Hot Lead Versus Cold Steel

Charge! Painting on the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 by Georgios Roilos (1867–1928)

I thought the bayonet charge went out with the horse mounted cavalry. Tam links to an Oleg post advocating marksmenship and naturally a whole field of dunderheads pipe up about how knives are better than guns because they don't jam or run out of ammo or blah, blah, blah. But then someone mentions a bayonet charge by the Scots in Afghanistan in 2004, which prompts me to look around and I discover that there have been a few others in the last 70 years. I'm not even going to look at WW2, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like what I found.

08-03-97. Doldol Training Area Kenya. Ist Battalion The Princess of Wales Own Regiment of Yorkshire, B Company. Photographer Giles Penfound.

Turns out I'm all wet about horse mounted calvary as well. First US soldiers in Afghanistan rode horses. You may have heard about the statue erected in their honor.

America's Response Monument - De Oppresso Liber, by Douwe Blumberg 2011

P.S. I thought it would be easy coming up with a picture for this post, but it seems like the old school painters preferred calvary charges to bayonets. There is hardly anything in the way of photographs. I suspect that is because the situation has to be pretty desperate to warrant a bayonet charge, and at times like that who's got time to fool with a camera?