The Last Cavalry Swords: British Army & Indian Army Cut vs Thrust 

I greatly wish to know the answer to this

not nearly enough context here :P

Depends on where he is and the makeup of his band, I think.

@@eldorados_lost_searcher I'm guessing Mike Inez, William DuVall, Sean Kinney and Jerry Cantrell. From his t-shirt at least.

he makes a very good argument for the CJM pattern sword in "The BEST SWORD ever? British 1788 pattern heavy cavalry sword" and with added consideration and detail "Best Sword Design Ever Made? Maybe BUT......"

Extracting a sword from your opponent is often a parry in and of itself. Also, even if you can't cut with an edge, you can still bind with it.

Perhaps, Wilkinsons had a good marketing team in those days. "Officers! Tired of having worse kit than your chaps? Searching for a decent sword to stick it to the Beastly Boche, Johnny Frenchman or some fiendish Pathan? Then seek no further because J Wilkinson and Son have developed the M1908 Officer version available for private purchase. All the same wondrous killing power that His Majesty's Government issues the rank and file but with the little touches that distinguish a gentleman from the hot polloi. Just enquire at one of our exclusive agents for more details." The advert can probably be found in a back issue of the Gentleman's Gazette or the Army and Navy Times.😀

The Yeomanry really came into their own in Palestine

It makes it easier to carry, the Scottish units with the Basket Hilts actually had a crossguard they could put on instead. Quite rare to see surviving examples that come with both but you can easily see 1 or the other.

Cross guards are far cheaper and easier to make and hand fit than basket hilts for one thing. A basket hilt is a complex thing that has to be made just so in order to meet the pommel end of the grip without placing stresses on it. When you need to produce hundreds or thousands of swords, you’re likely to go with cross guards to keep the budget down and to get delivery as soon as possible. I strongly suspect that officers would move to custom made basket hilts while ordinary soldiers would have to make do with “mass produced” cross guards for a long time. There’s also fighting style and skill level to consider. The great mass of foot soldiers are not going to be expert swordsmen executing intricate passes, they’re going to be more hack and slash about it, going for the head, arms and torso, not so much the hand. Officers will be better skilled and better practiced, so a basket hilt will serve them better.

Also, in this time, the most common thing a person with a sword is going to encounter is close combat is a enemy with a rifle with a bayonet mounted on it and his sword would be used in either mounted ambushes or trench raids, fencing woith another swordsman would almost never happen, so more handprotection is kinda superflous. Finally, crossguards are easier to wear and less finicky to draw out. @@markfergerson2145

Do you know much about its history?

@@hazzardalsohazzard2624 No, only circumstantial inferences. It is marked "WILKINSON PALL-MALL" & has the plain troopers model hand guard. It would have probably come to Iraq between 1914-1932 during the British mandate of Iraq. The Hashemites (1933-1958) may have retained them as military sidearms. They may also have been retained as a military weapon or stored away during the Republic of Iraq period (1958-1968), I have no evidence for either scenario. My sword was however marked with the Republican Guard Military Triangle sometime after 1968 and was in the field when I acquired it in 2003.

Actually the 1908 is a massive brute of a sword. The modern sport sabre is not at all based on cavalry swords, it is based on the Italian dueling sword (sciabola). A modern sport sabre generally weighs about 400g whereas an infantry officer's sword (then and now, in the UK) weighs about 800-900g, and a cavalry sword is around 900-1300g usually. The modern sport sabre is not really like any real sword, except itself.

I don't believe so. Matt has an article on his website on British cavalry sword development that references Burton twice but there's no suggestion of any influence.

Er, yeah. Why else would he be wearing it?

Because it's only "perfect" for one highly specific role.

You are travelling at speed on half a ton of horse, man and kit. As you thrust you swivel your arm about so as to trail behind and the poked angry man is left behind as the horse drags the sword out of your somewhat annoyed opponent. Then you look for another naughty man to poke with your spikey thing. A Pattern 1908/12 with the inertia of half a ton moving at more than 20mph will poke through anyone not wearing plate armour but also slide out even if hit in the bone. The Great War cavalry, with their swords, rifles and Hotchkiss machine guns, together with Horse Artillery formed a combined arms unit whereby the cavalry could race about at the speed of a modern cross country vehicle to bring rifle fire to bear upon the enemy flank and advance on foot covered by machine gun fire and supported by mobile artillery. All with the plus of being able to carry out a direct assault, or flanking movement far faster than foot infantry giving far less time for enemy fire to engage against an advance. Foot moves at 1/5 the speed of horse at best, so meeting enemy fire for at least 5 times as long. What the mounted troopers were vulnerable to was artillery (bit trickery to take cover stuck on top of a horse) and wire etc. removing the speed advantage. In the day the cavalry remained useful well into the 20th century but the strategic downfall was less firepower and more logistics. Horses are delicate and need feeding, watering and rest. One lorry can give a company all the POL it needs for the day but it takes several to bring forward fodder for a mounted one and their range of movement is limited to a few hours a day whilst a vehicle can be driven 24/7 as long as it is topped up and maintained. I note that the actual first Soviet soldier to physically meet the Wallies in 1945 was a Cossack cavalry scout.

Post South African War they disposed of the Lee Enfield Cavalry Magazine Carbines and troopers had the same Short Magazine Lee Enfield as the infantry and the matching bayonet. Once dismounted you needed a bayonet for offence and for defence against cavalry and cannot handle both a sword and a rifle. Hence the sword lived on the horse. Dismounted you had no need for a sword but you did for a bayonet which was therefore on the man’s accoutrements.

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