10. MACHINE VERSUS HORSE

To a career officer like Hank Reed, it made no difference that opinion was turning away from mounted cavalry. His job was to maintain the level of training and skill that the force demanded. Riding horses took constant practice and drill; caring for the horses was a morning-to-night routine. In addition, skilled craftsmen were needed to tend to the horseshoeing and equipment. Soon, his troops would be traveling by train with their horses to participate in war games. This would be a time to prove the horse’s utility even in the era of tanks, armored cars, and jeeps.

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ON THE GLORIOUS SUNNY DAY of the 10th Cavalry’s seventy-fifth anniversary, after the morning mounted parade, the men were not just ready but champing at the bit as they gathered at Camp Funston’s parade ground—known as the “Buffalo Stomp Grounds”—to hear their commanding officer, Colonel Paul R. Davison, give a rousing speech from the dais. The men listened attentively, their faces shaded by broad-brimmed campaign hats. Reed sat nearby with the other officers, intent on his commanding officer’s words.

Looking out over the sea of dark faces, the white officer explained to the members of the unit that the regimental standard might soon be flying almost anywhere in the world—Africa, China, Latin America. “That is the reason I’ve been pouring the training on this regiment,” he told the men. “When we fight an enemy, we want to be so tough, so hard and so well-trained that we can talk about it afterwards.” The American army in 1941, still segregated along color lines, was struggling to come to terms with the influx of new African-American recruits. While prejudice against them in the army was rampant, the white officers who led this historic black regiment believed in their men’s ability to fight. Speaking later about the 10th, Colonel Davison said, “In all my years of service, those in command of the Tenth stand out most clearly. In no other command did I receive more loyal, willing, and instant service than in the Tenth. I had the feeling that if given the job in peace or war we could accomplish anything with the regiment.” And yet the men seated here had a double whammy of disadvantages to contend with as the world prepared for war: First, they were horse cavalry; and second, they were African-Americans in a segregated army.

Colonel Davison and Major Hank Reed understood how high the stakes were for these African-American enlisted men. In under a month, they would be participating in the biggest war games ever held on American territory—the event that became known as the Great Louisiana Maneuvers. Horse cavalry would be thrown into a mix that included tanks, armored cars, airplanes, and half-tracks (trucks with two wheels in front and two tracks in back). Not only the mossbacks but also most army officers believed that horses still had an advantage over difficult terrain, and the area set aside for the maneuvers—Louisiana swampland—handily fit that description.

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ON MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1941, low-hanging dark clouds dumped rain over the thirty-four-hundred-square-mile area where the largest group of American military forces ever assembled in one place had gathered. The rain poured down upon the paved roads and the muddy ones, the pine forests and quicksand-filled marshes, the isolated farms and main streets and church steeples of the small parishes, and it rained on 470,000 men, 50,000 wheeled vehicles, and 32,000 horses. Congress had handed over $21 million to support these war games.

All eyes were on the army’s technology. The German blitzkrieg of tanks and motorized vehicles supported by airpower was perceived as the greatest potential threat. George Patton would be showing what his armored cavalry forces were capable of. The question on everyone’s mind was whether the American army had mechanized sufficiently to put up a fight.

Louisiana was not only the proving ground for America’s technology. For Major General John K. Herr’s equine-centric cavalry, this was the Battle of Little Bighorn, the horse’s last stand, a chance to prove that mounted troops were indispensable even nearly halfway through the twentieth century. For the African-American soldiers of the 10th Cavalry, there was even more at stake. Despite their proud history as valiant warriors from the Indian Wars through the charge up San Juan Hill, the racist, pseudo-scientific eugenic theories that had taken hold in the U.S. Army during the early years of the twentieth century had done these men harm. Especially since 1931, their status as fighters had been constantly degraded, leaving them often without weapons, employed as servants to white officers—grooms, valets, drivers—and stripping them of their historical role as fighting men. Here was their chance to prove their real worth.

