Joe, good comments on cavalry. Effective (prior to the modern era) against fleeing troops, or even those advancing in line. But the British squares were almost never broken by cavalry. I think the Brits did break a few French squares during the Napoleonic era, including one at Waterloo, but the Brits in general were better at rapid fire with their muskets than were the French.
eightbore, you're correct. The "European dueling sword" was used in the modern pentathlon. In that particular event, Patton came out 3rd and gave the Frenchman who won gold his only defeat.
The problem I see with our current military, having served about the same length of time as Joe (but virtually all Reserve Components), is that it needs to be bigger. After Nam, the Pentagon decided we would never again go to war without the Reserve Components, but the situation has now evolved to such a point that we CAN'T go to war without them. And it's only right that Reservists should be prepared for callups. But we've reached a point where some Reservists are spending almost as much time on active duty as they are as civilians and part-time soldiers. That's at best a stop-gap solution. At its peak, we had 4,000 Guardsmen on active duty here in Iowa--just in response to our recent floods. We're probably lucky that the rotations were such that we had that many available at home, rather than in Afghanistan, Iraq or the Balkans.
Last edited by L. Brown; 06/25/08 04:25 PM.
