3d Division Order of Battle, 1918

The order of Battle for the 3d Division, which we've been discussing here recently.

All US divisions in World War One were big "square" divisions, much larger than those which the US went to after 1940. Indeed, they were absolutely enormous compared to the divisions of other armies, in part because the U.S. was capable of fully manning a division. Generally, U.S divisions contained at least 30,000 men, but some would swell up beyond that. The 3d Division is an example of that. By October 1918 it contained 54,000 men, well three times the size of a World War Two Division.

Indeed, this impacts histories of the war as many histories fail to note how large US divisions were.  As we'll see, in the Battle of Belleau Wood the 2nd Division took on elements of five German divisions. But by 1918 German divisions were rarely fully manned. For that matter, Allied ones were rarely fully manned either.  So while histories may note that one army or another had "x" divisions here and there, while the US had only "y", the US commitment at any one time was often much larger than those numbers would suggest.

Anyhow, the 3d Division was made up mostly of Regular Army units. For that reason, it was one of the first divisions in France and one of the first combat ready divisions.  As the U.S. Army did not keep divisions formed during peacetime, it was assembled just prior to the war.  Nonetheless, it was largely made up of Regular Army soldiers augmented in some areas, to flesh it out, with National Guardsmen (most likely) or recent inductees from civilian life.

Here's how the unit was formed.

Headquarters, 3rd Division

5th Infantry Brigade, consisting of;

4th Infantry Regiment, a regular Army regiment.

7th Infantry Regiment, also a regular regiment

8th Machine Gun Battalion.  I don't know the make up of this unit but machine gun battalions were a recent introduction into the Army.  World War One would prove to be unique for the combat use of such battalions and they'd not really reappear in the U.S. Army during World War Two.

6th Infantry Brigade, consisting of;

30th Infantry Regiment. Regular Army.

38th Infantry Regiment.  Regular Army.

9th Machine Gun Battalion

3rd Field Artillery Brigade, consisting of;

10th Field Artillery Regiment (75 mm)  Newly formed in 1916 at Camp Douglas, Arizona.

18th Field Artillery Regiment (155 mm).  Newly formed in 1916 at Ft. Bliss, Texas.

76th Field Artillery Regiment (75 mm).  Converted from regular U.S. Army's 18th Cavalry Regiment wholesale.  The 18th Cavalry was a newly formed Cavalry regiment authorized in 1916 which had a brief existence before being converted to cavalry Quite a few of the newly authorized cavalry regiments from the National Defense Act of 1916, and National Guard cavalry regiments, were reorganized from cavalry to artillery or transport.  Indeed, even some National Guard infantry was so reorganized.  The reorganization of available cavalry regiments made sense in context as the men in them were familiar with handling horses, and artillery was horse drawn at the time.

3rd Trench Mortar Battery.  Another new formation. Trench mortars were a major feature of World War One but would be obsolete by World War Two.

7th Machine Gun Battalion

6th Engineer Regiment

5th Field Signal Battalion

Headquarters Troop, 3rd Division.  This was a cavalry troop.  I'm not sure what cavalry regiment provided the troops for it.  Basically, however, cavalry troops were individual troops assigned from prewar cavalry regiments, quite a few of which were National Guard cavalry troops.

3rd Train Headquarters and Military Police.  Military police as a regular establishment was new to the Army at this time, and reflected its enormous growth.

3rd Ammunition Train.

3rd Supply Train

3rd Engineer Train

3rd Sanitary Train

5th, 7th, 26th, and 27th Ambulance Companies and Field Hospital

Field Camp 68th Inf. Brigade, 34th Div., Tyrone, Burro Mts., N.M., elevation 5890 ft., May 1918, Col. Erle D. Luce, C.O.

Reveille.

Company "C." 115th U.S. Infantry - Camp McClellan, Anniston, Ala. - April 1, 1918

Lex Anteinternet: The Kaiserschlacht Commences. Operation Michael. The First Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the Battle of Moreuil Wood

Lex Anteinternet: The Kaiserschlacht Commences. Operation Michael

 The First Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the Battle of Moreuil Wood

On March 30 the Germans none the less tried again, launching an assault south of the new Somme salient towards Amiens resulting in two significant battles, one of which is very well recalled today.  The Germans gained some ground but it was slight, and German troops lost discipline when they hit Allied supply depots.