The unabated rain turned sandy roads into slick sheets of slippery mud and marshes into swamps. The horses, accustomed to traveling over any terrain, appeared to have an innate advantage. The war game maneuvers were set up with two teams facing off: the Red team under the command of General Walter Krueger, the Blue team under the command of General Ben Lear, each side including armored vehicles, cavalry, infantry, and airpower. The 10th, part of the 4th Brigade of the 2nd Cavalry Division, was assigned to the Blue team. Here, in the lands between the Sabine and Red Rivers, the men in uniform would face water, clay, mud, and hills, as well as chiggers and coral snakes. The cavalry leaders complained that the tanks started out with an unfair advantage, grumbling that horses should be given a head start, since they normally performed reconnaissance, operating by stealth, well in advance of the rest of the troops. But the rules of the war games specified that both mounted and mechanized troops had to start at the same time. The two teams faced off one hundred miles apart, imparting an obvious speed advantage to the motorized vehicles. Still, it seemed possible that the horses might be able to showcase their superior mobility over such tricky terrain.

While the press focused their cameras and comments on the technological might of the armored divisions and air capabilities on display, locals in this sleepy corner of western Louisiana were impressed by the sight of columns of horses thundering down the highways. They also noticed some of the unique difficulties encountered by the horsemen, who crept into local corncribs at night to steal extra rations for their horses.

On the second day of the maneuvers, a camera caught the soldiers of the 10th riding alongside a column of tanks that dominated the center of the road. For a while, it seemed as if the horse really did maintain an advantage: Riding hell for leather through the night in the pouring rain, the mounted soldiers beat their teammates in General George Patton’s armored division to the town of Zwolle, where their mission was to prevent the 1st Cavalry from crossing the Sabine River. Tanks were sliding off roads, getting stuck in Louisiana’s famous “gumbo” mud, running out of gas—subject to all of the shortcomings of motorized vehicles of the era. The horse showed none of these deficiencies. Among the horse cavalry, rumors were flying—perhaps their stellar performance had earned them an eleventh-hour reprieve from being marginalized.

The games were held from September 15 to 20 and 24 to 28, 1941. In the second maneuver, General Patton switched sides, joining the Red team, where he would assist General Krueger. Patton, a cavalryman himself but an early adopter of armor, took advantage of the fact that the Blue team’s General Lear didn’t trust armored divisions and liked to rely more heavily on the horses. Patton raced through East Texas with his jeeps, tanks, and armored cars, managing to encircle the Red team and proving that cavalry tactics combined with motorized speed could trump the traditional cavalry’s capabilities.

Though this was effectively the last time that the United States mounted cavalry would appear in force, Fort Riley still percolated with new recruits. The presence of such star athletes as Joe Louis and a young Jackie Robinson buoyed the spirits of the African-American community, and even though black soldiers were still discriminated against, a few glimmers of progress became apparent as the Officer Candidate School at Fort Riley grudgingly opened its doors to its first few black soldiers.

For the horse, there was no such glimmer of hope. Even though a few voices still argued in its favor, motorized vehicles had won out. In March 1942, with the stroke of a pen, the War Department eliminated Major General John K. Herr’s position as chief of cavalry and deactivated the 2nd Cavalry Division, of which the 10th was a part. Bitter regret surged through the old hands in the cavalry, and of John K. Herr, critics said, “He lost it all.” Just one year after the glorious seventy-fifth-anniversary celebration, the 10th Cavalry was disbanded and most of the soldiers were moved into service roles. By 1942, the stables at Fort Riley had been converted into tank barns.

Hank Reed was needed elsewhere. On February 21, 1942, Colonel Davison sent him off with these words of praise: “You have contributed more towards bringing the regiment up to its current level and it has prospered from your loyal and conscientious leadership.”

On his last night at Fort Riley, Colonel Reed walked across the base toward home. The night sky formed an inverted bowl above; the glittering Milky Way seemed close enough to touch. Off in the distance, a Union Pacific railroad train chugged past, its lonely whistle piercing the air. Reed was preparing to say goodbye. As for all career army men, his life had been a series of departures, each new phase marked by packing bags and boarding trains. He had watched his country roll past the plate-glass windows of his train cars, trading the green, closed-in East for the wide-open West, the empty plains giving way to eastern cities on the way back. But this time felt different. The cavalry as a mounted unit was finished, and the men he had been commanding for seven years would be broken up to face an uncertain future in an army that did not treat them fairly.

Major Reed was leaving for Camp Forrest in Tullahoma, Tennessee, to join the 633rd Armored Battalion. Starting today, he was a cushion pusher. Reed was no Luddite. He understood the necessity of moving into the armored age—his love for horses had convinced him that the modern battlefield was no place for these amazing animals. But still, his departure from Fort Riley was bittersweet.

The final strains of taps floated out over the base, then faded into the still night air, leaving just cricket sounds in its wake, while Hank Reed said farewell to his last day as a mounted officer.