 Here is the Big Picture, an official television report of the United States Army produced for the armed forces and the American people. Now to show you part of the Big Picture, here is Master Sergeant Stuart Quain. There is a story which has endured since the Napoleonic Wars about an English cavalry officer who, according to the tale, said that the purpose of cavalry and warfare was to give tone to what otherwise would be simply a vulgar brawl. The cavalry trooper was always from the beginning a magnificent fighter and the cavalry itself a magnificent service. Surrounding the very word cavalry, there is a warm glow of nostalgia, of romance and valor, a sense of proud men fighting a proud cause with both dash and distinction. These are valid impressions, but the cavalry's historic role in the defense of this country is one of the Army's most illustrious chapters. It is now many years since the horse cavalry was abolished. A global war and a localized police action have been fought without it. But the cavalry itself, its concept and its mission, is still a vital part of today's Army. A fact dramatically symbolized in a recent ceremony involving the first cavalry division. The first cow, the heart and soul of the mounted service, whose history parallels the lusty history of this country's growth, leaves Japan for Korea to become one of the first U.S. Army divisions to be reorganized into a phantom unit, a division organized to meet the demands of warfare on an atomic battlefield. Today the big picture camera sweeps back through history to bring you the story of the cavalry in its long ride to glory. The story of the U.S. cavalry threads through our nation's history from its opening pages. This is a salute to those valiant mounted warriors. The cavalry was part of the ragged and untried continental Army, which secured the dream of independence for the young nation. It was a small force, however, and it did not really come into its own until the southern campaigns toward the end of the war. Then at King's Mountain and Cowpens and in a series of other mounted battles, small bodies of regular cavalry routed the British and helped turn the tide of the war. From the Revolution emerged one of the first of a long line of distinguished cavalrymen, Light Horse Harry Lee of Virginia, whose son Robert E. Lee would later make his own mark in another chapter of American history. During the War of 1812, American mounted troops twice scored important victories against the British, once in the battle of the Thames in western Ontario and against their Indian allies on the Tala Pusa River in Alabama. The war with Mexico, which followed the admission of Texas into the Union, was a cavalry war, particularly with the invasion of the Mexican territories of New Mexico and California, which extended the nation's boundaries to the coastline of the Pacific. The mounted warriors in this conflict fought with the magnificence which prompted their commander to tell them, you have been baptized in fire and blood and have come out steel. The growing nation now stretched across the western prairies. Settlement of the land was violently resisted by the hostile Indians, who made war on the pioneers carrying civilization to the Buffalo lands. It now became the task of the hard riding and hard fighting cavalry to make the westward creeping frontiers secure. 12,000 miles of territory had to be protected against tribes prepared to fight to the death the migration of white men into their world. The firing of Fort Sumter, heralding the civil war which presented the nation with its greatest test, interrupted the cavalry's mission in the west. But leaders like Jeb Stuart, who twice led his cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia completely around the opposing Union armies, used mounted troops wisely and colorfully and with spectacular success from the beginning. As a result, the Confederacy had a mounted superiority over the north in the early part of the war. The Union, however, had cavalry giants of its own. Bill Sheridan and James H. Wilson, and under them, the Union cavalry became one of the greatest forces in the history of warfare. When it broke into action after almost two years on the defensive, it literally tore the heart out of the Southern forces. The cavalry of both armies, Union and Confederacy, fought with daring and distinction and with imagination. Together they developed a new concept of cavalry warfare, which took fullest advantage of the cavalry's potential for speed and mobility, completely revolutionizing strategy and tactics which had always before characterized mounted action. With the end of the Civil War, the cavalry trooper turned his attentions once more to the enemy in the west. While the divided nation had been struggling for survival for four years, the Indian tribes taking advantage of the conflict had loosed a fury of attacks against the settlements in the west. They followed almost three decades of terror and bloodshed on the plains. Many heroic names from cavalry lore emerged from this period but none more enduring than that of Major General George Armstrong Custer. His defeat at the hands of a horde of screaming Sioux and Cheyenne Braves near the Little Big Horn River has symbolized the generations of Americans, the cruel character of the Indian wars in the west. The bridge in southern Montana on a scorching June afternoon in 1876, where every member of Custer's proud and spirited Seventh Cavalry Regiment faced and met violent death, the Indian achieved his most memorable victory over the white man. Skirmish followed Skirmish in those lusty and troubled years. The whole savage west was aflame. East came hard and slowly and only with the constant pressure of force applied by the mounted guardians of the nation's territories. By the turn of the century, the bloody work of the trooper and his steed was over in the west. America's frontiers were secure at last. For the first time in half a century peace pervaded the plains and the mountains and life for the tough cavalrymen became almost routine after the capitulation of the long warring red men. Chief Joseph, the indomitable chief of the Napersay who had fought the army bitterly, spelled out the tragic destiny of all the Indian nations with his words of surrender to the cavalry in northern Montana. