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Still plinking along with Sabers and...
I realized while making a couple of characters for the world and assigning skill levels that I am vastly overqualified compared to the average trooper in the American West of 1899.
I qualified sword and shield in the SCA.
I passed the saber course the WW1 reinactors put on for British cavalry.
I've read and practiced some of what's in the official saber manual for the time period.
Because of my, brief, dalliance in WW1 cavalry reinacting, I've even done some shooting from horse back. Spoiler: I suck at it.
But all of that puts me head and shoulders over the typical US Army cavalryman who barely got an explanation of which end of the rifle was where the bullets came out before being tossed into situations where they might have to shoot someone!
And they were considered to be better trained than their predecessors who were in the actual thick of the Indian wars! By 1899 things had calmed down a LOT and there were many fewer instances of shoot at someone.
I read somewhere that by the end of the Civil War most calvary men left their sabers at camp and preferred to fight with firearms and dismounted except when in pursuit. Was that true during the 1865-1875 Indian wars?
ReplyDeleteThat's correct. Very rarely did the sabers leave the barracks, assuming their officers bothered to issue them at all.
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