Weapons, planes, tanks, vehicles, tactics and strategy often get the glory in military history.  But often, the most overlooked yet important element to the success in any battle is communication.  Amidst the din of fighting men, horses and gunfire, a commander needed to be able to communicate with his unit at a moment’s notice.  Ineffective battlefield communication can spell the difference between life and death, but more importantly victory and defeat.  Before the days of radio, communication was handled by drums, horns, flags and even fire and smoke signals.  A good bugler was worth his weight in gold to an army, especially during the American Civil War.  Every unit had either a drummer boy or a bugler, especially the cavalry.  Cavalry bugles, such as this Antiqued 7^th Cavalry Bugle, was small enough to keep slung alongside the shoulder or off the saddle while at the same time as effective in combat as cavalry swords were.  This particular one features the distinctive 7^th Cavalry insignia on the end of the bugle and will look quite handsome as a mantelpiece or on your desk.  Civil War accessories such as this speak about a different time, a different way of doing things, that marks the difference between one age and another, where as advanced the technology was during those days, they still operated by and large the same way as the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Medieval armies did.  Perhaps it is battlefield communication that really spelled the difference between the way wars are fought today as they were over a hundred years ago.