Some cavalry goofs.

Have you ever watched a cavalry and Indians western and wondered if the writers got the tribe's customs correct? Seeing how often movies get the customs of the 19th century United States Cavalry wrong makes one doubtful about the accuracy of Indian customs in the movies.

For example, The Horse Soldiers (1959) makes Marlowe's brigade look more like a very small regiment than a brigade.

In short, a Civil War era company had a regulation strength of about a hundred men; an infantry regiment had ten companies and a cavalry regiment had twelve; a brigade had at least two regiments; a division had at least two brigades; a corps had at least two divisions, and a field army had at least one corps, though units often had only a small fraction of their regulation strength.

One could often judge the size of a cavalry command by the type and number of flags it carried. Each company or troop in the cavalry carried a guidon, a fork-tailed flag. Guidons had three different patterns, one used from 1833 to 1862, one from 1862 to 1885, and one from 1885 until now. The Horse Soldiers shows the wrong guidon design for the period - a very common movie mistake.

Each regiment or battalion in the modern army carries two flags called colors, though 19th cavalry cavalry colors were called standards.

Regulations for the Army of the United States, 1895, Article XXX, section 218, page 31, says that cavalry standards should be silk, three feet on the lance and four feet on the fly, fringed in yellow. The national standard had a a pattern like a (short proportioned) US flag, with the regimental name and number embroidered in yellow on the center stripe. The regimental standard was yellow with the United States coat of arms and beneath the eagle a red scroll with the regimental name and number in yellow.

https://archive.org/details/regulationsfora12deptgoog

Many cavalry movies show a pair of standards in the commanding officer's office.

But in 1895 those were very recent new designs for cavalry standards. Cavalry regiments carried only a regimental standard until some time in the early 1890s. According to the revised United States Army Regulations of 1861, 1863, Article L, section 1468, page 462, each cavalry regiment had a regimental standard of blue silk, fringed in yellow, 2 feet 3 inches on the lance and 2 feet 5 inches on the fly, with the United States coat of arms and the number and name of the regiment on a scroll beneath the eagle.

https://archive.org/stream/revisedunitedst00deptgoog#page/n449/mode/2up

Movies showing US cavalry regiments in battle or on the march often show them with a pair of standards according to the 1895 regulations or a single blue standard. Since the brigade in The Horse Soldiers has three regiments until one is sent back, the movie should show three standards or pairs of standards at first and then two standards or pairs of standards.

Furthermore, during the Civil War, brigades, divisions, corps, and field armies began to use headquarters flags. If nobody knew anything about the brigade flag - if any - used in the the real raid that inspired The Horse Soldiers the prop makers could have made a headquarters flag like the typical cavalry brigade flag late in the war; a flag of bunting three feet on the lance by six feet on the fly, triangular, with crossed sabers for the cavalry.

Just as using company guidons and regimental standards shows that a regiment is made up of companies, using a brigade flag would show that the brigade was made up of regiments.

Instead, The Horse Soldiers only shows one pair of standards and no brigade flag, implying that there is only a single regiment in the raid.

And Colonel Marlowe sometimes acts like a regimental commander instead of a brigade commander, as though he retained command of his regiment instead of passing it on to the next senior officer once he became brigade commander.

Before setting out Marlowe gets Sergeant Major Kirby to serve as a replacement for his sick sergeant major Mitchell. Since there were only regimental sergeant majors in those days Marlowe would be doing the duties of a regimental commander, not a brigade commander, by getting a sergeant major for the regimental staff, not the brigade staff. He was usurping the duties of one of his subordinate officers.

In the battle at the end, Marlowe again usurps the duties of a regimental commander. He gives the order to "uncase the colors". For most of the movie, the company guidons have been flying, while the colors or standards have been wrapped around their lances and covered with their cases. In real life colors and standards would be uncased and flying whenever the guidons would be.

And the colors include an accurate looking blue regimental standard, and a larger US flag being used in place of a national standard, as if they feared to correctly show US soldiers fighting without a US flag.