The Twilight of the U.S. Cavalry


Book Description

Lucian Truscott takes the reader back in this military memoir to the days of the horse cavalry in American history.




The Last Cavalryman


Book Description

In this biography of Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., author Harvey Ferguson tells the story of how Truscott—despite his hardscrabble beginnings, patchy education, and questionable luck— not only made the rank of army lieutenant general, earning a reputation as one of World War II’s most effective officers along the way, but was also given an honorary promotion to four-star general seven years after his retirement.




The Twilight Riders


Book Description

I have endeavored in the following pages to present the full drama and scope of the 26th Cavalry's heroic but doomed mounted campaign against the seasoned troops, planes, and tanks of the Japanese Army, from the first few hours after the invaders poured from their landing craft onto the shores of Luzon Island in late December 1941, to the final desperate months in Bataan and on The Rock, the Corregidor fortress. Every step of the way, the scouts bought time for MacArthur's army to fight back. It is also not hyperbolic to contend that without the 26th's delaying actions on Luzon--a textbook and innovative campaign studied in modern war colleges--MacArthur might never have had the time to escape the Philippines when ordered to do so in March 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The cavalrymen of the 26th fought the last full-fledged horseback campaign in history, paying a terrible toll but exacting an even higher one upon the Japanese Army. The regiment's story reveals not only the valor of the horsemen, their horses, and the 26th's motorized squadron, but also the way in which the unit's American and Filipino troopers forged ties that transcended race and were forever cemented in blood, suffering, and pride.--from the Prologue, A Vision from Another Century




The Regulars


Book Description

In 1898 the American Regular Army was a small frontier constabulary engaged in skirmishes with Indians and protesting workers. Forty-three years later, in 1941, it was a large modern army ready to wage global war against the Germans and the Japanese. In this definitive social history of America's standing army, military historian Edward Coffman tells how that critical transformation was accomplished. Coffman has spent years immersed in the official records, personal papers, memoirs, and biographies of regular army men, including such famous leaders as George Marshall, George Patton, and Douglas MacArthur. He weaves their stories, and those of others he has interviewed, into the story of an army which grew from a small community of posts in China and the Philippines to a highly effective mechanized ground and air force. During these years, the U.S. Army conquered and controlled a colonial empire, military staff lived in exotic locales with their families, and soldiers engaged in combat in Cuba and the Pacific. In the twentieth century, the United States entered into alliances to fight the German army in World War I, and then again to meet the challenge of the Axis Powers in World War II. Coffman explains how a managerial revolution in the early 1900s provided the organizational framework and educational foundation for change, and how the combination of inspired leadership, technological advances, and a supportive society made it successful. In a stirring account of all aspects of garrison life, including race relations, we meet the men and women who helped reconfigure America's frontier army into a modern global force.




The Doomed Horse Soldiers of Bataan


Book Description

This is the story of the last mounted American troops to see action in battle, when, in late 1941, six-hundred men and their horses held off the Japanese invasion of Luzon in the Philippines just long enough to allow General Douglas MacArthur's forces to withdraw to Bataan. The 26th continued to fight on horseback until late February 1942 when, tragically, they were ordered dismounted and their horses and mules transferred to the Quartermaster's center and slaughtered for food for the defenders. It is on record that the 26th troopers refused to accept meat rations from their animals, regardless of their own starvation. This stirring account of a little-known aspect of the Philippine campaign is military history at its best.




Roman Heavy Cavalry (2)


Book Description

In the twilight of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th–6th centuries, the elite of the field armies was the heavy armoured cavalry – the cataphracts, clad in lamellar, scale, mail and padded fabric armour. After the fall of the West, the Greek-speaking Eastern or Byzantine Empire survived for nearly a thousand years, and cavalry remained predominant in its armies, with the heaviest armoured regiments continuing to provide the ultimate shock-force in battle. Accounts from Muslim chroniclers show that the ironclad cataphract on his armoured horse was an awe-inspiring enemy: '...they advanced against you, iron-covered – one would have said that they advanced on horses which seemed to have no legs'. This new study, replete with stunning full-colour illustrations of the various units, offers an engaging insight into the fearsome heavy cavalry units that battled against the enemies of Rome's Eastern Empire.




