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7. The 8th Cavalry Regiment (Infantry), 1st Cavalry Division (Infantry)
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t HE 8th Cavalry Regiment (“Rocking Horse”) began its service in 1866 as one of four new cavalry regiments authorized by Congress to protect westward expansion of the country.1 Scattered across almost every western state in the final decades of the nineteenth century, the regiment participated in eight major campaigns against the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, and Sioux tribes. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 the unit shipped out to Cuba. Arriving too late for combat, they nevertheless spent three years on occupation duty. Returning to the United States in 1902, the regiment made its headquarters at Fort Riley, Kansas, until the requirements of counterinsurgency in the Philippines compelled the War Department to transfer the regiment overseas again in 1905. For the next three years the 8th Cavalry operated as a mounted security force on the islands of Luzon and Jolo, safeguarding roads and freshwater supplies. With the end of the insurgent activities in 1907 the need for regular forces diminished considerably. The regiment returned to the United States in 1908 and was once again scattered among isolated posts in Arizona, Wyoming, and Montana. The return to the routines of garrison life in the West proved short-lived, however. In 1910 the 7th and 8th Cavalry Regiments returned to the Philippines to help quell the rebellion in the southern islands of Jolo, Mindanao, and the Sulu Archipelago. For five years Rocking Horse troopers fought against the Muslim Moro tribesmen. Some fifty members of H Troop participated in the 1913 battle of Baksan, perhaps the most decisive battle of the insurgency, in which U.S. soldiers killed more than three hundred Moro rebels while suffering few casualties of their own. 7 The8th Cavalry Regiment (Infantry), 1st Cavalry Division (Infantry) 91 92 In September 1915 the 8th Cavalry returned to the United States in response to a growing threat to the nation’s southern border. Posted to Fort Bliss, Texas, the regiment arrived too late to become part of General John J. Pershing’s Punitive Expedition and instead reverted to its decades-old mission of border security. Although assigned to the 15th Cavalry Division in December 1917, the regiment remained in the United States during World War I, actively engaged in interdicting both smugglers and raiders from Mexico from 1915 until well into the 1930s. The incorporation of the regiment into the newly activated 1st Cavalry Division on September 13, 1921, changed nothing. Joining the 8th Cavalry as organic regiments of this new formation were the 1st, 7th, and 10th Cavalry Regiments, in two brigades of two regiments each. Subsequent changes saw the substitution of the 5th Cavalry Regiment for the 1st Regiment and the 12th Cavalry Regiment for the 10th. During breaks in constabulary duty along the border, officers of the regiment engaged in polo matches, both intramural as well as with military and civilian teams from throughout the United States and Mexico. In March 1937 Lt. Charles P. Walker of the 8th Cavalry bested all other contenders in a 150-mile endurance race from Fort Bliss, Texas, through New Mexico and back to Fort Bliss. Polo and feats of equestrian skill proved of little value in preparing the regiment for war, however. In February 1943 the War Department dismounted the division, making it an infantry division in all but name. The 8th Cavalry’s World War II baptism of fire took place on March 8, 1944, at Manus Island in the Bismarck Archipelago. Operations on Samar, Leyte, and Luzon in 1944 and 1945 marked the regiment’s third combat tour in the Philippines in less than forty years. As part of Brig. Gen. William Chase’s Flying Column, men of the 8th Cavalry would proudly claim the title “First in Manila” when U.S. forces liberated that city beginning February 3, 1945. With Japan’s surrender on September 2, 1945, the men of Rocking Horse quickly shifted their focus from training for the planned invasion of Japan to Occupation duties.The 1st Cavalry Division received metropolitan Tokyo as its area of responsibility for the Occupation. The 8th Cavalry’s headquarters and 2nd Battalion found quarters in the former Third Imperial Guard regiment barracks in downtown Tokyo, close to both its parent headquarters, the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, and the Imperial Palace. The 1st Battalion was stationed at Camp King near Omiya, on the outskirts of Tokyo. The regiment underwent the same slow diminution of ranks as every other unit in the U.S. Army in the...