1145 15 April 1943
As the son of the late el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade, Se¤or Cletus Frade was given the position of honor beside el Coronel Pablo Porterman, Colonel Commanding the Second Cavalry, as they rode out to inspect the landing strip. Coronel Porterman was in a pink and green uniform. A cavalry saber in a sheath was attached to his saddle. His saddle blanket carried gold-thread-embroidered representations of his rank and the regimental crest.
Behind them, alone, rode Capitan Gonzalo Delgano, Air Service, Argentine Army, Retired, who was dressed almost identically to Se¤or Frade in riding breeches, boots, a tweed jacket, an open-collar shirt with a foulard, and a woolen cap.
Behind Capitan Delgano, Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodriguez, Cavalry. Retired, similarly dressed, rode beside Suboficial Mayor Annarana of the Sec-ond Cavalry, who wore a khaki-colored woolen uniform, was also armed with a saber, and who could have been Enrico's brother.
Though Se¤or Frade was raised on a West Texas ranch and was once a member of the horse-mounted Corps of Cadets at the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College, he had never seen so many horses in one place in his life.
Earlier, he had asked Coronel Porterman, a tall, good-looking man who looked uncomfortably like Clete's father, how many troopers there were. Ap-proximately 1,200, Coronel Porterman told him, and, he added, approximately 1,600 horses, following the Argentine Army standard of 1.3 mounts per officer and trooper.
As they rode out to the landing strip, which was about two miles from the barracks and stables, Clete watched for a time the troopers of the Second Cav-alry at their routine training.
Some were doing mounted drill, moving their horses in precise parade-ground maneuvers. Some were going through what looked like an obstacle course for horses, jumping over barriers, and moving the animals through mazes of stakes. Some were actually engaged in saber practice, riding past what looked like blanket-wrapped stakes and taking swipes at them.
They were, Clete decided, magnificent cavalrymen. He wondered if any of them knew that the magnificent cavalry of the Polish Army, with dash, ‚lan, and courage, sabers flashing, had charged the tanks of the German Army and were wiped out in a matter of minutes by machine-gun and cannon fire.
He wondered if they were aware that at that very moment, at some place in the world, tanks were fighting each other, and that horse cavalry as a viable tool of warfare was a thing of the past.
The landing strip was, of course, dirt. At Clete's suggestion, their little cav-alry detail formed a line and rode the length of it six or eight feet apart, looking for holes or rocks that would take out landing gear.
Though there were only a few holes, and no rocks, there were a number of cattle skeletons, some of them posing, in Clete's judgment, a bona fide threat to aircraft operation.
Coronel Porterman promised to send a troop of his cavalry out that very af-ternoon to fill the holes, remove the cattle skeletons, and examine the field with greater care.
"You can land here, Se¤or Frade?" Delgano asked. "More important, can you take off from here?"
"I don't see any problem landing or taking off," Clete said. "The problem will be finding this place at night."
"Mi Coronel?" Delgano asked.
Coronel Porterman rode up beside them on his magnificent horse, and standing at the threshold of the dirt strip, the three of them discussed where the locating fire would be located-it would burn all night as a beacon-and the precise location of the gasoline-in-sand-in-clay-pots "runway lights."
Then they rode past the troops of the Second Cavalry, who were practicing using their sabers and bolt-action carbines on enemy cavalry, and back to the barracks and stable area. From there they proceeded to the officers' mess.
The mess was crowded with the regiment's officers, and Se¤or Frade was introduced to each of them as the son of the late el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade, onetime Deputy Commander of the Second Cavalry.
Se¤or Frade was shown the trophy cases, containing silver cups won by his father for one equitational competition or another. These began with his first as-signment to Second Cavalry as a Sub-Teniente fresh from the Military Acad-emy, and ended with trophies won during his assignment to the regiment as a Teniente Coronel.
On the wall were framed photographs of a young Teniente Frade and his peers, among whom Se¤or Frade recognized Teniente Juan Domingo Per¢n and a chubby smiling character who was probably Capitan Arturo Rawson.
El Coronel Porterman led the procession into the dining room, where Se¤or Frade again was given the position of honor and seated beside Porterman.
The table was elaborately set with silver bearing the regimental crest, and fine china and crystal. There were three glasses for every place, and waiters promptly began to fill glasses with wine.
Clete thought of the "officers' mess" on Guadalcanal. It consisted of crude plank tables. The tableware was steel mess trays; the "silver" was knives, forks, and spoons from mess kits; and the china was heavy Navy-issue mugs.
An officer appeared and whispered in el Coronel Porterman's ear. He rose, excused himself, and left the dining room. A minute or two later, the same offi-cer appeared and whispered in Capitan Delgano's ear, and he rose and left the dining room.
Then they returned, without explaining why they had left. The five-course luncheon continued for another thirty-five minutes. And then el Coronel Porter-man rose to his feet, excused himself again, motioned to Delgano, and turned to Clete.
"Will you come with me, please, Se¤or Frade?"
They went to a corner of the bar.
Porterman looked at Delgano as if he wanted him to begin.
"Word has just reached us that makes it very important to have the airplane here as quickly as possible," Delgano said.