The resumed German offensive opened up near the town of Le Hamel but was turned back, although the Germans took ground near the Hangard Wood.  This resulted in a five day pause in the German effort in this location until they resumed their attack towards the town of Villers-Bretonneux.  The French fell back upon the German resumed attack but British and Australian troops generally held well but were ultimately forced to retire due to a two stage retreat by the 14th (Light) Division. which ultimately fell back some 3500 yards to a new position.  Australian troops restored the line and counterattacked, pushing the Germans back out of the town.  This was followed up by flanking advances by British cavalry and Australian infantry which consolidated the line for the time being.

This phase of the German offensive also saw the remarkable Canadian cavalry charge in the Battle of Moreuil Wood in which the Canadian Cavalry Brigade conducted a mounted assault near the village of Moreuil, taking the wood against the prediction of failure of a nearby French unit, receiving assistance from the RFC in the assault.  The Germans retook the wood the following day, March 31, but the Canadians then took it back. The Germans ultimately retook the wood, showing the intense nature of the fighting, but the overall offensive was called off shortly after that.

 The charge at Moreuil Wood.

Operation Michael had gained a lot of ground, but it had ground to a halt.  By April 5 the Germans were exhausted and an effort to resume the offensive against the British failed.  Moreover, German casualties had been massive, and many of those casualties came from their very best units.

The Kaiserschlacht Commences. March 21, 1918. Operation Michael

Afternoon edition of Cheyenne's Wyoming Tribune, March 21, 1918.

It was a momentous day, to be sure.

Excellent map showing all five expressions of the Kaiserschlacht, the massive German campaign to end the war in 1918.  Every single part of the offensive was a tactical success for the Germans. . . but not enough of a success to win the war.

And so, on this day, the German Army began its last great, and nearly successful, offensive the Great War.  An offensive, however, whose result was foreordained by the lack of German horsepower.

 What the Germans were lacking by this point of World War One.

There will be a lot of "100 Year Ago" type history venues on this event, as it is a big one.  It was, truly, the German's last big gasp of World War One.  It wrecked the offensive abilities of the German Army for the duration of the war, but it was something they had to try. After the Kaiserschlacht the Germans could only defend and their strategy changed to that.  It wouldn't work long as the home front crumbled behind the German front, to include the crumbling in moral of the German Army and Navy at home.

The offensive, made up of a series of operations that would take place over the next two months, commenced with Operation Michael, a massive offensive against the British Expeditionary Force.

Operation Michael

 

Repeat of the map above.  Operation Michael is the "First German Drive" of the mpa.

The Kaiserschlacht, it not Operation Michael, was somewhat obvious in that it had been known for months that the Germans would try a giant 1918 offensive.  As early as February the American soldier's newspaper Wadsworth Gas Attack and Rio Grand Rattler had published an issue was a drunk Mars "waiting for spring".  It was coming, and everyone knew it.

Everyone with any military savvy also knew that with Russia having now surrendered to the Germans, and the Germans having been sensible enough to accept a negotiated peace, something they failed to do in World War Two, millions of German troops should have now been available to fight in the West.  However, what hadn't been counted on with Trotsky's blundering, which delayed the onset of peace by a month, and German avarice, which caused t he German's to use Trotsky's error to absorb huge areas of Russian territory and former Imperial territory they were now left garrisoning as if they had the spare manpower to do it.

The Germans should have poured out of the East, taking every horse they could "conscript" with them.  German troops did come, but not in the numbers they could have.

So the Allies braced for an offensive they knew was coming.  They were not idle.  The British, operating partially on intelligence gathered from two German deserters, not only anticipated the attack, but placed the probable date of the attack on this very day, although they anticipated it could be slightly earlier.  As a result, the British had been engaged in nightly artillery strikes on German positions since March 18.

