They Led The Life Of Riley

It used to be gospel among cavalrymen that Fort Riley, Kans. was the exact geographical center of the U.S. Originally called Camp Center, it stood at the confluence of the Smoky Hill and Republican rivers, 717 miles south of Canada, 717 miles north of Mexico, 1,700 miles west of the Atlantic and 1,700 miles east of some rocks on the Pacific Coast near San Francisco Bay. According to an 1883 book, History of the State of Kansas , it could be found by playing a pleasant game. You took a map of the U.S., folded it from east to west and folded it again from north to south. The point where the folds intersected marked the site of a monument in the middle of Fort Riley and so in the middle of the nation itself.

More exact measurements later showed that the actual center was miles away in the potato patch of a Mr. Smith. But the cavalry liked the symbolism of the myth better than the expertise of the surveyors, and draftees at Riley during World War II continued to be told how fitting it was that their branch of the Army should have its headquarters at the center of the country it so gloriously served.

It wasn't the only legend with a long life at Fort Riley. By 1921 the automobile industry was producing 1� million vehicles a year, and everybody except cavalry diehards knew that horses were no longer necessary to the winning of wars. "How those old boys held on!" says Lee Rich, general manager of the Union in nearby Junction City and a member of the local historical society. "You know, even during the Second World War, there were sergeants here, men who had served with Patton or Wainwright, who used to go around wearing boots and spurs!" It was nothing to them that the war was one of dive bombers and tanks. They ignored the armored cars and rode their horses. They had grown up under a generation of officers who transformed a rundown frontier post, originally built to protect emigrant trains from the Indians, into a cavalry school the equal of L'Ecole de Cavalerie in Saumur, France and Il Tor di Quinto in Rome. They had seen this remote stretch of Kansas hill country turned into a world-famous training ground for Olympic riders, horse-show teams, polo players and shrewd bargainers who excelled in making horse trades.

In 1904 a student at the Mounted Service School at Fort Riley spent 78 hours in the saddle during a school year. By 1911 a student officer spent 1,320 hours in the saddle. It was around then that the Fort Riley horse-show team ventured out of Kansas for the first time to the National Horse Show in Madison Square Garden and came back with first prize in military jumping; by 1939 it was routine for the show team to take part in events around the world as long as tanks were not rumbling across frontiers.

U.S. racetracks, stud farms, riding academies and hunt clubs are still peopled with those who served at Fort Riley under the old boys. Any horse show is likely to have a retired colonel or general serving as judge, and the influence of the post on thoroughbred racing and breeding has been phenomenal. The reputation of Fort Riley was so high among horsemen that after Pearl Harbor almost every Union Pacific train that stopped at Junction City brought a celebrated fox hunter, jockey, polo player, rodeo performer or Western movie star. They stepped off the train looking as though they might ask for directions to a livery stable where they could rent a rig to drive to the post.

One of the first to arrive was Paul Mellon. "I wanted to be in the cavalry," Mellon remembers, "and I thought that maybe there would still be a use for horses, in reconnaissance or something." Mellon is known nowadays as the owner of Rokeby Farm and a string of multimillion-dollar thoroughbreds.

He had developed a zest for riding to hounds as a student in England, and in the country near his home in the Piedmont he occasionally hunted with General George S. Patton Jr. "The only person I knew in the whole U.S. Army was Patton," Mellon says. In the summer before Pearl Harbor he went to Fort Benning, where Patton was commandant, and asked his advice. Patton encouraged him to volunteer for the Selective Service; volunteers could indicate the branch they wanted to serve in, and he probably could get into the cavalry. Mellon arrived at the fort in July and was given the nickname of Mush by a friendly sergeant. Six months passed before the Junction City Union got around to noticing him, and then only because his name was included among those awaiting officers' training. The paper said he was stalled behind a class that included three Oxford graduates, 17 lawyers, a former chiropractor and a man whose education stopped at the eighth grade.

At the time almost every issue of the Union noted the arrival of another horseman. The Cavalry Replacement Center was described as—how else?—"a Who's Who of American horsemanship." Entries ran like this:

"Private Pete Bostwick, one of the biggest names in the polo field, arrived last week and joined the 1st Squadron."

"Pasquale (Pat) di Cicco, husband of Gloria Vanderbilt, and associate of film producer Howard Hughes, arrived at Riley this morning."