by Cameron Binkley
Command Historian
Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center
Long before it became a sweeping national monument favored by hikers and cycling enthusiasts, or a new Cal State campus, or the center of a coastal development boom, California’s Fort Ord was a bustling hub of military training. That training began in an era that is nearly forgotten.
Created during the First World War, the original purpose of Fort Ord was to give troops from the cramped presidios of San Francisco and Monterey a place where they could conduct combat training. That meant both maneuver and live fire drills, but also movement via horse and mule. Indeed, what truly distinguishes the soldiers of that day from our own was their reliance on horsepower. Military men universally wore jodhpurs, those funny looking pants that allowed horsemen to ride hard without splitting their seams. And mounted soldiers wore knee high riding boots or service shoes encased in leggings, attire developed for horsemanship. As a bonus, because these men worked with animals every day, nearly every unit had a dog mascot.
Fort Ord initially bore a cumbersome name: the United States Field Artillery Reservation – Presidio of Monterey. Of course, to the soldiers who trained in its dry, hilly landscapes, it was simply Camp Gigling, a name borrowed from the nearest rail stop. However, Camp Ord was the name that stuck – from a Civil War general who came to Monterey in the 1840s.
The very first unit to be stationed at Fort Ord was the horse-mounted 76th Field Artillery, assigned some 1,400 horses. While at the Presidio between the world wars, it managed the reservation and set up the first permanent camp on Cavalry Bluff overlooking the Salinas Valley, the area that is today East Garrison.
In its first two decades, mounted artillerymen, alongside other units like the 11th Cavalry, executed mounted marksmanship, cavalry charges, and demanding artillery drills. For the artillerymen, it also meant piloting two-ton gun rigs pulled by six horses charging down steep hills with no brakes. During WWI, the 76th served on the Marne and pulled its caissons across France. Its kit even included inherited French 75 mm field pieces. These were simple and reliable weapons, but soldiers needed the open hills of Camp Ord to hone their targeting skills. Aided by observers, gunners corrected their angle of fire after officers using triangulation scopes shouted out coordinates. This exercise is captured indelibly in the lyrics of “The Caisson Song,” a revised version of which later became the Army Song:
For it’s hi! hi! hee!
In the Field Artillery,
Call off your numbers loud and strong!
Where’er you go,
You will always know
That those caissons go rolling along.
A horse-powered Army required extensive veterinary care, giving rise to Fort Ord’s Station Veterinary Hospital—now known as the Marina Equestrian Center (MEC). Built in 1940, the facility featured an assembly of stables, corrals, barracks, and surgery wards.
Because it continued to operate as an equestrian facility long after the Army mechanized, the MEC became the only surviving example of a complete Station Veterinary Hospital from the mounted era, encapsulating the historic military transition from horse to machine power. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the MEC remains the only historic site of the former fort designated as nationally significant.
Perhaps the strongest connection to Fort Ord’s cavalry past is illustrated by the story of Sergeant First Class Allan MacDonald, affectionately known as “Old Bill.” MacDonald joined the cavalry during the Great Depression and despite mechanization served as a stable sergeant for General MacArthur in occupied Japan, broke horses sold to the Turkish military, later managed a pack mule unit, and in retirement became an enduring fixture at official Fort Ord ceremonies and parades riding his white Mustang while dressed in a 19th-century cavalryman’s uniform.
MacDonald named his beloved horse “Comanche” after the famous 7th Cavalry steed who survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn. When Comanche passed, MacDonald secured permission from the base commander to bury his companion at Fort Ord. He chose a spot near the historic water troughs once used by mounted units in the 1930s. Today, Comanche's Grave site, located within Fort Ord National Monument, and a trail named after MacDonald leading there from the Station Veterinary Hospital, stand as a lasting monument to the brave soldiers and military equines of the Army’s horse-powered past.
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