The two met during battles at Tsaritsyn in 1918 along with Commander Kliment Voroshilov, the three of them forming a long-lasting alliance and Stalin using his position as a member of the Red Army Southern Front to advance Budyonny's career.

In December, Stalin brought in Voroshilov and Shchadenko, another Tsaritsyn veteran, to chair the 1st Cavalry Army's revolutionary military council along with Budyonny.

[8] It was December 1919, and the 1st Cavalry Army was on the pursuit, chasing down an enemy now reduced to a fighting retreat all the way from Kastornoye south to the Azov Sea.

[9] Earlier in 1919, the Armed Forces of South Russia had been making progress on their march north on Moscow however, by October this was no longer the case.

The advance, over extended and slowed down by attacks on supply lines by Makhno's Red-aligned anarchist partisans, had stalled and now the Red Army was primed for a counter-offensive.

Having no bridging equipment, Budyonny's men would take to burning down Rostov's hospital in the meantime, presumably with wounded White officers inside.

[13] On 17 January Budyonny was ordered by his superior, Caucasian Front Commander-in-chief Vasily Shorin, to lead his men in a head-on attack across the river against the Volunteer Corps in Bataysk.

Budyonny had instead suggested taking his 9,000 sabres and 5,000 bayonets further east to cross, flanking and then striking the Volunteers from the rear but Shorin refused.

[16] Now split from their Cossack allies in the east, the Volunteers had no choice but to retreat to Novorossiysk where they would evacuate by boat to the Crimea on 26 March 1920; there the AFSR would be disbanded and its remnants formed into Wrangel's Russian Army.

[20] Upon their reaching the south-west Budyonny and Voroshilov would find an old friend: Stalin had been made commissar for the front and so with their arrival the Tsaritsyn triumvirate was back together.

Smashed and burned fences, thatch torn off roofs for litter for his horses, looted food and fodder stores and the lament of girls – everything clearly testified to the passage of Budyonny's "grand" cavalry.

On 3 August, just as the trap was about to be sprung, the two cavalry divisions that were to cut off the Army were recalled to defend Warsaw against the Red advance, allowing Budyonny's men to escape.

[33] With the Red Army now in flight on both fronts, there was little reason for this besides a petty attempt by Kamenev to make up for his previous lack of stern authority and the Tsaritsyn men now feeling a greater obligation to follow orders.

[7] With the last major battle fought by the Konarmia finished, battered and beaten, Budyonny's Red cavalry retreated to the other side of the Bug on 2 September, violently venting their frustrations on any Polish villages and Jewish shtetls in their path.

[34][33] Its last action in Poland, only by a fraction of the 1st Cavalry, was the partial destruction of the Polish 8th Division at Dytyatyn on 16 September on the South-Western Front before being destroyed itself at Ternopil.

[33] Now having returned to Soviet territory in western Ukraine and morale low as ever, mutiny would spark in the 1st Cavalry beginning in September and spreading anarchy and violence throughout the region for three weeks.

[35] Once the 1st Cavalry had come under heel, they were sent once again south to face an old enemy: In Crimea, Wrangel had reformed the devastated AFSR into a new army which had advanced into the Northern Tauride during the Polish War.

The solution was to slowly replace the tracks with the correct gauge as the Red front advanced but this still meant that the Cavalry Army's armoured trains would be handicapped for the duration of the war.

[56] In June however, the Army's aviation would ramp up its activity with 16 reconnaissance sorties being flown in preparation for a breakthrough, identifying key weaknesses in enemy positions for the cavalry to exploit.

Now with the Polish line rolling back and the 1st Cavalry rapidly advancing, a problem arose: how can the Air Group, limited to operations near airfields, keep up with and support the Horse Army?

This was answered by so-called 'forward aviation echelons', squadrons made up of the most reliable aircraft travelling by air with the cavalry and setting up makeshift airefields on suitably flat ground as they went.

Supplies for these echelons, transported by trucks and horse wagons, would follow close behind whilst aviators slept under the wings of their machines in open fields at night.

They would continue to provide valuable reconnaissance, and in some cases bombing support, until June; the constant sorties and exposure to the elements left the aircraft in a sorry state, leading to breakdowns and accidents but no loss of life.

Just before the start of that month the 24th Detachment had only one fighter in good condition, whilst the 36th had not a single machine not in need of repairs, and with logistics and infrastructure so lacking, the idea of replacing any aircraft was a fantasy.

[60] Without any real aircraft of their own to counter these raids the 1st Cavalry turned to the machine guns on their tachanka carts as a fairly effective alternative.

'Anti-aircraft ambushes' were even developed where a fake convoy would act as bait for enemy fighters; when a plane would lower in altitude to strafe, machine guns hidden amongst nearby trees or buildings would open fire.