In hopes that, after the first snowstorm of the year, our readers won't mind thinking a little bit more about snow, the Archives is focusing on multi-media coverage of the "snow rides" of the 1930s. A 1936 newsreel announcer said it best: "Norwich University is where America trains her future cavalrymen, and with the first big snowfall of the year the cadets come out for a ride...It makes a pretty picture!"
A snow ride in 1937, from "The Story of Norwich" in the Norwich University Record.
At first pitched as an "ordinary riding class in a snow setting," each succeeding snow ride became a much-anticipated event with the same steeplechase jumps, downhill "slides," and dramatic charges on the polo field. The visual result, captured and distributed worldwide by the British newsreel producer Pathé News, was a true spectacle. "The steam from the horses made any vision practically nil," a January 1935 Guidon author wrote. "This was merely a case of which horse had the most ability to set all four hooves and slide." The snow rides became a platform as much for the entertainment of eliciting "spills" as for a show of horsemanship. In a 1938 ride, a cameraman complained that a "colorful but ignominious descent" had occurred off-camera, and in the same ride, it was noted almost balefully that "horsemanship and equilibrium [took] preference over the impromptu equestrian slap-stick and hodge-podge entanglements with trees...which characterized 'side scenes' in recent years."
Norwich news outlet accounts of the event repeat the same elements in an entertaining, pithy style: the camera operators' freezing feet, the cavalry instructor who has devised the cruelest test yet, and the fate of the unluckiest riders. Indeed, the news writers' goal at times seems to have been to roast individual riders in the most creative way possible! In 1938, one "Bob Adams" who "twined his neck around a pine branch...[seemed to] have read an ad about 'White Pine Cough Syrup,' and decided there was nothing like saving money."
Wintertime cavalry training at Norwich before the snow ride tradition, approximately 1910-1914
World War II saw the end of the snow ride's glory days, with the cavalry program ending soon after the war. In a January 1943 Guidon article, the most spectacular segments of that year's ride were omitted to protect the horses from injury due to an icy crust underlying the drifts. The newsreel crew was absent, and the volunteers settled for a trot and short gallop on the crest of a hill.
Unlike much of what we feature on this blog, the efforts of Pathé camera operators braving subzero temperatures mean you can see for yourself the glory days of the Norwich snow ride!
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