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Primarily he would have been trained to ride a horse at speed with all his gear to the point of battle and then jump off it and fight on foot.

I have problems with your narrative as you seem to have missed out his first period of service in South Africa which would have been at the time of the war. Also from his service records, see below, he does not appear to have been in Crete. This is the pertinent extract from his military paperwork that can be found on Find My Past:



Apologies you did mention 1901/1902 service in SA I just did not scroll down to the bottom of page 2 to find it. Still don't think he was ever in Crete.

The 17th Mounted Infantry received quite a lot of mentions in the British newspapers of 1901 & 1902. This is an extract from a letter written home by a Sgt Major Pilkington who served in one of the Lancashire Regiments - it makes somewhat gruesome reading, the Christmas Day he mentions was 25th December 1901: