Lucian Truscott takes the reader back in this military memoir to the days of the horse cavalry in American history.

In this biography of Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., author Harvey Ferguson tells the story of how Truscott—despite his hardscrabble beginnings, patchy education, and questionable luck— not only made the rank of army lieutenant general, earning a reputation as one of World War II’s most effective officers along the way, but was also given an honorary promotion to four-star general seven years after his retirement.

I have endeavored in the following pages to present the full drama and scope of the 26th Cavalry's heroic but doomed mounted campaign against the seasoned troops, planes, and tanks of the Japanese Army, from the first few hours after the invaders poured from their landing craft onto the shores of Luzon Island in late December 1941, to the final desperate months in Bataan and on The Rock, the Corregidor fortress. Every step of the way, the scouts bought time for MacArthur's army to fight back. It is also not hyperbolic to contend that without the 26th's delaying actions on Luzon--a textbook and innovative campaign studied in modern war colleges--MacArthur might never have had the time to escape the Philippines when ordered to do so in March 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The cavalrymen of the 26th fought the last full-fledged horseback campaign in history, paying a terrible toll but exacting an even higher one upon the Japanese Army. The regiment's story reveals not only the valor of the horsemen, their horses, and the 26th's motorized squadron, but also the way in which the unit's American and Filipino troopers forged ties that transcended race and were forever cemented in blood, suffering, and pride.--from the Prologue, A Vision from Another Century

In 1898 the American Regular Army was a small frontier constabulary engaged in skirmishes with Indians and protesting workers. Forty-three years later, in 1941, it was a large modern army ready to wage global war against the Germans and the Japanese. In this definitive social history of America's standing army, military historian Edward Coffman tells how that critical transformation was accomplished. Coffman has spent years immersed in the official records, personal papers, memoirs, and biographies of regular army men, including such famous leaders as George Marshall, George Patton, and Douglas MacArthur. He weaves their stories, and those of others he has interviewed, into the story of an army which grew from a small community of posts in China and the Philippines to a highly effective mechanized ground and air force. During these years, the U.S. Army conquered and controlled a colonial empire, military staff lived in exotic locales with their families, and soldiers engaged in combat in Cuba and the Pacific. In the twentieth century, the United States entered into alliances to fight the German army in World War I, and then again to meet the challenge of the Axis Powers in World War II. Coffman explains how a managerial revolution in the early 1900s provided the organizational framework and educational foundation for change, and how the combination of inspired leadership, technological advances, and a supportive society made it successful. In a stirring account of all aspects of garrison life, including race relations, we meet the men and women who helped reconfigure America's frontier army into a modern global force.

This is the story of the last mounted American troops to see action in battle, when, in late 1941, six-hundred men and their horses held off the Japanese invasion of Luzon in the Philippines just long enough to allow General Douglas MacArthur's forces to withdraw to Bataan. The 26th continued to fight on horseback until late February 1942 when, tragically, they were ordered dismounted and their horses and mules transferred to the Quartermaster's center and slaughtered for food for the defenders. It is on record that the 26th troopers refused to accept meat rations from their animals, regardless of their own starvation. This stirring account of a little-known aspect of the Philippine campaign is military history at its best.

In the twilight of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th–6th centuries, the elite of the field armies was the heavy armoured cavalry – the cataphracts, clad in lamellar, scale, mail and padded fabric armour. After the fall of the West, the Greek-speaking Eastern or Byzantine Empire survived for nearly a thousand years, and cavalry remained predominant in its armies, with the heaviest armoured regiments continuing to provide the ultimate shock-force in battle. Accounts from Muslim chroniclers show that the ironclad cataphract on his armoured horse was an awe-inspiring enemy: '...they advanced against you, iron-covered – one would have said that they advanced on horses which seemed to have no legs'. This new study, replete with stunning full-colour illustrations of the various units, offers an engaging insight into the fearsome heavy cavalry units that battled against the enemies of Rome's Eastern Empire.

From the Preface: The following pages provide a narrative analysis of the U.S. Army's development of armored organizations and their related doctrine, materiel, and training activities in the period 1917-1945. This period marked the emergence of clear principles of armored warfare that became the underpinning of the Armor Branch, influencing armored developments long after World War II ended. A unique style of mounted maneuver combat emerged that reflected a mix of tradition an innovation. In the process, American military culture changed, particularly through the adoption of combined-arms principles. Conversely, political actions, budgetary considerations, and senior leadership decisions also shaped the course of armor development. The emergence of an American armored force involved more than simply tank development. It included the creation of an armored division structure steeped in combined-arms principles, organizational flexibility, and revolutionary command and control processes. Parallel developments included the establishment of specialized units to provide antitank, reconnaissance, and infantry support capabilities. Several Army branches played a role in determining the precise path of armored development, and one of them-the Cavalry-became a casualty as a result.

This occasional paper is a concise overview of the history of the US Army's involvement along the Mexican border and offers a fundamental understanding of problems associated with such a mission. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the historic themes addressed disapproving public reaction, Mexican governmental instability, and insufficient US military personnel to effectively secure the expansive boundary are still prevalent today.

When the United States entered World War II, it took more than industrial might to transform its tiny army—smaller than even Portugal's—into an overseas fighting force of more than eight and a half million. Peter Schifferle contends that the determination of American army officers to be prepared for the next big war was an essential component in America's ultimate triumph over its adversaries. Crucial to that preparation were the army schools at Fort Leavenworth. Interwar Army officers, haunted by the bloodshed of World War I's Meuse-Argonne Offensive, fully expected to return to Europe to conclude the "unfinished business" of that conflict, and they prepared well. Schifferle examines for the first time precisely how they accomplished this through a close and illuminating look at the students, faculty, curriculum, and essential methods of instruction at Fort Leavenworth. He describes how the interwar officer corps there translated the experiences of World War I into effective doctrine, engaged in intellectual debate on professional issues, conducted experiments to determine the viability of new concepts, and used military professional education courses to substitute for the experience of commanding properly organized and resourced units. Schifferle highlights essential elements of war preparation that only the Fort Leavenworth education could provide, including intensive instruction in general staff procedures, hands-on experience with the principles and techniques of combined arms, and the handling of large division-sized formations in combat. This readied army officers for an emerging new era of global warfare and enabled them to develop the leadership decision making they would need to be successful on the battlefield. But Schifferle offers more than a recitation of curriculum development through the skillful interweaving of personal stories about both school experiences and combat operations, collectively recounting the human and professional development of the officer corps from 1918 to 1945. Well crafted and insightful, Schifferle's meticulously researched study shows how and why the Fort Leavenworth experience was instrumental in producing that impressive contingent of military officers who led the U.S. Army to final victory in World War II. By the end of the book, the attentive reader will also fully comprehend why the military professionals at Fort Leavenworth have come to think of it as the "Intellectual Center of the Army."