Talk:Tom Wrangle
The ongoing vendetta between the Selachiis and the Venturis, which makes it near-impossible for their respective regiments to work together as two army units notionally on the same side should, has its echoes in Roundworld history.
An ongoing simmering feud between Lord Raglan (the notionally commanding general) and Lord Cardigan (his cavalry commander) may well have been one of the contributory causes to the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854. Cardigan was not minded to accept any orders from Raglan, his notional superior, and Raglan's attitude to the problem was to pretend his cavalry comander didn't exist. This was not conducive to good co-operation or co-ordination of forces, and of course when the fatal order arived, late and written ambiguously, Cardigan was inclined to interpret it in the most bloody-minded way possible, so as to make an obscure point, as well as indulging his Ronnie Rust-like desire to grab lasting glory. Which of course he did, but for the wrong reasons - as well as virtually wiping out most of Britain's light and medium calary assets in an utterly pointless charge into the mouths of the Russian guns.
The feuding between George Armstrong Custer's officers that caused deep and irreperable divisions in the Seventh Cavalry is also well documented, as is Custer's grudge against his senior officers (for busting him down from General to Colonel, and unaccountably failing to recognize his genius as America's greatest cavalry leader). This led him to go off at a tangent at the Little Big Horn, against the spirit of orders from above; to lead his Regiment into a position where no reinforcements could arrive to rescue them; and the in-fighting between his officers meant the Regiment fragmented, could not operate as an effective whole, and its component parts could or would not co-operate to extricate themselves and make a fighting retreat, as might have been possible at one point.
Oddly enough, both the British Light Brigade and the U.S. Seventh Cavalry rode to their doom to the same theme music, played by their respective musicians: the Irish lilt Garryowen.
Despite the obvious connotations of ill-fortune (surely now mandated by narrative causality?), this remains the regimental march of the modern U.S. Seventh Cavalry, although they have exchanged their horses for Apache attack helicopters...--AgProv 09:06, 3 October 2008 (UTC)