Customer Reviews

Five Years A Cavalryman Or, Sketches Of Regular Army Life On The Texas Frontier, 1866-1871 (Western Frontier Library)

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H.H.McConnell's Five Years A Cavalryman is a rem iniscence of the author's military service in the U.S. 6th Cavalry in northwest Texas from 1866 to 1871.If you are interested in a straightforward firsthand account of life on a frontier post along with some interesting anecdotes you will like this book. However...if you are an old horse cavalry aficianado and reenactor like myself and are looking for the "nuts and bolts" of cavalry life in the field, forget it.The author spent his hitch on post doing mostly bureaucratic work. It seems the only time he got on a horse was to relocate to a new fort or to attend to some official business here or there.On the rare occassions when he does discuss troops in the field, either on scout or on campaign, he wasn't there. The only discription he gives of these events are only in very general and uninformative terms. You will not learn anything about the cav out in the field, anything about their equipment, their tactics, or procedures. The best book I have found so far on the old horse cavalry is Forty Miles A Day On Beans And Hay by Don Jr. Ricky which you can purchase on Amazon.com. If you only read one book on the subject read this one!Happy Trails......Trooper7E