ARMOR-CAVALRY: Part 1; Regular Army and Army Reserve/Cavalry in World War I

by Mary Lee Stubbs and Stanley Russell Connor

• The cavalry organization of seventeen regiments in effect when the United States entered the war against Germany was based upon the National Defense Act of 1916. In May 1917 emergency laws called for immediate increase to the full strength authorized by the National Defense Act, and organization of the remaining eight new cavalry regiments began at once. To speed up the process, certain old units in June 1917 transferred two-thirds of their men to the new regiments.

• The new regiments were numbered the 18th through the 25th. But, one month after their organization was completed, all eight began training as field artillery. On 1 October 1917 Congress acted to make their conversion to field artillery legal, and on 1 November 1917 the 18th through the 25th Cavalry were redesignated as the 76th through the 83d Field Artillery. Although Congress specified that the units would reorganize as cavalry after the emergency, such action was never taken. Hence, the histories of the former 18th through 25th Cavalry are currently perpetuated in a number of artillery units.

• An act of Congress on 18 May 1917 provided for twenty National Army (or temporary) cavalry regiments, which were designated 301st through 320th. Fifteen of them, the 301st through the 315th, were organized in early 1918 at various National Army camps, but in August of that year they, too, were converted to field artillery. Thirty field artillery regiments, the 44th through the 72d, and nine trench mortar batteries, the 15th through the 23d, were organized from them. None of those units served outside the United States and all were demobilized in January-February of 1919. The 316th through the 320th Cavalry were not activated during the war years.

• By the time the United States entered World War I, the machine gun, together with improved artillery, barbed wire, and elaborate field fortifications, had produced a stalemate on the European Western Front. The Allies and the Germans, with their opposing armies anchored on the sea in the west and on the mountains in the east, repeatedly used waves of infantrymen and heavy artillery barrages in vain efforts to break the deadlock. Their critical need was for mobility and shock action, both traditional roles of horse cavalry, but static trench warfare and the machine gun had made use of the horse impractical.

• Four regiments of U.S. cavalry- the 2d, 3d, 6th, and 15th- nevertheless formed a part of the American Expeditionary Forces, and engaged chiefly in remount duty. That they would have been used otherwise during the latter part of the war, had they been available, was implied by General Pershing in 1920. He stated that, once the forces were in the open, cavalry would have been of great value on several occasions, and Allied cavalry trained in American tactics would have been most effective in the pursuit of the enemy northward toward the Meuse.

• Since U.S. cavalrymen had been trained to fight dismounted as well as mounted, many of them did see action as foot soldiers. Again, as in earlier wars, many individual awards for gallantry were earned by the dismounted troopers who fought in other arms and services.

• Only a very small portion of the U.S. cavalry saw any mounted service in France. In late August 1918, just before the St. Mihiel offensive, a provisional squadron was formed from Troops, B, D, F, and H of the 2d Cavalry. Fourteen officers and 404 enlisted men from those troops with convalescent horses furnished from the veterinary hospital moved to old Camp Jeanne d'Arc, near Neufchateau, for training in mounted action. Lt. Col. Oliver P. M. Hazzard commanded the squadron. Among the troop commanders was Capt. Ernest N. Harmon who, during World War II, was to command the 2d Armored Division and then the XXII Corps.

• After about ten days of training, one troop of the Provisional Squadron was detached and marched to Menil-la-Tour, where it reported for courier duty with the 1st, 42d, and 89th Divisions. The remainder of the squadron reported to the 1st Division on the night of 11 September 1918, and by a few minutes past noon of the next day U.S. cavalrymen, mounted, were at Nonsard, about five miles behind the original front line of the enemy. Sent out on reconnaissance duty beyond their capabilities, the cavalrymen met the enemy in considerable force and were routed. Later, in the Meuse-Argonne action, the squadron with three troops maintained liaison between flank divisions and those on the front lines. Among the trenches, which made movement of a whole troop impracticable, small patrols, sometimes riding and sometimes walking, acted as military police and couriers. By mid-October, when withdrawn from the front, the squadron had only 150 mounted effectives, largely because of the evacuation of sick and wounded horses.

• After the armistice, Headquarters, Band, and six troops of the 2d Cavalry acted as advance guard for the Army movement into Germany, and afterward were stationed along the Rhine with the American Army of Occupation.

• Although few U.S. cavalry regiments went to Europe during World War I, all were well represented there by individual cavalrymen. For example, between May and September 1917, one regiment alone- the new 16th Cavalry- lost most of its original officers by promotion in the National Army; and from May 1917 until November 1918 more than a hundred enlisted members of that regiment received commissions in the National Army. Many of these men saw service in France. After the armistice twenty-six of them returned and reenlisted as noncommissioned officers.

• Vacancies in cavalry units created by promotion and reassignment were filled by new personnel, and the regiments were moved to the Mexican border, an area well known to the older cavalrymen. Germany's efforts to rekindle trouble between the United States and Mexico were met by the concentration of a cavalry force in the southwest. In December 1917 the 15th Cavalry Division - three brigades of three regiments each - was organized in Texas. There were no other cavalry divisions in the Army then, but no explanation for designating this one the 15th has been found. Like the divisions organized during previous emergencies, the life of the 15th was short. Actually, a full division organization was not completed, and it was discontinued in May 1918. The brigade headquarters lasted until July 1919 when they, too, were disbanded.