A Cavalry Charge

I recently saw a m0vie with a fantastic cavalry charge...yes cavalry charge. Remember the fascination that warlords of all shapes, sizes, hues and ideologies had for men on horses leading the line? Wasn't too long back either. In these days of stealth bombing and collateral damages, sweaty men riding frothing horses while waving a sword seems impossibly quaint. But as a scene from a movie made it vividly clear, they were as deadly as napalm bombings, and in their own way, perhaps more human.
Understandably, it is a fantasy. Peter Jackson's humungous, kill'em by the millions epic Lord Of The Rings-Return Of the King. The cavalry charge I refer to is the great ride of the Rohirrim in the shadow of Minas Tirith. The men of Gondor have been all but vanquished by the bloodyminded assault of the orcs and the assorted Nazgul. The demented Steward of Gondor, Denethor, is about to set fire to his own son, thinking all is lost. Gandalf the wizard is reduced to giving homilies to Pippin the hobbit that dying is not a bad thing after all, when it is heard, the horn of the Riders Of Rohan, come to beleagured Gondor's aid at last. Thanks to the MASSIVE animation used in the film, what we get is a long line of impressively arrayed Teutonic horsemen overlooking the slaughter of the men of the West. The orcs are enjoying themselves and the Nazgul are picking off the odd warrior here and there. King Theoden of Rohan is horrified by the carnage he sees. But then he steels himself and gears up for the final pep talk. Unlike your typical Braveheart-style harangue, where you feel like taking off Mel Gibson's Kilt just cause he looks so pompous, King Theoden's message is pretty simple. Here we are, and this is the last cavalry charge we're ever gonna do. So might as well fuck 'em. This is pretty grim kamikaze stuff, and his scream of "Ride Ride!" is as chilling as they could get. He leads the charge himself, on his white horse, at first ambling, then breaking into a brisk trot and finally into a no-holds barred assault. The orc-army is vaster than the Rohirrims, but the sheer momentum of the charge quails the orc-heart. And believe me dearies. When the Riders sweep through the ranks of the yelping orcs, it creates the strongest moment of the entire film, maybe of the entire Trilogy. Tolkien's book was always about the grim Teutonic fatality which lies at the heart of the Icelandic Eddas, the Norse myths and the Old English sagas. These were untamed and wild people that he was talking about, and never mind the nobility and the impressive genealogy of the charecters, during war you were supposed to go insane. A truly grand moment in the film, which made me a fan of cavalry charges.
Somebody in some book I read recently said that we are rapidly falling into the world of the impersonal. And cavalry charges were as personal as personal could be.