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people have run away to the hills. Hear me, my chiefs. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. The next great chapter in cavalry lore bears the indelible imprint of one man, Theodore Roosevelt, whose first United States volunteer cavalry, or rough riders as they were called, captured the public's imagination and romantic attention with their courageous charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish American War. What was to be the last campaign of the old cavalry came in 1916 with the punitive expedition across the border into Mexico to pursue the bandit Pancho Villa, who had wreaked destruction on American lives and property near the border. Through the heat and wind and dust of the Chihuahua Desert, the columns rolled, living off the land in much the way the troopers of the Indian wars had had to do. It was a long ride and a final one. With the beginning of World War I, the history of the cavalry changed forever. A regiment of cavalry troopers and horses landed in France with the American expeditionary force. It was stabilized into a trench warfare of mass fire and little change of position and there was no use for the mobility of cavalry. Training camps back in the States, there was still no reason to believe that the end of the cavalry was in sight, however. Even though the greatest war in human history had left it behind, this was because of factors beyond the controlled strategists. The cavalry was still very much an active force and mounted troops trained constantly to keep in readiness for the day when the combat situation might change. So the training went on unceasingly. Training in all the qualities which had made cavalry indispensable. Maneuverability, movement, horsemanship. Once in Europe during World War I, however, was American cavalry employed tactically. For the most part, instead of fighting with the esprit and dash which had distinguished it in so many other wars, the cavalry in Europe was left with the unfamiliar task of running various remount stations. Tools and horses used for transport were cared for at these depots. The horse himself, proud steed bred to the thrill of excitement, became for a while a messenger, a carrier of supplies for whom the bugle called a battle no longer sounded. He was treated well and with consideration, however, as befits an honored warrior who had been withdrawn for a while from the battle. Still, there was no valid reason to believe the story of the cavalry was ending. Despite the small part it had played, all the great generals of the war paid tribute to its continuing function. General John Pershing declared, there is not in the world today an officer of distinction who does not believe with emphasis that cavalry is as important today as it ever has been. So with the end of World War I, the pride and the polish of the cavalry remained undiminished. Colorful and aggressive, it continued to train devotedly in its traditional role of the army's mobile army, the antennae of a striking force. It was well prepared to carry out its mission of reconnaissance and counter reconnaissance, screening and planking in every kind of terrain and situation. The cavalry kept alive the disciplines and the skills and the aileron, which were the soul of the mounted tradition. Yes, the cavalry trained hard during the 20s and 30s while war clouds were forming over Europe and the Orient. But it was training for a war it would never fight. These were the twilight years for the cavalry. But by the time World War II broke out, the age of mechanization had overtaken the horse. German Panzer divisions overran Northern Europe, crushing all resistance under a rolling mass of steel and fire. Devastating successes of the Blitz Kriegs, which these armored divisions spearheaded, pointed up clearly the kind of mobile force that each side would employ on the battlefields of World War II. The United States Army adopted the armored force as its new mobile arm. Under the direction of such old-time cavalrymen as General George S. Patton in Europe, it launched its spectacular drives into the heart of the enemy's country. On the other side of the world, cavalry troopers received their baptism in a new kind of warfare. Cavalry division traveled not by horse, but by new amphibious steeds to the islands of the Pacific, whose history reaches back to the winning of the plains, was the only cavalry division to remain intact during the war. But it fought dismounted as infantry. The Germans handled their new role well. They fought with a courage that did justice to the reputation established by their mounted comrades of an earlier age. Battled the Japanese in a succession of vital and bitterly fought campaigns. Los Negros. Leyte. They moved on