Parting ShotCavalry Mounts and Colt .45s
Mounted Pistol Marksmanship, U.S. Cavalry
Roswell, New Mexico, November 1927. The recruiting sergeant told George Moseley to take a walk around the block. “And when you get back,” the sergeant added, “you’ll be nineteen years old.” In reality, George wasn’t quite sixteen. The next day he was a recruit in the 8th Cavalry Regiment at Fort Bliss, Texas, and before the end of the week he was assigned his first mount. His drill instructor, Sgt. John Gobel, passed the halter shank to him and screamed, “Recruit, this is a horse!” Obviously. Buddy was a dark bay with a white stripe on his forehead, 15-2 hands and about 1050 pounds, a veteran mount just about the same age as the boy soldier, who was five feet seven inches and 135 pounds.
Most cavalry recruits knew little about riding, which was just fine with the drill instructors, who preferred a clean slate to cowboys and plowboys with bad habits. For several weeks, the new riders learned the basics. Then they were ready, more or less, for the pistol course, armed with a seven round, semi-automatic Colt .45. And if this exercise sounds familiar to mounted shooters, well, it should.
The Fort Bliss course was about a quarter mile long with fourteen man-sized silhouette targets, and the rider had to change ammo clips at the gallop. The recruits familiarized themselves with the course by first walking their mounts through it.
And then Sgt. Gobel told them to go for it at the gallop, and if at any time they allowed their mount to slow to a walk or a trot they would have to run it again until they got it right. One by one, they charged into the course. The first seven targets were on the right, about twenty feet off the trail and in a row like a line of enemy soldiers. The riders were instructed to lean toward each one, extending the arm and thrusting the pistol straight out.
After the seventh target, the course took a half circle to the right. And that’s where things got tough.
The rider had to change magazines. That meant laying the Colt upside down in the rein hand, ejecting the empty clip and slipping it into the magazine pouch on the pistol belt. Then he had to pluck a loaded clip out of the pouch, and slap it into the pistol butt. As if that wasn’t enough, some courses reportedly had a log to jump at about that point.
The next three targets were on the left, requiring tough crossover shots. Then a quick turn to the left. Two more crossovers at silhouettes on the left. A turn to the right. The target was behind the shooter, so he had to turn in the saddle to make the shot. One last target ahead, and then the charge across the finish line rounded things out.
A decent score? Eight or nine hits out of a possible fourteen. The average trooper was doing well to hit seven, and only a real ace would score on thirteen or fourteen targets.
The 124th Cavalry, our last horse regiment, wasn’t dismounted until 1944. Buddy died in a stable fire in 1929 that killed almost fifty cavalry mounts. George Moseley became a classic, hard-riding cavalryman. He was dismounted in 1942, attended Officers Candidate School, and went to war in the Pacific as a company commander. He was a major when he retired after the Korean War. Years later, George claimed that he never forgot Sgt. Gobel’s instructions—especially that loud introduction, “Recruit, this is a horse!”
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