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Subject: Cavalry combat in How Few Remain
TrustButVerify    3/7/2007 10:41:11 AM
Custer's cavalry squadrons seem to spend a lot of time fighting while mounted. Is this strictly realistic? I'm of the impression that cavalry fought as dismounted infantry by the time of the Civil War and used their mounts for mobility rather than fighting platforms. Comment?
 
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Desertmole    Depends   6/24/2007 3:07:44 AM
The Civil War was a period of change for both armies.  In the case of the Union, the cav units mostly fought dismounted as infantry (Buford at Gettysburg, for example), but occasionally fought like cavalry should (Brandy Station).  Probably one of the best uses of Union cavalry was Grierson's raid (fictionalized in the old John Wayne flick The Horse Soldiers). 
 
Confederate units were a mixed bag, and depended on which theater and when.  Forrest's cavalry did a lot of raiding, as did Mosby's troops.  Stuart's "rides" around the Union Army were great for morale building, but often left Lee without good intelligence (one of the prime uses of cavalry - recon and counter recon). 
 
Custer's cavalry at Gettysburg did fight more as cavalry than as infantry, from what I remember.
 
 
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TrustButVerify       7/17/2007 4:46:44 PM

How Few Remain is set well after the Civil War (with the conceit that it was lost by the Union), so Custer's cavalrymen are firing breechloaders (or lever-actions, I forget) from horseback at one point or another. You get the impression that Custer means to directly charge the enemy, if he ever runs into them en masse, with a squadron of cavalry guns-a-blaze. This seems like the sort of thinking that lead to slaughter in WWI, to say the least; I should think that cavalrymen charging a dismounted enemy who was armed with breachloading rifles would be cut to pieces!
 
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TrustButVerify       7/17/2007 4:48:56 PM
Sorry, should have added- this was set in 1881. Therefore, was Custer's wont for direct attack appropriate for cavalry of that time?
 
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StudentofConflict       7/26/2007 3:55:42 AM
The whole point of Custer's military mindset is to set him up as a WW1 style chateau general in The great War trilogy. I think Turtledove had sort of a love-hate relationship with Custer through those books, you can't tell if hes a hero or a buffoon-probably both! However that slamming aggressiveness pays off when the US invents tanks...I mean Barrels!!
I've just been re-reading the series recently, and I think Turtledove has gone in the wrong direction with the last 3. I'd've had Germany crushed quickly at the outset of WW2, then all the facist states overrunning the USA-it would've made it more of a parable, about how democracy could only survive in the real 20th century 'cos of a democratic US superpower, but oh well...
 
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Ehran       7/26/2007 12:48:54 PM

I've just been re-reading the series recently, and I think Turtledove has gone in the wrong direction with the last 3. I'd've had Germany crushed quickly at the outset of WW2, then all the facist states overrunning the USA-it would've made it more of a parable, about how democracy could only survive in the real 20th century 'cos of a democratic US superpower, but oh well...

fascist states?  the germans were the fascists and the usa wasn't a whole lot better in the books.  the csa, england etc were the good guys.
 
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