Read Online The Iron Stallions by Max Hennessy - Free Book Online

sergeants free spirits, and its officers a slap-up dinner – to give, after the King and the Regiment, the Plague Toast, a toast that had fallen to the youngest officer since 1763 when one Jeremiah Harkness, a total newcomer, had been the only man on his feet after cholera had decimated the regiment. There were squadron, regimental and guard-mounting parades and duty officer came round with depressing frequency. Only the imminent arrival of Toby Reeves cheered him with the thought that Reeves, once his senior but now his junior in the Army list, would soon be relieving him of some of his burdens.
    The rumours that they were to have their horses taken away came to nothing, but it was always hanging in the air over their heads like the sword of Damocles. Despite those officers who claimed that Balaclava proved that cavalry moving at speed could overwhelm guns, there were the others who pointed to Mars-la-Tour, the charge of the Chasseurs d’Afrique at Floing, and the disasters to the cavalry in France between 1914 and 1918.
    Ellesmere, who was a tank advocate, made his views felt very clearly. ‘It was proved over and over again that tanks were the answer to the machine gun,’ he said.
    Morby-Smith was less convinced. ‘Horses are essential for shock action,’ he said. ‘And tanks are slow. Charging cavalry has a demoralising effect on infantry.’
    ‘It didn’t have at High Wood. We lost half the regiment there.’
    ‘All the same, élan and dash, and perfection in manoeuvres are of inestimable value.’
    ‘Why can’t we have élan and dash in tanks?’
    ‘At five miles an hour?’
    Leduc came down firmly on the side of armour. ‘I went through the last lot,’ he observed, ‘and the fact that we failed in France was borne out by the number of dead horses one saw. Even the junior char at the War Office could hardly fail to come up with the same conclusions.’
    ‘But, sir,’ Morby-Smith argued, ‘aren’t the traditionally rural origins of military families the very best thing for the army?’
    Leduc gestured with his mangled right hand. ‘The horse is a noble but uncomprehending factor in military stupidity,’ he said, ‘ and it’s too much in evidence. Still, it pulls things, you can ride it, it raises egos, takes the weight off the feet and allows you to go to war sitting down. When it’s cold, you borrow its warmth and when it’s dead you can even eat it. But it has no place on a battlefield. Nevertheless, judging by the observations of some of the half-wits in power, it will still, like the poor, be with us when we next go into battle. Some people will never understand tanks until they can be made to eat hay and shit, and no new tank brigade will ever be assembled while the ranks of the petrified, the ossified and the stupefied remain unthinned.’
    Already, however, four regiments had been selected for disbandment and the mess began to take sides.
    ‘The real trouble,’ Ellesmere said, ‘is that everybody’s sick of war and they’re using it to bring in colossal service cuts.’
    ‘Trust me to join the army just when it’s beginning to fade away,’ Reeves complained. ‘I didn’t join to see it fall apart. I joined for loot and lust, in that order.’
    ‘The Regiment’ll lose men,’ Morby-Smith insisted. ‘We’ll have the NCOs deciding to buy themselves out. Wives have a tremendous influence.’
    ‘Why don’t they amalgamate the regiments?’ someone else asked. ‘The decision would be accepted as a patriotic duty.’
    ‘They’d make a mess of it,’ Ellesmere decided. ‘The regiment’s the foundation of everything.’
    ‘There’d be quicker promotion in the slow regiments.’
    ‘It’d be a self-inflicted wound.’
    For every argument there was an answer and for every answer a new argument.
    ‘What will they do about the traditions, for God’s sake? And what about the uniforms? I can just imagine the 16th giving up their scarlet jackets.’
    ‘Or us giving up the green.