Comments on the 8th Cavalry Leadership Test

Comments on the 8th Cavalry Leadership Test by Lieutenant Ralph E. Haines, Jr.. 8th Cavalry SCENE: The annual Thanksgiving dinner at the Eighth Cavalry Bachelor Officers’ Mess. TIME: Four days before the proposed cavalry leadership test.

SPEAKER The regimental commander, Colonel I.

P. Seift (leaning against the mantelpiece). “Gentlemen, it is only the mediocre officer in the Army who does not welcome competition.’’ This terse statement exploded like a bombshell on the consciousness of every member of the mess and temporarily stilled the frivolous holiday banter. It remained in the back of every lieutenant’s head and lent moral encouragement to his efforts to prepare himself for the competition at hand. It became, in fact, the very keynote of the Eighth Cavalry Leadership Test. Seven officers and over two hundred enlisted men of the Eighth Cavalry participated in the Infantry Division maneuvers in San Antonio until two weeks before the date of the test. The platoons were, therefore, not organized nor the platoon commanders named until much later than normal. This resulted in a frenzy of last minute preparations, causing officers and men to give up their weekends and Wednrsday afternoons. The weatherman, realizing full well that the time was so short that not even one day’s training could be foregone gave a sarcastic twist to the whole affair by inflicting a span of raw, wet days on the troops for their preliminary training. Officers and men found that they were woefully out of shape. Many of them had not ridden for three months and all of them needed to train for the specialized events of the individual phase. A program for clipping, shoeing, and conditioning the horses to be drawn up immediately in view of the fact that these matters were partially neglected during the Infantry Division maneuvers due to the skeletonized available personnel. All these handicaps demanded that each may-june 1985 Pavezia Prime Mover, 1930 troop mobiliLc ail LbD cllcL51cD ,,,d men in an effort to make a creditable showing.

The Individual Phase: The individual phase of the leadership test was held on December 6th and 7th. It was divided into two parts, one for officers and one for enlisted men. All the lieutenants in the regiment (seventeen in all) were required to enter the officer’s individual phase, in the capacity of an actual or alternate platoon leader. The object of this phase was “to demonstrate the endurance, courage, and ability of each officer and the development and training of his mount” in a series of events approximating possible physical requirements in actual service. There were twelve different events: namely, schooling mounted, handiness and speed of mount, cross country riding, hand grenades, pistol mounted, pistol dismounted, rifle, swimming, high jumping, broad jumping, rope climbing and running. The schooling course was held on a regularly marked twenty by sixty meter ring. It included a series of prescribed movements at the walk, slow trot, and gallop. Lt. Cole won this event with a practically flawless performance.

Handiness and speed of mount were demonstrated on the grannis course. The same horses had to be used throughout by each rider in all the mounted events and, since the horses were of the hunter rather than the polo pony type, many officers encountered trouble here. Lt. O’Brien made the best time, spinning around the course in highly approved style.

The cross country ride was a mile course with twelve obstacles. A fourteen mile an hour gallop was prescribed and penalties were awarded for completing the course too rapidly or too slowly in addition to those for refusals at any obstacle. Four officers made perfect scores on this event.

Officers were required to throw hand grenades from the prone position into a shell crater three yards in diameter and thirty-five yards distant. They were also required to gallop by an escort wagon representing a scout car ten yards distant and throw two hand grenades into it. Throwing hand grenades is a novel experience to most cavalrymen and the contestants experimented a great deal beforehand trying to determine the approved solution. Three lieutenants made perfect scores on this event.

The mounted pistol course consisted of one overhead target, two to the right front, and one to the left front. The dismounted pistol event consisted of firing five rounds in fifteen seconds at an L target at twenty-five yards. The entire seventeen officers were put on the firing line at one time. Natural nervousness over the announced ruling to allow no alibi runs caused the score to be lower than otherwise.

The contestants fired the rifle from the two hundred yard point - standing and sitting. Lt. Davis won this event with a perfect score.

The swimming event consisted of a forty yard race, free style - two lengths of the Army “Y” pool. All the contestants proved to be better than average swimmers with Lt. Cole copping the event in excellent time. The high jump was run according to regular track rules with the bar going up two inches at a time. The contestants appeared in weird track uniforms - everything from long drawers on up. Lts. Paul, Alger, Walker and Martz fought it out, Lt. Martz finally winning with a jump of five feet, three inches. The broad jump followed immediately on the heels of the high jump. Apparently the officers had used up so much energy in the high jump that they were in poor condition for further exertion. About half the contestants pulled or strained a thigh muscle in the broad jump and consequently did not take full advantage of the three jumps allowed. Lt. Martz maintained his reputation as a leaping gazelle placing one again. The rope climb was a fifteen foot climb against time -no holds barred. The muckers came into their own here and went up the rope hand over hand in excellent times.

The last event was the 440 yard dash -probably the hardest race there is to run. Few of the contestants knew much about running it, but none of them lacked determination. Taped legs and perceptible limps were very much in evidence as they lined up at the starting point in successive heats. Nevertheless, they all went away on the gun in a racing start and somehow or other kept muddling through until they crossed the finish line. Cries of “Pump your knees” and “Give her the gun” were heard as the contestants wobbled down the home stretch gasping for breath. Lt. Martz again finished first, thus make a clean sweep of the track events. He also was determined the winner of the entire individual phase and was presented with a silver trophy. Lts. Cole, Palmer and Walker followed him in that order. All six troops of the regiment entered a platoon in the individual phase for enlisted men. Each man in the platoon was required to enter a series of ten events: namely, cross country riding, hand grenades, pistol mounted, pistol dismounted, rifle, swimming, broad jumping, rope climbing, running, and wall scaling. To simulate actual service conditions, they were required to perform all events except the swimming with full field equipment and arms. Their events were practically identical with those of the officers except that they were generally made a little easier.

