My father, born in and raised in India, the last of the British Raj generation, joined the British army as a boy trumpeter in 1937. His 17th/21st Lancers were mechanized in 1938 and he told us of having to watch as some (or all, he wasn’t certain) of the horses were taken down to the river and shot, an event that soured him on the cavalry and prompted him to transfer to the Royal Artillery. I can find no mention of the episode in any official records, though.
I asked him what it had been like to have been a cavalryman. “Horses,” he replied, “bite at one end, shit at the other and kick on all four corners.” No love lost there, then.
“This was meant to illustrate the technological gap between Germany and Poland — Germany was fighting a 20th-century war while Poland was fighting a 19th-century one. The story wasn’t quite true — the cavalry charge at Krojanty was actually fairly successful, and the tanks showed up afterward.” And demolished them! I hate the modern trend of “debunking” in writing even when it doesn’t work
"The myth likely stems from the Battle of Krojanty in September 1939 at the outset of World War II, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. On the first day of the war, Polish cavalry charged a German infantry battalion. They initially broke the German ranks, until a counterattack by armored cars with machine guns turned the balance. The charge ended up inflicting heavy losses on the Poles but it worked, delaying the German advance and allowing other Polish forces to retreat. There were no tanks on the battlefield.
But Nazi propagandists spun this battle and other encounters with Polish cavalry — horse was a big component of the Polish army — as vindication of the Wehrmacht’s technical modernity and tactical superiority."
Is this incorrect? My impression from what I've read is that, at this battle at least, the cavalry never fought the tanks head on, although they did fight other motorized vehicles, and that the cavalry charge was more effective than my old high school teacher led me to believe. Happy to be corrected, though.
My father, born in and raised in India, the last of the British Raj generation, joined the British army as a boy trumpeter in 1937. His 17th/21st Lancers were mechanized in 1938 and he told us of having to watch as some (or all, he wasn’t certain) of the horses were taken down to the river and shot, an event that soured him on the cavalry and prompted him to transfer to the Royal Artillery. I can find no mention of the episode in any official records, though.
I asked him what it had been like to have been a cavalryman. “Horses,” he replied, “bite at one end, shit at the other and kick on all four corners.” No love lost there, then.
You'd think they would just find some other use for the horses! This is fascinating -- thanks for sharing it!
Surplus to requirement, he said, but they wouldn’t ‘give them to the Indians’. Awful.
Yikes.
“This was meant to illustrate the technological gap between Germany and Poland — Germany was fighting a 20th-century war while Poland was fighting a 19th-century one. The story wasn’t quite true — the cavalry charge at Krojanty was actually fairly successful, and the tanks showed up afterward.” And demolished them! I hate the modern trend of “debunking” in writing even when it doesn’t work
I've read accounts like this in several places (the quotes below, which sum things up fairly well, are from https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/23/no-polish-cavalry-never-attacked-nazi-tanks-irate-poland-tells-mad-money-host/):
"The myth likely stems from the Battle of Krojanty in September 1939 at the outset of World War II, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. On the first day of the war, Polish cavalry charged a German infantry battalion. They initially broke the German ranks, until a counterattack by armored cars with machine guns turned the balance. The charge ended up inflicting heavy losses on the Poles but it worked, delaying the German advance and allowing other Polish forces to retreat. There were no tanks on the battlefield.
But Nazi propagandists spun this battle and other encounters with Polish cavalry — horse was a big component of the Polish army — as vindication of the Wehrmacht’s technical modernity and tactical superiority."
Is this incorrect? My impression from what I've read is that, at this battle at least, the cavalry never fought the tanks head on, although they did fight other motorized vehicles, and that the cavalry charge was more effective than my old high school teacher led me to believe. Happy to be corrected, though.