In Ireland's County Limerick, near the River Shannon, there is a quiet little suburb by the name of Garryowen, which means "Garden of Owen".
Undoubtedly none of the residents realize the influence their town has had on American military history, or the deeds of valor that have been done in its name.
The cry "Garryowen"!
Bursting from the lips of a charging cavalry trooper was the last sound heard on this earth by untold numbers of Cheyennes, Sioux and Apaches, Mexican banditos under Pancho Villa, Japanese in the South Pacific, and Chinese and North Korean Communists in Korea.
Garryowen is the battle cry of the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, "The Fighting Seventh".

Today a battle cry may seem an anachronism, for in the modern Army, esprit de corps has been sacrificed to organizational charts and tables.
But don't tell that to a veteran of the Fighting Seventh, especially in a saloon on Saturday night.

Of all the thousands of men who have served in the 7th Cav, perhaps no one knows its spirit better than Lieutenant Colonel Melbourne C. Chandler.
Wiry and burr-headed, with steel blue eyes and a chest splattered with medals, Chandler is the epitome of the old-time trooper.
The truth is, however, that when Mel Chandler first reported to the regiment the only steed he had ever ridden was a swivel chair and the only weapon he had ever wielded was a pencil.

Chandler had been commissioned in the Medical Service Corps and was serving as a personnel officer for the Kansas City Medical Depot when he decided that if he was going to make the Army his career, he wanted to be in the fighting part of it.
Though he knew no more about military science and tactics than any other desk officer, he managed to get transferred to the combat forces.
The next thing he knew he was reporting for duty as commanding officer of Troop H, 7th Cavalry, in the middle of corps maneuvers in Japan.

Outside of combat, he couldn't have landed in a tougher spot.
First of all, no unit likes to have a new CO brought in from the outside, especially when he's an armchair trooper.
Second, if there is ever a perfect time to pull the rug out from under him, it's on maneuvers.
In combat, helping your CO make a fool of himself might mean getting yourself killed.
But in maneuvers, with the top brass watching him all the time, it's easy.

Chandler understood this and expected the worst.
But his first few days with Troop H were full of surprises, beginning with First Sergeant Robert Early.
Chandler had expected a tough old trooper with a gravel voice.
Instead Sergeant Early was quiet, sharp and confident.
He had enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and had immediately set about learning his new trade.
There was no weapon Early could not take apart and reassemble blind-folded.
He could lead a patrol and he knew his paper work.
Further, he had taken full advantage of the Army's correspondence courses.
He not only knew soldiering, but mathematics, history and literature as well.

But for all his erudite confidence, Sergeant Early was right out of the Garryowen mold.
He was filled with the spirit of the Fighting Seventh.
That saved Mel Chandler.
Sergeant Early let the new CO know just how lucky he was to be in the best troop in the best regiment in the United States Army.
He fed the captain bits of history about the troops and the regiment.
For example, it was a battalion of the 7th Cavalry under Colonel George Armstrong Custer that had been wiped out at the Battle of The Little Big Horn.

It didn't take Captain Chandler long to realize that he had to carry a heavy load of tradition on his shoulders as commander of Troop Aj.
But what made the load lighter was the realization that every officer, non-com and trooper was ready and willing to help him carry it, for the good of the troop and the regiment.

Maneuvers over, the 7th returned to garrison duty in Tokyo, Captain Chandler still with them.
It was the 7th Cavalry whose troopers were charged with guarding the Imperial Palace of the Emperor.
But still Mel Chandler was not completely convinced that men would really die for a four-syllable word, "Garryowen".
The final proof was a small incident.

It happened at the St. Patrick's Day party, a big affair for a regiment which had gone into battle for over three-quarters of a century to the strains of an Irish march.
In the middle of the party Chandler looked up to see four smiling faces bearing down upon him, each beaming above the biggest, greenest shamrock he had ever seen.
The faces belonged to Lieutenant Marvin Goulding, his wife and their two children.
And when the singing began, it was the Gouldings who sang the old Irish songs the best.

Though there was an occasional good-natured chuckle about Marvin Goulding, the Jewish officer from Chicago, singing tearfully about the ould sod, no one really thought it was strange.
For Marvin Goulding, like Giovanni Martini, the bugler boy who carried Custer's last message, or Margarito Lopez, the one-man Army on Leyte, was a Garryowen, through and through.
It was no coincidence that Goulding was one of the most beloved platoon leaders in the regiment.

And so Mel Chandler got the spirit of Garryowen.
He set out to keep Troop H the best troop in the best regiment.
One of his innovations was to see to it that every man -- cook and clerk as well as rifleman -- qualified with every weapon in the troop.
Even the mess sergeant, Bill Brown, a dapper, cocky transfer from an airborne division, went out on the range.

The troop received a new leader, Lieutenant Robert M. Carroll, fresh out of ROTC and bucking for Regular Army status.
Carroll was sharp and military, but he was up against tough competition for that RA berth, and he wanted to play it cool.
So Mel Chandler set out to sell him on the spirit of Garryowen, just as he himself had been sold a short time before.

