ITALIAN CAVALRY

Evening Star, Issue 16625, 7 January 1918, Page 8

ITALIAN CAVALRY

TN T THE GREAT RETREAT. Reuter's special correspondent on „the Italian front paid a fine tribute to the gallantry of the Italian cavalry during the first day* of the great retreat. "The Italian cavalry have emulated the glory of the famous Light Brigade at Balaclava 64 years ago," said an English officer who is following the operations on the Italian front. Ever since the opening of the war the Italian cavalry have been deeply disappointed that mountain warfare gave no opportunity for the use of their branch of the service. Cavalrymen were drafted into infantry and bombthrower contingents or into the air service, but Italian cavalry officers now remark that the opportunity has arisen to 'show that cavalry is not, as a well-known writer «aid, "as obsolete/ as cross-bow men," but vital to the safety of the infantry and all other arms. The" splendid manoeuvring in great masses, and the Teckless gallantry of the Italian horsemen, against a hail of machine-gun' projectiles, will remain one of the most brilliant features of this war. and can be compared to the charges of the Austrian.cavalry at Koniggratz, which drove back the Prussians, enabling Benedek's defeated troops to retire in safety. The Italian cavalry practically repeated the same feat in screening, with constant daring dashes under fire, the march of the main body of the army, enabling the latter to occupy a new prearranged position, in whicli they are already busily engaged in fortifying themselves. The charges, hand-to-hand encounters, and irresistible rushes of squadrons and whole brigades were executed with such admirable precision at the highest speed as to astonish experts, who declared that never had great masses of horsemen been more easily controlled. On several occasions magnificent feats of that trick riding for which the Italian cavalry has always been celebrated at English military tournaments were performed. Riders and horses, like centaurs, climbed down the sides of the precipitous hills on both sides of the road leading from the Friuli Plain to the Tagliamento River, showing great mastery of both horses and weapons. Machine guns could not arrest them. Some regiments wero practically annihilated, but their heroic sacrifice was not in vain, since it protected the road by which the Third Army, led by the Duke of Aosta, and its munitions and stores, passed to safety.