On this day, the offensive commenced with the assault on the BEF.

A closer view of the successful German drive on the Somme.  Over a three week period the Germans wiped out British gains on the Somme and seriously threatened the position of the BEF in Europe.

The Battle of St. Quentin, the Somme Crossings and the First Battle of Bapaume

It commenced with an artillery barraged at 0435 on British positions near St. Quentin (and it also saw the commencement of German artillery strikes on Paris). While our memory of it has become skewed due to the intense British focus on World War One, the British were a small army compared to the French, but they were also in much better fighting shape than the French overall.  While the bombardment was massive, it did not leave the British incapable of resisting.  Nonetheless, after extremely intense infantry combat, which started with a German assault at 0940, the British had yielded in some places and began to retreat. Already on March 21 the British had lost ground.  This continued to be the case through March 23.

British artillery in retreat.

The British broke at St. Quentin, but their resistance had already worked a toll on the German forces which had begun to slow down. Nonetheless the British lost their lines on the Somme on March 24.  The same day the British lost the town of Bapaume and the French began to be concerned that the British had been irretrievably beaten.  Ironically the German capture of British supplies caused despondency in the German rank as German troops realized, from what they captured, that the British were very well supplied and even had stocks of Champagne in their stores.  The French, however, began plans for an offensive operation against the Germans out of a fear that the British situation could not be restored.

By the 25th the French were in fact engaged, but in defensive operations, and the overall situation was confused. Fighting was occurring everywhere but what was occurring was not clear to anyone.  British cavalry was in action in rearguard operations slowing German advances and the RAF was busy as well, as both the oldest and newest forms of mobile warfare combined against the Germans.

 British 6 Inch Gun firing on March 26 near Ancre.

Nonetheless a council of war was held on the 26th with the result that General Foch of the French Army was made the supreme Allied commander.

The Battle of Rosieres and the Battle of Arrars

On the 26th and 27th the British fought the Battle of Rosieres in which the British committed tanks. Nonetheless the Allies continued to lose ground and lost the town of Albert during the night.  Throughout the retreat phase that went  through the 27th Tommies occasionally panicked and took up defense positions at the report of German cavalry being just over the horizon.  Still, while they retreated continually they did not disintegrate and both the British and the French remained in action throughout.  On the 28th a German assault only a handful of miles, showing that the Germans were slowing.  A primary factor was that the German cavalry that was needed to exploit the breakthroughs in the Allied lines that continually occurred simply didn't exit.

There wasn't any. The Germans were now, in terms of fighting at the front, an infantry force only.  They'd lose the war as a result.  The could exploit gaps in the British lines no quicker than a man could advance, and with each days advance the German troops became more and more fatigued until, at last, they simply refused to move, even under threat of death.

The First Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the Battle of Moreuil Wood

On March 30 the Germans none the less tried again, launching an assault south of the new Somme salient towards Amiens.  The Germans gained some ground but it was slight, and German troops lost discipline when they hit Allied supply depots.  This phase of the German offensive saw the remarkable Canadian cavalry charge in the Battle of Moreuil Wood in which the Canadian Cavalry Brigade conducted a mounted assault near the village of Moreuil, taking the wood against the prediction of failure of a nearby French unit, receiving assistance from the RFC in the assault.  The Germans retook the wood the following day, March 31, but the Canadians then took it back. The Germans ultimately retook the wood, showing the intense nature of the fighting, but the overall offensive was called off shortly after that.  Operation Michael had gained a lot of ground, but it had ground to a halt.  By April 5 the Germans were exhausted and an effort to resume the offensive against the British failed.

 The charge at Moreuil Wood.

The initial German advance had been significant, but equally significant is that the  Germans had failed to take any of their objectives and by April 5 they were halted.  The German advance was impressive, but far short of achieving a knockout blow.  German and British losses were nearly equal at 250,000 men but the British were able to make up material shortages so rapidly that loss of material turned out to be relatively inconsequential.  German manpower losses, however, were catastrophic as it had lost a significant number of elite troops in the effort, which it would not be able to replace.