When the Korean war began, on June 25, 1950, the anniversary of the day Custer had gone down fighting at the Little Big Horn and the day the regiment had assaulted the beachhead of Leyte during World War 2,, the 7th Cavalry was not in the best fighting condition.
Its entire complement of non-commissioned officers on the platoon level had departed as cadre for another unit, and its vehicles were still those used in the drive across Luzon in World War 2.

Just a month after the Korean War broke out, the 7th Cavalry was moving into the lines, ready for combat.
From then on the Fighting Seventh was in the thick of the bitterest fighting in Korea.

One night on the Naktong River, Mel Chandler called on that fabled esprit de corps.
The regiment was dug in on the east side of the river and the North Koreans were steadily building up a concentration of crack troops on the other side.
The troopers knew an attack was coming, but they didn't know when, and they didn't know where.
At 6 o'clock on the morning of August 12, they were in doubt no longer.
Then it came, against Troop Aj.

The enemy had filtered across the river during the night and a full force of 1000 men, armed with Russian machine guns, attacked the position held by Chandler's men.
They came in waves.
First came the cannon fodder, white-clad civilians being driven into death as a massive human battering ram.
They were followed by crack North Korean troops, who mounted one charge after another.
They overran the 7th Cav's forward machine-gun positions through sheer weight of numbers, over piles of their own dead.

Another force flanked the company and took up a position on a hill to the rear.
Captain Chandler saw that it was building up strength.
He assembled a group of 25 men, composed of wounded troopers awaiting evacuation, the company clerk, supply men, cooks and drivers, and led them to the hill.
One of the more seriously wounded was Lieutenant Carroll, the young officer bucking for the Regular Army.
Chandler left Carroll at the bottom of the hill to direct any reinforcements he could find to the fight.

Then Mel Chandler started up the hill.
He took one step, two, broke into a trot and then into a run.
The first thing he knew the words "Garryowen"!
Burst from his throat.
His followers shouted the old battle cry after him and charged the hill, firing as they ran.

The Koreans fell back, but regrouped at the top of the hill and pinned down the cavalrymen with a screen of fire.
Chandler, looking to right and left to see how his men were faring, suddenly saw another figure bounding up the hill, hurling grenades and hollering the battle cry as he ran.
It was Bob Carroll, who had suddenly found himself imbued with the spirit of Garryowen.
He had formed his own task force of three stragglers and led them up the hill in a Fighting Seventh charge.
Because of this diversionary attack the main group that had been pinned down on the hill was able to surge forward again.
But an enemy grenade hit Carroll in the head and detonated simultaneously.
He went down like a wet rag and the attackers hit the dirt in the face of the withering enemy fire.

Enemy reinforcements came pouring down, seeking a soft spot.
They found it at the junction between Troops H and G, and prepared to counterattack.
Marvin Goulding saw what was happening.
He turned to his platoon.
"Okay, men", he said.
"Follow me".
Goulding leaped to his feet and started forward, "Garryowen"!
On his lips, his men following.
But the bullets whacked home before he finished his battle cry and Marvin Goulding fell dead.
For an instant his men hesitated, unable to believe that their lieutenant, the most popular officer in the regiment, was dead.
Then they let out a bellow of anguish and rage and, cursing, screaming and hollering "Garryowen"!
They charged into the enemy like wild men.

That finished the job that Captain Chandler and Lieutenant Carroll had begun.
Goulding's platoon pushed back the enemy soldiers and broke up the timing of the entire enemy attack.
Reinforcements came up quickly to take advantage of the opening made by Goulding's platoon.
The North Koreans threw away their guns and fled across the rice paddies.
Artillery and air strikes were called in to kill them by the hundreds.

Though Bob Carroll seemed to have had his head practically blown off by the exploding grenade, he lived.
Today he is a major -- in the Regular Army.

So filled was Mel Chandler with the spirit of Garryowen that after Korea was over, he took on the job of writing the complete history of the regiment.
After years of digging, nights and weekends, he put together the big, profusely illustrated book, Of Garryowen And Glory, which is probably the most complete history of any military unit.

The battle of the Naktong River is just one example of how the battle cry and the spirit of The Fighting Seventh have paid off.
For nearly a century the cry has never failed to rally the fighting men of the regiment.

Take the case of Major Marcus A. Reno, who survived the Battle of The Little Big Horn in 1876.
From the enlisted men he pistol-whipped to the subordinate officer whose wife he tried to rape, a lot of men had plenty of reason heartily to dislike Marcus Reno.
Many of his fellow officers refused to speak to him.
But when a board of inquiry was called to look into the charges of cowardice made against him, the men who had seen Reno leave the battlefield and the officer who had heard Reno suggest that the wounded be left to be tortured by the Sioux, refused to say a harsh word against him.
He was a member of The Fighting Seventh.

Although it was at the Battle of The Little Horn, about which more words have been written than any other battle in American history, that the 7th Cavalry first made its mark in history, the regiment was ten years old by then.
Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer was the regiment's first permanent commander and, like such generals as George S. Patton and Terry De La Mesa Allen in their rise to military prominence, Custer was a believer in blood and guts warfare.

During the Civil War, Custer, who achieved a brilliant record, was made brigadier general at the age of 23.

He finished the war as a major general, commanding a full division, and at 25 was the youngest major general in the history of the U.S. Army.