In Kansas: Echoing Hoofbeats

By John Skow

The faces of these old horse soldiers were lined, and stories were written on the lines. Traces were visible of more than a random share of scars and broken noses and of skin reddened by weather and bourbon. Their bodies had stiffened, but hands, forearms and shoulders remembered easy strength. They had aged, but that surely was not all they had done.

What is now called the horse cavalry, to distinguish it from the armored cavalry of tanks and jeeps that replaced it, was phased out of the U.S. Army slowly, over a period of years that began in the early '40s and officially ended in 1950. But the end had begun much earlier. General George S. Patton, the most flamboyant cavalryman since Custer, had commanded tanks in World War I. And, of course, 1950 was not really the end. There were too many memories.

Here at Fort Riley, Kans., where cavalry officers were trained from before Custer's time, the U.S. Horse Cavalry Association was holding its annual meeting. The group admits young members who never sat a horse in anger, and among those on hand was a group of re-enactors wearing uniforms of the 2nd Dragoons in the 1850s. But for a few years more, the core will be soldiers who trained to fight from the saddle. They call one another Trooper, so that former noncoms and onetime generals can feel at ease as they retell old stories, many of them true. Merton Glover, a big, angular man of 69, retired years ago as a platoon sergeant. He trained as a horse soldier, but in 1942 he was transferred to Fort Meade, S. Dak., where the cavalry was experimenting with mechanization. The concept was shaky at first. "Their idea for a while was to have us all run around on motorcycles," says Glover. "I rode a big old Indian 45 all the way down to maneuvers in Louisiana, 1,500 miles, and then rode it all the way back." There is a glint in his eyes as he talks.

The highest-ranking officer on hand is James H. Polk, 75, now a horse farmer from El Paso, who retired with four stars after commanding the U.S. Army in Europe from 1967 to '71. His earliest recollections are of horses and Army encampments. He was a small boy, he remembers, living here at Riley, when the bugler blew officers' call at lunchtime one day. His father, a young lieutenant, was on a train two hours later, heading toward Mexico to chase < Pancho Villa with General John J. Pershing's 1916 punitive expedition. "He never had time to change clothes, and we didn't see him again for a year," Polk said. "Fortunately, he had on a good pair of britches, and he still had the seat of his pants when the others had ridden theirs out."

For cavalry brats, the years between the wars are seen through a golden haze. Jane Wilson Cooper, daughter of the late Colonel Garnet ("Bill") Wilson, a 40-year cavalryman, recalls a "marvelous sense of security when you heard the bugle call tattoo or the gun was fired for retreat. It was the Depression, but we were never aware of not having money. What I remember is fox hunting at Fort Oglethorpe, not being broke." Her voice, these years later, carries enormous pride at being family to an elite corps of warriors.

Young cavalry officers training at Fort Riley in the '30s spent eight hours in the saddle most days, riding punishing cross-country courses, practicing dressage, riding tight figure-eight patterns while emptying their .45 pistols at targets. They were up at 5:30 a.m., often with pounding heads. "We were bachelors, and we did a lot of drinking," says Polk, "but with all the riding, we were healthy." Another old Riley hand, Major General Lawrence ("Bud") Schlanser, arrived at the post as a second lieutenant and married Jill Rodney, daughter of Colonel Dorcey Read Rodney, the commandant, "a little bandy-legged guy, tough as an old boot." Socializing for young married officers and their wives was both formal and innocent -- tuxedos or dress blues for the men, 15 cents movies and milk shakes afterward at the PX. "Your sole purpose in life was to develop your equestrian skills," Schlanser recalls. "Yeah, they paid us to ride and stay in shape," says Colonel James Spurrier, president of the U.S. Horse Cavalry Association. He sounds wistful. A first lieutenant's pay was $125 a month, good money in those days. A pair of English boots cost $110, Polk remembers, but the shop "would wait six months before sending you a letter saying 'We note that you are slightly overdue . . .' I bought a pair of tank boots in London during the war, and they said, 'Oh, we have your measure, Master Polk.' I guess I looked young." Polk's eyes flick back 45 years, and his face softens with self-amusement. Time passes, sure enough.

Ask one of these horse soldiers what he was doing on Dec. 7, 1941, and the answer is easy: it was Sunday, so he was playing polo. Polk had a two-goal rating, which is good. Spurrier, a star, had a five-goal rating when the Army, on Feb. 28, 1943, at last took his cavalry unit's horses away. The two watch indulgently as local enthusiasts play a polo match at Riley. "Gopher killing," says Polk, as a player whacks the ground with his mallet, missing the ball entirely. Spurrier, a horseman whose face shows ancestry that is part Osage Indian, gently instructs an observer who has thought polo a game for prosperous fops. Yes, he says, you could call it a risk sport; at least five Army friends died playing the game.

Lieut. Edwin P. Ramsey, stationed in the Philippines in 1941, played the season's first polo match on Dec. 7, and then, because of the time-zone difference, heard news of the Pearl Harbor raid early the next morning. Ramsey these days is a fit-looking 70, and his manner is that of a semiretired businessman, not a cavalry hero. But the fact is that Ramsey, at the battle of Moron on Bataan in the Philippines, led the last cavalry charge in the history of the U.S. Army. He was serving with the crack Philippine Scouts, the 26th Cavalry Regiment, a mounted outfit with U.S. officers and Philippine enlisted men. They were the best troops General Jonathan Wainwright had, says Ramsey, and they helped delay the Japanese advance until the fall of Bataan, buying time for Wainwright and General Douglas MacArthur. The charge came on the morning of Jan. 16, 1942. A Japanese column of about 75 soldiers, the advance guard of a much larger force, had crossed a river, and Ramsey, on orders from Wainwright, charged with a platoon of 28 men. "They were magnificent," Ramsey says. "I gave the order to deploy as foragers -- that means in a line -- and then gave the order to charge, which they executed instantly." He snaps his fingers. "We broke through their column, inflicted ten to 15 casualties, and then went into dismount action near a little stream. Shortly after, the main body of the troop came into the village dismounted, and we held the position under heavy shelling for about five hours, until we were relieved." Only one trooper in the charging platoon was killed and three were wounded. Afterward, the horses of the 26th Cavalry were taken away for food, and the regiment fought on foot for the remainder of the defense of Bataan. Following the surrender of Bataan, Ramsey escaped and organized the guerrilla forces in central Luzon. By the war's end he commanded some 40,000 irregulars.

) So the stories go, some grand, some merely odd links of a man's life. Jose de Jesus, a trooper (later a lieutenant) with the Philippine Scouts though not a participant in Ramsey's charge, meets one of his old officers, Colonel William Chandler, who helped him back onto his horse during a stretch of fighting when his legs were shaking uncontrollably. Bud Schlanser meets a onetime noncom who found him wandering in a daze after his jeep struck a mine near Trier, Germany. Two days are still gone from Schlanser's memory, but the meeting helps fill the gap. And Spurrier, the great polo player, tells of marching 25 miles in riding boots after his cavalry unit was transmogrified into infantry, then, with rubber legs, trying to ride in a competition and rolling off his horse like a greenhorn. He grunts, "Hmm, hmm," thinking about this, and then comes out with it, the lament of more than one old horse soldier. "Yeah," he says, with what could be a laugh, "I was born 30 years too late."