Many of the German troops lost were Stoßtruppen

 German Stoßtrup, Spring 1918.  Trained in individual and small unit combat, this soldier is carrying a MP18 and a P08.  Submachineguns were a brand new weapon at the time.

Stoßtruppen were a late war German innovation created to attempt to restore mobility to the battlefield.  Highly trained light infantrymen, these "Storm Troops" were in some ways the first of their kind. Predecessors of units like the later American Rangers and other similar elite infantry units, they were trained to storm enemy positions and overwhelm them in violent rapidly moving assaults.  They were equipped accordingly, carrying pistols, K98a's, and as seen above, submachineguns.

They were also a bit of a desperate effort on the part of the Germans to make up for the lack of cavalry, something which is evident but rarely discussed.  Unable to take a concentrated enemy position by a mounted charge, the Germans had to resort to infantry, something that had proven to be a failure since 1914.  They sought to overcome this through highly trained specialized infantry.  It worked in part, but only in part.  Stoßtruppen could penetrate. . . but they really couldn't advance.  And by April 5, the Germans weren't advancing.

But they couldn't stop.  To do so was to conceded an inevitable defeat. So, ground to a halt against the British though they were, they determined to renew the offensive elsewhere.  

U.S. Troop Strength. March, 1918.

While reading the newspapers would have lead you to the opposite conclusion, and therefore no matter how attuned to the news you may have been, you wouldn't have known it, on this date in 1918 there were only four American divisions in France.

There were over 2,000,000 men in training, but only the 1st Division (Regular Army), the 2nd Division (Regular Army and Marines, under the command of a Marine Corps general), the 26th Division (National Guard) and the 42nd Division (National Guard) were standing as organized combat units in France.  The 41st Division was also in France, but it had already sustained casualties in the sinking of the SS Tuscania and was therefore assigned by Pershing as a Depot, i.e., replacement, unit stationed in Tours.

U.S. divisions were very large at the time, almost double the size they'd be during World War Two.  A full "square" division had over 27,000 men in it, compared to the approximate 15,000 of the World War Two "triangular" division.  And they had a smaller logistical train, so in terms of combat strength, they'd have been roughly equivalent to six or seven World War Two type divisions, although the evolution of the Army in the twenty some years between World War One and World War Two make that a very tenuous comparison (the WWII division was a markedly more lethal division).  All World War One American divisions were simply divisions as well, there were no "infantry" divisions. They were all infantry divisions.  Moreover, there was only one cavalry regiment, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, in France at the time.  While the Army had based the U.S. Division on the French "square" division, incorporating organic cavalry into each division, there was to have been independent cavalry regiments along the British pattern for breakthroughs in mobile warfare.  Indeed, Pershing didn't imagine the United States Army doing trench fighting at all.  Only part of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment was in France at the time, although it was one of the very first units to arrive in France.

That all means  there was only about 130,000 U.S. combat troops in Europe on March 20 (or 21), 1918.

Of course, the use of the word "only" is itself deceptive.  By the end of August (a critical time, as we will be seeing) over 500,000 U.S. combat troops would be in Europe.  That's roughtly equivalent to the number of US troops committed to the Korean War and the Vietnam War, but that number is deceptive in that comparison as 500,000 World War One era combat troops were in fact mostly combat troops, where as in later U.S. wars the logistical and support elements were always much larger than the combat contingent.

If you'd been reading the paper, you'd have been reading about the heroic actions of "Sammies", an unfortunate name that somebody tagged on to U.S. doughboys which showed up on the papers but which thankfully didn't survive as a nickname all that long.  It was taken from, of course, Uncle Sam, the nickname for the U.S. Government.  What wouldn't have been clear is that all those actions occurred in the context of small units being assigned to the front in British and French sectors just to be exposed to combat.  Pershing, famously, was not keen on deploying the U.S. Army until it was up to strength, in spite of French and British requests that he do so.  The Army in Europe was engaged in intense training at the time, and frankly it was still being outfitted as almost all the Army's heavy weapons had been left in the United States.  We'll be looking at that a bit later.