into the capital of the enemy's homeland. After traveling the long route through the beaches of Leyte and the jungles of Luzon, the division was the first to enter Tokyo. It was a proud climax to a valorous performance as tough as any in cavalry history. The fighting spirit of the cavalrymen had endured and emerged once more victorious. The division brought credit to itself in its occupation of Japan. But its fighting days were not yet over. Less than five years after its triumphal entry into Tokyo, the first cavalry division was on the move again to defend the invaded land of South Korea. Less than a month after the North Korean communists began their aggressive war in June of 1950, the division landed at Pohang-dong on the east coast of Korea. Its mission was to push inland and help stop the enemy from reaching the port city of Busan. Dismounted once more, they fought with the same distinction they had shown in World War II. Their mission was successful. The defense perimeter around Busan held. And while the world watched and hoped, the beleaguered nation of South Korea continued to live. In September of 1950, the division broke out of the perimeter along with the rest of the UN forces. And now it had a new mission, to drive North more than 100 miles through enemy territory to link up with the seventh division which had landed on the west coast. It fulfilled this mission in little more than 20 hours in a drive called the most rapid advance ever made in the history of modern arms. The inheritors of the legend of the little big horn pushed North across the 38th parallel. And the cavalrymen who had in World War II achieved the distinction of being first into two enemy capitals, Manila and Tokyo, now set themselves to the task of adding another first to their record. Pyongyang, the capital city of the North Korean aggressor. They succeeded. This victory too was theirs. And with the collapse of the North Korean enemy, symbolized by this capture of his strongly held capital, the hope for peace grew bright again. It was a false hope. An entirely new war came with the entry of the Chinese communists into the conflict. Added many names to the division's roster of memorable battles. Its last big action was a series of sustained assaults on famed old Baldy and the vital hills around it, which in enemy hands, threatened the United Nations supply line. The last campaign ended in victory. A victory bought like all the others with bravery and devotion. When the fighting was over for the weary men of the division, they returned to Japan. The last in a long and gallant line of cavalrymen who had fought their nation's wars with distinction. The inheritors of a tradition which reached back to the earliest pages of the American past, the cavalry. But through two wars, cavalrymen had fought dismounted. And now the word cavalry existed only as a name and a noble memory. Or so it seemed. So it would seem indeed. No more can be heard again the creak of saddle harness in battle. The horse has retired forever from the field of combat. The few horses that remain in the army are stationed at the old cavalry post of Fort Myer, Virginia. The old ones bask in the sun after years of service. Younger horses are still drafted for service. Not the exciting service that their forebears knew, but duty of signal honor nonetheless. They belong along with the men who ride them and care for them to the honor guard unit of the Third Infantry Regiment. Theirs is the job of transporting America's heroic military dead to their final resting place. They are proud symbols of an army that has gone. Today's army is shaped to the demands of the battlefield of the future. It is an army that must be prepared for all possible combat conditions, conditions never before experienced by men at war. It is an army built on firepower. All of weapons with which it can hit an enemy is spectacular. Groups who can disperse over great distances in all kinds of situations. No place in such an army for the old horse cavalry. But that does not mean the cavalry itself is gone. Honorable traditions do not die easily, nor do historic missions which have proved themselves indispensable in warfare. The horse is gone, but the cavalry still remains, mounted now on other steeds. Brides on tanks and armored carriers on the ground, rides in helicopters and other light aircraft in the sky. Cavalry troop capable of operating both in the air and on the ground in each of the army's new pentomic divisions. Divisions reorganized to meet the demands of war on an atomic battlefield. The cavalry troop is still the division's antennae, prepared to carry out the cavalry's time-proved mission of reconnaissance with a mobility in keeping with the characteristics of today's army. Kneaks change, but traditions endure. And the traditions of the men who won the West, who died with custard, who rode with steward and with Sheridan, who found glory at the charge and wrote history with their spirit, are too deeply embedded in the fiber of America ever to be lost or forgotten. Traditions endure. The hoofbeats of the cavalry thunder still in the memory of living men. And they echo and will echo forever in the mind of the nation. First to the air, a long ride and a colorful one. That is the story of the cavalry in your army. Now, this is Sergeant Stuart Queen, your host for The Big Picture. The Big Picture is an official television report for the armed forces and the American people, produced by the Army Pictorial Center, presented by the United States Army in cooperation with this station.