![]() Simple, trusty, custom-made by the Dehner Boot Company of Omaha, Nebraska. Like the man that wore them, they were a product of the American Mid-West. Decades later, Reagan made them famous again. Throughout World War Two, General George Patton wore them conspicuously. The boots he wore as President and beyond were copies of the Model 1940 US Cavalry issue riding boots, the last ones the old “Horse Cav” would issue before giving up its horses and becoming motorized in 1942. But a better symbol would be his trusty old Cavalry riding boots, a part of his life for almost seventy years, from the first pair he wore as a newly enlisted Trooper Private in 1937, to the ones on Sergeant York, his riderless horse at his state funeral in 2004. “No,” he said, chiseling away, “I want to do it by hand.” It was clear to me that although he didn’t express his emotions about the horse in anything he said, the time Reagan spent working on that rock said, “This horse deserves my labor of love.”ĭuring his Presidency, a cowboy hat was used to personify Reagan, sometimes derisively. President, you could get one of those electric drills to do that.” I was surprised by all the work he was putting into it, and offered a modern solution. He labored on that stone for quite some time. He found a flat stone and chiseled Little Man’s name on it, his date of birth, and his date of death. Soon after we got back, he went up to Boot Hill, a beautiful vista on the ranch where he buried all the animals. Reagan didn’t say another thing about Little Man’s death until we returned to the ranch. Though Reagan was not an outwardly emotional man, Secret Service Agent John Barletta, who rode extensively with him, recalled his reaction when his mount Little Man suffered a broken neck and had to be put down: In a famous World War Two cartoon, Bill Mauldin paid a joking tribute to the Cavalryman’s legendary love for his mount, showing a grieving Trooper putting a wrecked Jeep out of its misery with a Colt. Thirty-seven years, those three carried me.” He replaces “Little Man.” Before him I had ridden his sister, “Nancy D,” and before her their mother, “Tar Baby,” who was in the movie “Stallion Road” that I made back in the 1940s. “(He’s) a national champion hunter (from) Brazil. ![]() You can see one of Reagan’s well-worn personal copies at the Reagan Ranch Center, through which he learned to flawlessly execute such exotic commands on horseback as “By the left direct rein of opposition, half turn to the left!” and “Half turn in reverse, leave the track by the bearing rein!” To ride “by the book,” there really was a book three volumes, in fact: “Horsemanship and Horsemastership,” by the Academic Division of the Cavalry School at Fort Riley, Kansas. While he did some things with style and flamboyance, in other things, Reagan insisted on doing it the regulation Cavalry way- especially when it came to riding correctly. Michael Deaver recounted Reagan’s ideal of the perfect Cavalry-style salute that he was trained to give: “You bring it up like honey, and shake it off like shit!” The Cavalryman’s use of colorful language has been immortalized as “swearing like a Trooper,” and though Reagan was the soul of propriety and good manners in public, he absorbed that tradition. Yet surprisingly, little has been written on Reagan, the Cavalry Trooper.īut Reagan didn’t just return salutes mechanically, by rote he snapped them off. It was the legacy of his Cavalry service, a clue to understanding the man. His riding was not an affectation put on for show to conform to an idolized, mythologized idea of the Old West. Though his enemies tried to deride him as a make-believe cowboy, Reagan was a genuine Trooper- a US Cavalry soldier trained to ride into battle on horseback. Ronald Reagan is the last President who was a veteran of the United States Horse Cavalry, a living link to the mounted Cavalry of American mythology. This old Cavalry practice continued a Roman tradition in which a slain leader symbolically faces and salutes his men on the way to his final resting place, There in the stirrups, turned backward, were Reagan’s Model 1940 US Cavalry riding boots and spurs. Close to them, to the sound of slowly beating, muffled drums, a soldier on foot led a riderless horse named Sergeant York, to represent the fallen Commander-in-Chief. The caisson was pulled by four magnificent Army horses.
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