So, while the careful reader would have been in fear of a large German offensive, and probably relieved that the Germans simply couldn't disengage from Russia, that same reader wouldn't have known that only four American combat divisions, at this point in the war, were ready for action, assuming they were ready for action, and that some elements of the force that Pershing envisioned simply were not there, and never would be. U.S. strength in France would grow to be enormous in short order.

But it wasn't yet.

120th Infantry, Col. William B. Cochran, commanding, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 16th, 1918

123rd Infantry, Col. S. W. Kirkpatrick, commanding, Camp Wheeler, Georgia. March 11, 1918.

Poster Saturday. First Division

118th Infantry, Col. H.H. Pattison commanding, Camp Sevier, S.C., March 9th, 1918

General View of Camp Custer, Michigan and the 337th and 338th Infantry. December 29, 1917.

123d and 124th Infantry Regiment. Camp Wheeler, Macon, Georgia. December 10, 1917.

124th Infantry Regiment Camp.

123d Infantry Regiment Camp.

The first US Army ground casualties of World War One. November 3, 1917.

 

All three men were serving in the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division, which had been rotated to the front for experience.  The unit was the subject of a Bavarian trench raid which pitted a larger Bavarian force against the American one.  In addition to the three men killed, twelve men were taken by the Germans as prisoners.

The men who lost their lives that day were:

Thomas Enright, Pennsylvania. Private.  A professional soldier who had served in the cavalry and infantry with a brief break since 1909. 

James Bethel Gresham.  Indiana.  Corporal  He had been in the Army since 1914.

Merle David Hay.  Iowa.  Private.  He had enlisted in the Army in May, 1917.

The Battle of Beersheba (Be'er Sheva, בְּאֵר שֶׁבַע, بئر السبع,) October 31, 1917

Today in the centennial of one of the most dramatic events of the Great War, the Battle of Beersheba (or as it is sometimes called Be'er Sheva), culminating the Charge of the Australian Light Horse that took the town.

CC BY-SA 3.0 au.  File:Palestine Gallery at the Australian War Memorial (MG 9693).jpg.  Creative Commons on Wikipedia.

The mounted assault by the 4th and 12th Australian Light Horse is one of the seminal events of Australian history and, by any measure, one of the most dramatic events of the Great War.  What it is not, however, is the "last" charge by a body of mounted men (the Light Horse were not cavalry, but mounted infantry), nor even the "last great charge" or "last full scale charge".  It wasn't even the last big charge of cavalry during World War One.  It was, however, a spectacular and successful use of mounted men in a very skillfully orchestrated Commonwealth battle in the desert.

Beersheba in 1917.

The battle came about as part of British Empire's advance north into Palestine, towards Jerusalem, during World War One.   As part of their war against the Ottoman Turks the British had decided to continually advance north, a decision that would ultimately take them all the way to Damascus during the course of the war in the desert.

 Edmund Allenby, the commander of British forces in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in 1917.

Their problem in doing this is that the straight road to Jerusalem lead to Gaza and Gaza was heavily defended.  Therefore, the British, under the command of Edmund Allenby, determined to make a flanking move and that made Beersheba a goal of their flaking advance.

Map of the area in which the British were operating.  Note the importance of wells, which are marked on the map, including those at Beersheba.

The town of Beersheba is an ancient one, and was once quite isolated in the desert.  Always associated with well,  the name itself may mean the Well of the Oath as it is where the oath of Abraham and Abimelech was taken. Some claim, however, that the name means Seven Wells, which may refer to the multiple wells associated with the town, or it may be a way of signifying the importance of the town given the Bible emphasis on the number seven.  Some Arabic translations come across different yet, as Lion's Wells.  At any rate, the town has been there for an extremely long time.

 Abraham's Well at Beersheba, 1855.

