Savage Squadrons
by
[Hale, Cushman and Flint, $2.75]
THE Marines joyously adopted the German epithet Teufelhund and called themselves Devil Dogs. The old British Army of Mons — the contemptible little army of the Kaiser’s speech — liked to be called the Old Contemptibles. The French soldier was scoffed at as hairy and at once accepted the honorific title of poilu. So the Caucasian Cavalry Division was called savage by the Russian Army and took the nickname the Savage Division to its greater glory.
Savage Squadrons is the war autobiography of Sergei Kournakoff. His family tradition had always been that a son should serve in the Imperial forces. It was broken, to his disgust, and at the outbreak of the war he found himself training at St. Petersburg to become an engineer. At once he decided to join the cavalry. After a hundred pages of frustration he finds himself an officer of the Savage Division.
From that point his adventures accumulate rapidly. His first experience of actual war is an unimportant little affair—a dismounted attack on an Austrian bridgehead on the Dniester. That, however, is a mere nothing — the hors d’œuvres to give him an appetite for what was to come.
It was not long in coming. The Savage Squadrons were detailed for an attack mounted from the front-line trenches. They had to ford the Dniester, — the horses had to swim, — to pass through the enemies’ wire, and to charge the Austrian trenches.
The programme was exactly carried out. Kournakoff’s troop very properly were first through the wire, which they had to cut with their sabres.
A minor adventure with a patrol is followed by a major one when our hero is picked to ride with six men into thick forest to discover the exact position of an Austrian battery and to set a fire behind it to disclose its whereabouts to his own artillery. Even this he does with éclat. The Austrians seem not to have bothered with the formality of covering troops, with the result that the battery is wiped out in short order.
After this exploit the Commanding Officer cannot leave the unfortunate author alone. He gets landed for every sticky job. Again he finds himself on a patrol — this time a fighting one — with which he very nearly captures an Austrian battery. (How very careless the enemy were with their batteries, to be sure.) This time, however, he is prevented in his objective by a troop of Austrian cavalry. After a brisk mêlée, in which our hero cuts down his man and is in turn unhorsed, these enemies, freshly mounted and in superior numbers, are pursued triumphantly from the field.
Eventually, after many more adventures, the Revolution brings the end of the war. The author must have sighed a very private sigh of relief, for it would never have become an officer of Savage Squadrons to admit that he was anything but sorry when war was done. They always went where duty called and where the fire was hottest.
The book is very complete of its kind. The heroes are heroic with a jovial sang-froid. The villains are wretched, ill-favored beings easily recognized at sight. The spy has a pig face and speaks with a German accent.
Even the jacket is right. It is not often nowadays that one comes across the good old-fashioned jacket — savage squadrons charging, galloping horses, sounding trumpets, plenty of action, all done in glossy oils. It is a rollicking jacket for a book of rollicking war. For the grown-up Henty lover, — if there are any left, — here is the book.
A. W. SMITH