The Last Charge of the 26th Cavalry
This the first book to chronicle the full drama and scope of the 26th Cavalry's magnificent but doomed mounted campaign against the finest troops, air power, and tanks of the Japanese Army. It was shortly after Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines had begun. Among the Philippine's defenses was a group of Filipino non- commissioned officers and enlisted men, led by white American officers. They were from a different era - trained to fight on horseback the same way the Cavalry had been trained for the Civil War and before, except they had traded in the traditional saber for a rifle. They battled fiercely against the mechanized Japanese Army, forced with the rest of MacArthur's army to give up the fight. In a tragic blow, they had to slaughter their mounts for food, thus ending the grand tradition of the U.S. mounted cavalry.