The British plan called for a large right flaking move by mounted elements of the British expeditionary force.  Mounted troops were, contrary to widespread myth, used on every front during World War One, but as the war in the desert remained fairly mobile, they were particularly important there.  Allenby was, moreover, a cavalryman and well acquainted with mounted warfare.  In this instance the British committed The Desert Mounted Corps under the command of Australian Lieutenant General Sir Harry Chauvel which consisted of Australian and New Zealand Mounted Division (1st Light Horse, 2nd Light Horse and the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigades), The Australian Mounted Division (3rd Light Horse, 4th Light Horse and the 5th Mounted Brigade and the Yeomanry Mounted Division (6th Mounted, 8th Mounted and the 22nd Mounted Brigades) with the 7th Mounted and the Imperial Camel Corps held in reserve.  This was augmented by the addition of mounted units transferred from other British units prior to the battle.  Rather obviously, the mounted elements were quite substantial, although they were not not the only troops committed to the effort by any means and the infantry commitment was quite substantial.

 Chauvel with his officers.

The battle itself was part of the overall Battle of Gaza and it would not be correct that the British simply showed up at Beersheba and the battle ensued.  To even contemplate an effective attack at Beersheba preliminary positions on the line of advance had to be secured which did in fact happen.  Almost all of this was accomplished through substantial mounted action in advance of the main body of advancing troops.

The British forces were in position by the night of October 29-30 and a preparatory bombardment of the grossly outnumbered Turkish forces (British forces outnumbered the Turks over ten to one in the battle), which did have the advantage however of being dug in, commenced in the early morning of October 31.  The bombardment was effective on severing elements of the Turkish forces in place.  A British infantry and yeomanry assault was launched at 8:20 that succeeded in securing important areas of the high ground.  

The Desert Mounted Corps went into action at 0800 with attacks on strategic positions around Beersheba.  Due to the movie treatment of the battle its often imagined that only Australian mounted troops were at the battle and that they were kept in reserve all day in desperate conditions until called into battle at the lat moment.  In fact, Australian, New Zealand and British mounted troops were all in action all day long in the battle but were used in a way that their mobility would contemplate, taking positions around the main town while infantry, supported by cavalry, took positions immediately next to the town in order to prepare for a final assault of it.  The mounted actions throughout the day isolated the town in an effort to keep anything from reaching it, or escaping it.  This resulted in a situation where by 15:00 the town was effectively isolated and ready for a final assault.

 Opening of the Turkish railway station in Beersheba in 1915.  The railway station still stands in the town near a monument to the  Turkish combatants who fought there.  A monument to the Australian Light Horse also exists in the city of 200,000 residents today.

That's when what is so widely remembered about the battle, the mounted charge of the Australian Light Horse, occurred.

Upon taking final positions outside of the town, the Australian Light Horse were ordered to make a dismounted attack upon the Mosque in Beersheba.

It's important to keep in mind that the Light Horse were mounted infantry, not cavalry.  They were not equipped like cavalry, and the distinction between cavalry and mounted infantry, while it had declined in the British forces since the Boer War, was a real one yet.  Mounted infantrymen were equipped identically to infantrymen, being issued a Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle, a rifle that was in the short rifle category deemed suitable for infantry and cavalry, and a bayonet. Cavalry, in contrast, also carried the SMLE but they were equipped with the traditional saber that cavalrymen had carried for generations (lance had been dispensed with for British cavalry quite some time prior, but they did remain in the cavalry of some other nations, including the Ottoman's.  Unlike American cavalry, which was more of a mixed force filing the role of mounted infantry and cavalry, British cavalrymen did not carry sidearms, although the cavalry forces of some other nations did.  Turkish cavalry in this period still carried the lance.

Mounted infantry had come in strong to British Empire forces during the Boer War where it had been found to be highly useful.  Indeed, there had been an Empire military debate on whether it was so effective that it had supplanted cavalry entirely, although that had not occurred.  The British Empire fielded both cavalry and mounted infantry during the Great War and both were present at Beersheba in the Desert Mounted Corps.

Shortly after the Australians determined to advance an order from Gen. Allenby to take Beersheba by nightfall also arrived.  The Australians soon began to contemplate a mounted assault on the town, something that they had contemplated as early as October 26, if the opportunity arose.  On that date, accordingly the order had gone out to have bayonets sharpened.