Major General Maurice Rose


Book Description

Major General Maurice Rose (1899-1945), commander of 3rd Amored, First Army's legendary "Spearhead" division, was the highest-ranking American Jewish officer ever killed in battle, and the only individual casualty to spark a War Crimes Investigation. This, the first and only biography of this important World War II figure, tells the dramatic story of Rose's life—-from his childhood as a son of a rabbi, through his experiences in World War I and in the U.S. cavalry, to his meteoric rise as America's answer to Rommel. In 1943, Rose negotiated and accepted the surrender of the German Army in Tunisia, the first large-scale surrender to an American force during World War II. At the Battle of Carentan in June 1944, he saved the 506th Parachute Infantry (of Band of Brothers fame), and might very well have saved the entire Normandy beachhead from a catastrophic German counterattack. His brilliant, daring, and aggressive defensive tactics during the Battle of the Bulge prevented an enemy breakthrough to the Meuse River and beyond, thereby frustrating the German advance. Based on original archival research and exclusive interviews, this biography shatters old myths and factual distortions, and offers a refreshingly inquisitive and critical perspective. Steven L. Ossad and Don R. Marsh reveal new insights into Rose's controversial death—-was he killed because he was Jewish or because he went for his weapon?—-and about the even more controversial investigations that followed. As compelling and extraordinary as the life that it describes, this biography pays long-overdue tribute to one of America's greatest heroes.




Riding to Arms


Book Description

Horses and horsemen played central roles in modern European warfare from the Renaissance to the Great War of 1914-1918, not only determining victory in battle, but also affecting the rise and fall of kingdoms and nations. When Shakespeare's Richard III cried, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" he attested to the importance of the warhorse in history and embedded the image of the warhorse in the cultural memory of the West. In Riding to Arms: A History of Horsemanship and Mounted Warfare, Charles Caramello examines the evolution of horsemanship—the training of horses and riders—and its relationship to the evolution of mounted warfare over four centuries. He explains how theories of horsemanship, navigating between art and utility, eventually settled on formal manège equitation merged with outdoor hunting equitation as the ideal combination for modern cavalry. He also addresses how the evolution of firepower and the advent of mechanized warfare eventually led to the end of horse cavalry. Riding to Arms tracks the history of horsemanship and cavalry through scores of primary texts ranging from Federico Grisone's Rules of Riding (1550) to Lt.-Colonel E.G. French's Good-Bye to Boot and Saddle (1951). It offers not only a history of horsemen, horse soldiers, and horses, but also a survey of the seminal texts that shaped that history.




Interpreting American Military History at Museums and Historic Sites


Book Description

Across the country, museums and historic sites welcome visitors into a world long gone but fundamental to America today. Military history in particular is etched into our country’s culture and the public’s imagination. The trouble, though, for museums and historical sites lies in continuing to make it both accessible and relevant to today’s audiences. Through Interpreting American Military History at Museums and Historic Sites, Marc K. Blackburn tackles the difficult task of helping those institutions charged with the care of sites, collections and stories that relate to our past relatable while still maintaining the dignity and reverence of their rich history. Looking at the various components of American military history such as battles and famous figures, Blackburn provides alternatives to the traditional museum experience. The 21st century is a culmination of the past and it is more important than ever to remember and learn from the triumphs and failures, and this guide provides and explains those strategies for making our stories and collections relevant to modern audiences. This books acts as a primer for those unfamiliar with academic trends of the last forty years. Historiography of American military history, like that of other sub-fields, shifts as new information surfaces or as perspectives change. Blackburn modernizes this area through new interpretative methods, as well as through case studies of museums and historic sites that have created programs, interpretive media, outreach strategies, and mission goals updated to meet the needs of today’s patrons. Armed with these strategies, historic institutions will have the foundation to provide compelling, relevant, and engaging experiences for the 21st century audience.




A Handbook of American Military History


Book Description

The second edition of A Handbook of American Military History delineates the military history of the United States from the Revolutionary War into the opening stages of the twenty-first century war on terrorism. Comprehensive and easy to use, it supplies essential information on the social, technological, political, tactical, and strategic developments that have affected the evolution of the U.S. armed forces. New to the second edition is a chapter on U.S. military history from 1995 through 2004 and an index. A Handbook of American Military History is the perfect reader's guide for the military history buff or anyone interested in a brief overview of American military history.