The running consisted of a spectacular 2,700 yard relay race held on the parade ground between barracks and the officers’ quarters. This parade ground is broken up by several streets and there are also two chain fences over which themen had to jump. The troop guidons were passed from man to man as the batons in the race. The wall scaling was another unique event held in the bottom of the Seventh Cavalry swimming pool. The platoons were required to scale the twelve foot side of the pool using nothing except regular field equipment. The winning platoon got all twenty-seven men up the wall in the remarkable time of one minute and twelve seconds. The individual phase results were duly tabulated, the officers’ efforts being given a coefficient of five percent and the men’s efforts one of twenty percent. Machine Gun Troop was declared the winner and was presented may-june 1985 with a handsome regimental trophy and $135.00 in cash. The rifle troops finished in the order “B,” “A,” “F,” “E”; they were the only platoons eligible to compete in the second phase of the test by a directive from the chief of cavalry.

The Collective Phase: Six days were allowed after the completion of the leadership phase for the platoons to polish up on their tactical work. Platoons were required to enter absolutely the same horses and men in the collective phase as in the individual phase. This caused the platoon leaders no small amount of worry because of horses going lame, men breaking in the hospital, etc. As it turned out, two platoons entered the collective phase with all twenty-eight men and the other two platoons with only twenty-seven.

The order of departure for the collective phase was determined by lot with the platoons leaving on successive days in the order “A,” “B,” “E,” “F.” Each platoon was given a warning order at 1O:OO p.m. of the evening before it was scheduled to start. The mission assigned caused each platoon to march via Hueco Tanks Road to Cerro Alto Pass; bivouac at Cerro Alto Pass; observe to the east of Hueco Mts. early the next morning; march via Nations Salt Well to Newman and then to Ft. Bliss via Castner Range. The tactical situation was continuous for two days. During the march, the platoon received an airplane attack and met hostile armored reconnaissance vehicles; the platoon was blocked on its axis of march by a strong hostile dismounted force on terrain which required the platoon commander to go around the enemy position and reconnoiter for the strength of the opposition; the platoon leader was forced to select a bivouac in Cerro Alto Mt. pass, reconnoiter to the east of the Hueco Mts. at dusk of the first day and again in the morning, provide for security during the night and so place his detachment as to deny any hostile passage through the pass to the west during the night; the platoon encountered a disabled hostile personnel carrier transporting twelve enemy and, because of its mission, had to attack and capture some of the hostile group; the platoon had to reconnoiter several ranch houses and a small village; the platoon rejoined its regiment just prior to a dis-mouted regimental attack and took part in the attack. At the completion of the combat phase, the tactical situation ceased and the platoons returned to Fort Bliss for a final examination of the condition of men, animals, and equipment.

Lt. Walker’s platoon went out on a cold, rainy morning. He ran into interlocking bands of enemy machine gun fire at the pass southeast of Nation’s East Well, and attempted to avoid them by scaling the mountains to the south. He dismounted his platoon and led his horses seven hundred feet up the side of a mountain. During this maneuver, one horse did a complete backward somersault and strangely enough landed on its feet. When Lt. Walker reached the top, he discovered that the mountain sheered off in an almost vertical precipice on the far side, and he disconsolately retraced his footsteps. He reached the appointed bivouac area in the Cerro Alto pass about eight-thirty that evening, winding his way up the pass in inky darkness. He ran into rain, sleet, snow, and below freezing weather. When the problem was called off for the evening, he attempted to build fires, but the scant available firewood was so wet that it only smouldered. His men were too cold to attempt to heat up their reserve ration and stolidly munched on their semi-sweetened chocolate bars with their blankets drawn tightly around them. Lt. Walker failed to locate the water tank up in the pass and many of his men ate snow to quench the thirst induced by the chocolate bars. Lt. Walker himself burnt the sole completely out of one of his boots standing on a smoldering log. -Because of the physical beating that his men and horses had taken, Lt. Walker proceeded very slowly on his mission the following day and did not get to Fort Bliss until after nightfall. He was even forced to forego the last phase of the problem, namely, the combat exercise, until the third day.

The platoons under Lts. Cole, Alger and Haines did not experience the same difficult weather conditions as that under Lt. Walker. However, it was below freezing up in the Cerro Alto pass all four nights of the competition, and many officers and men had holes burned in their blankets from huddling in Indian style too closely over the fires.

Examples of sheer nerve among the men was numerous. One soldier sprained his ankle very badly, another broke his finger, and still another had a blank shell discharged into his forearm at close range. All continued on the test displaying great fortitude under intense physical pain.

The horses, too, did nobly despite an abbreviated conditioning period. Over half the animals in each platoon were young horses, turned to duty in the last year after undergoing systematic remount training under the direction of Major W. B. Bradford. Nevertheless, there was not a lame horse in the entire four platoons on their return to Fort Bliss. They carried their riders between eighty-five and a hundred and ten miles in two days. In addition, they did a great deal of galloping due to the tactical conditions imposed. The terrain was difficult, varying from deep sand on the mesa to a bed of sharp pointed rocks on the floor of the Cerro Alto canyon. The horses were fed no long forage and a maximum of eight pounds of grain the two days they were out. “F” troop’s horses came in the last twelve miles at an eight and a half mile an hour rate because of the necessity of reaching Castner Range to fire the combat problem before sundown.

The spirit and pep which the men put into the combat exercise, advancing by infiltration for about five hundred yards could not fail to impress deeply anyone who witnessed it. The men had had practically no sleep the previous night and were out on their feet. Nevertheless, they zigzagged through the deep sand at full speed and hit the ground hard behind cover of the mesquite bushes. More than one of them got sick at his stomach from the exertion. may-june1985