This may seem odd, but it was well known that sabers were a more effective weapon that rifles in a mounted charge.  A person can debate if sidearms were more effective yet, and the American Army felt they were, but the British retained the traditional belief that an edged weapon was superior for a cavalry charge.  The Light Horse lacked sabers but they were equipped with the British sword bayonet, an exceedingly long bayonet that in fact approached the short sword length.

British infantryman training in 1940 but still equipped with a SMLE rifle and sword bayonet.  Sword bayonets were common in World War One but the British pattern was very long even at that.

The decision was soon made to order a mounted charge by the 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments.  The units had to cover four miles in order to achieve their objectives and under the circumstances, and given the terrain, a mounted charge was by far the most likely to succeed at the smallest cost to the advancing men.  To the post World War One mind, this seems to be an almost impossible conclusion, but it was the tactical reality of the day.  The men covering that four miles would be under fire from artillery, machine guns and massed rifle fire for much of it, and with no cover.  The best way to approach a problem like that was to cover the ground as quickly as possible.

Additionally it had been known for quite some time that the prospect of facing a charging mass of horses, and two regiments was a large number of horses was terrifying for the men enduring it and generally most infantry reacted poorly in that circumstance. The real difficult for mounted forces in the Great War, therefore, was not the new weaponry, such as automatic weapons.  Indeed, with the exception of aircraft and poisonous gas there wasn't anything new to the World War One battlefield that mounted troops hadn't faced before.  Rather, the real difficulty was the exceedingly decimated terrain and terrain obstacles that mooted horse mobility.  That factor wasn't present to the same extent in the desert.

The Australian Light Horse charge commenced after 16:00 with the first half mile of the charge covered at a walk. At that point the men were ordered into a trot and then, when Ottoman artillery opened up, they deployed at a gallop. The artillery proved ineffective as the Light Horse rapidly rode under the guns to where it could no longer be used. At that point Ottoman machine gun and rifle fire opened up but some of it was neutralized by British counter battery fire.  Machine gun fire and small arms fire proved less effective than might be supposed in part due to this but in part because, as has been well demonstrated, facing a mounted assault is terrifying and ground troops have rarely reacted well to it.

 4th Light Horse at Beersheba.  This photograph is often attributed to have been taken during the battle but in fact its suspected that this was taken soon after the battle when the events were reenacted for camera.  It was already appreciated how dramatic the battle had been.

Contrary to what is sometimes supposed the 4th Light Horse, upon reaching the trenches, dismounted and fought as ground skirmishers, true to their nature of being mounted infantry.  The trenches were taken by Light Horsemen fighting dismounted and their mounts were galloped off, as per the norm for such a deployment.  The 12th Light Horse, meanwhile fought at first mounted and dismounted into the town, but upon getting into it, fought dismounted.  While all of this was going on, additional mounted reserves were ordered into the battle to follow upon the 4th and 12ths success. The town was soon taken.

Most of the casualties in the overall battle were British infantry, not mounted men.  Casualties sustained in the Light Horse assault itself were light under the circumstances with more men being killed in close quarter combat on the ground rather than in the charge.  Most of the casualties in the charge were men wounded in action, rather than killed.

The battle is deservedly well remembered today and the Australian Light Horse is correctly attributed with valiant action on that day.  The emphasis on the Light Horse charge, and the somewhat inaccurate portrayal of the resulting combat, has tended however to skew the  history of the battle being accurately recalled, however.  In reality, the Light Horse combined with other mounted elements of the British forces were active throughout the entire offensive and their role was vital throughout.  The final Light Horse mounted assault took the town, but the overall effort had involved mounted troops from the onset in a highly competent and coordinated effort.

Send Off Day for the 27th Division. The New York National Guard leaves for Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina. August 30, 1917.

Send Off Day Poster.

On this day in 1917 the State of New York held a massive parade in New York City for its sons in the National Guard. Those men formed the 27th Division.

The parade lasted a massive five hours.  The dignitaries in the reviewing stand included former President Theodore Roosevelt.  4,000 New York City policemen were deployed to control a crowed that was estimated to reach as high as 2,000,000 spectators.

