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Cavalry Officer: Difference between revisions
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This is partly because it usually was more expensive to serve in the cavalry than in other arms of service because they wore more [[Bling of War|glamourous dress]] and had to pay for their own horses - and as a cavalryman you generally could expect to lose at least one or two horses in the course of a campaign. Add to this a tendency of cavalry officers to look upon themselves as a continuation of of the knights of old in more modern times, and you see why in many films set in historic wars a Cavalry Officer tends to be more strict in the appliance of military rituals and codes of honour - when you have a duel scene, there is often a cavalry officer involved - and also more likely to indulge in a spendthrift "aristocratic" lifestyle including gambling, womanizing, racing and various eccentricities to a larger extent than officers of other services. In this context it is worth recalling that both the positive "chivalrous" and the negative "cavalier" are derived from a French root meaning "horseman".
Being a cavalry officer also required very specialized skills and a readiness to take (calculated) risks. To be successful, cavalry usually had to charge, and thus the stereotype of cavalry officers favouring [[Attack! Attack! Attack!]] and [[Zerg Rush]] tactics, also when put in command of infantry, emerged. Conversely, cavalry standing in one place within the range of enemy artillery or infantry fire often meant having to take losses without being able to inflict some on the enemy, so a sensible officer would take his men out of range, which could lead others to charge the cavalry with not having the stomach for a real fight and waging a war of their own divorced from the real one. Thus in the first half of the [[American Civil War]], a popular dig among the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac was the question: "Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?" To be fair there were plenty of dead cavalrymen, but unfortunately their most important work took place in skirmishes and recon missions far from the main army where no infantry could see their "deadness".
If the Cavalry Officer is one of the good guys, you can expect him to be leading [[The Cavalry]] [[Horseback Heroism|as they come riding in to save the day!]] In this case, he is often a [[Supporting Leader]]. Cavalry Officers have a notoriously poor grasp of time, because they will always manage to arrive at the [[Just in Time|last possible moment.]]
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[[Category:Western Characters]]
[[Category:Cavalry Officer]]
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