Out of the Saddle, Into the Fire: A Cavalryman's War in Macarthur's Pacific

By Warren C. Matha

A cavalryman's memoir chronicles the transition from horses to mechanized warfare while detailing brutal Pacific battles, rescue missions, and the enduring personal cost of combat.

This powerful memoir tells how one man--a U.S. horse cavalryman--witnessed the collapse of an old world and endured the birth of a new one. It follows him from mounted drills at Fort Riley to border patrols with the 5th Cavalry, and then to the desperate and brutal battles of the Pacific: Los Negros, Leyte, and Luzon; the rescue of 3,700 men, women, and children, including Army nurses, at Santo Tomas; savage house-to-house combat in Manila; and the daily grind of survival in the tropics.

Public record sits beside private witness--flamethrowers clearing buildings, a wounded Japanese soldier detonating a grenade that kills both himself and the American trying to save him, and the grim realization that "the more we fought them, the more we became like them."

Among the millions who served, few began in the horse cavalry and went on to fight as infantry across the Southwest Pacific. This memoir keeps faith with one such soldier, tracing how duty, violence, and loss left a shadow that followed him for sixty-five years.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 163624677X
• ISBN13: 9781636246772
• Release Date: November 2026
• Publisher: Casemate
• Length: 256 Pages