 Col. James S. Boyer. Washington Arch Square in the background.

The New York National Guard's 27th Division had a fair number of dignitaries and representatives from well known families itself amongst 24,000 members in and of itself.

Colonel Cornelius Vanderbilt III, Commander of the 22nd Engineers, New York National Guard.  In civilian life Vanderbilt was an engineer associated with his family's railroad interest but often on the outs with his parents due to a marriage that they disapproved of.

The unit wasn't going to France yet, but actually just leaving the State of New York for Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina.  And the New York National Guard wasn't contained completely within the 27th Division.  Other units remained in training in the state and would be deployed to Army training camps in the coming weeks, resulting in more, if not quite so massive, farewell parades.

The unit Vanderbilt commanded at this time, the 22nd Engineers, New York National Guard.

 

Watching from downtown New York.

 

Major General John Francis O'Ryan, commander of the 27th Division.  He was a lawyer and a life long resident of New York City.  He was also a rare National Guard officer in that he was a graduate of the Army War College.  The youngest division commander in the Army at the time of his arrival in Europe, he was also the only National Guard officer still in command of a division by the war's end.

Lt. Col. Paul Loeser, Commander of the Eighth Coast Defense Command (coastal artillery).

The parade also included units of the New York National Guard's Coastal Artillery.  Coast Artillery is something we don't think much about anymore, but it was a major defensive organization at the time by necessity and it was a natural for the National Guard, given that Guardsmen could train in place on the same weapons they'd man in war.

Col. Sidney Grant, Commander of the Thirteenth Coast Defense Artillery.  By the time this phoograph was taken the day must have grown hot as Col. Grant has taken off his service coat.

 

 Maj.Wilbur T. Wright, Commander of the Second Battalion, Second Field Artillery, New York National Guard.

Col. John J. Byrne, the Commander of the Ninth Coast Defense.

Scenes like this were playing out all over the nation as National Guard units were being sent off to training camps and ultimately to the war.  New York's example was an unusually large one, but then the populace state had a very large National Guard establishment.

The Cheyenne State Leader for March 17, 1917. Shades of the Spanish American War

During the Spanish American War Wyoming was strongly associated with volunteer cavalry.  The 2nd U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, Torrey's Rough Riders, to be specific.

The story of the 2nd is disappointing.  A really early effort along the same lines as the famous 1st US Volunteer Cavalry, the much more famous Rough Riders associated with Theodore Roosevelt, Torrey's unit never saw combat. Which isn't to say that it didn't see casualties.  The unit was involved in a terrible railroad accident on the way to to Florida resulting in loss of life to men of the unit.  Partially because of that, it never deployed.

Indeed no Wyoming volunteers or militiamen saw action in Cuba, but Wyoming's National Guard units, recruited during the war in part, much like the National Guard units raised during the Punitive Expedition, saw action in the Philippines.  Those units, like the ones raised and deployed in the Punitive Expedition, were infantry, however.  They did serve very well.

Well, cavalry is more glamorous, without a doubt, and even though the Wyoming National Guard had just come home, the looming entry of the United States into World War One, which was appearing to be increasingly certain, was causing thoughts to return of the glamorous idea of raising a volunteer cavalry unit.  Major Andersen, the Adjutant General of the Wyoming National Guard, was backing just such and idea and touring the state to try to get it rolling.

Cavalry saw a lot more action in World War One than people imagine.  And Wyoming was a natural for cavalry really.  Given the small population of the state Andersen surely knew that any infantry units provided to a mobilized Army for deployment to France would simply be swallowed up into other units.  Cavalry had a better chance of remaining distinct and intact, so the idea had some merit, in spite of the excessively romantic way that it must appear, reading it now.

Which isn't to say, frankly, that all the boys "from the border" who had just returned would have been horsemen. Far from it. The idea that every Wyomingite knew how to ride at the time is just flat out false.  Young men with little horse experience must have been cringing a bit at the thought of being converted to cavalry.

Douglas Enterprise for October 10, 1916. A letter from a Guardsman