The military mainly used horses for logistical support during the war; they were better than mechanized vehicles at traveling through deep mud and over rough terrain. Horses were used for reconnaissance and for carrying messengers, as well as pulling artillery, ambulances, and supply wagons. The presence of horses often increased morale among the soldiers at the front, but the animals contributed to disease and poor sanitation in camps, caused by their manure and carcasses. The value of horses, and the increasing difficulty of replacing them, was such that by 1917 some troops were told that the loss of a horse was of greater tactical concern than the loss of a human soldier. Ultimately, the Allied blockade prevented the Central Powers from importing horses to replace those lost, which contributed to Germany's defeat. By the end of the war, even the well-supplied U.S. Army was short of horses.

Conditions were severe for horses at the front; they were killed by artillery fire, suffered from skin disorders, and were injured by poison gas. Hundreds of thousands of horses died, and many more were treated at veterinary hospitals and sent back to the front. Procuring equine food was a major issue, and Germany lost many horses to starvation through lack of fodder.

source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_World_War_I

Until the 1880s each cavalry regiment would buy its own horses. In 1887 the Remount Department was created to take over the purchasing and supply of Army horses. Animals were bought from horse breeders and auctions, or, like Joey, from private families. Officers at this time always used their own horses.

To meet its need for horses, Britain imported them from Australia, Canada, the USA, and Argentina, and requisitioned them from British civilians. Lord Kitchener ordered that no horses under 15 hands (60 inches, 152 cm) should be confiscated, at the request of many British children, who were concerned for the welfare of their ponies. The British Remount Service, in an effort to improve the supply of horses for potential military use, provided the services of high quality stallions to British farmers for breeding their broodmares.^[53] The already rare Cleveland Bay was almost wiped out by the war; smaller members of the breed were used to carry British troopers, while larger horses were used to pull artillery.^[9] New Zealand found that horses over 15.2 hands (62 inches, 157 cm) fared worse than those under that height. Well-built Thoroughbreds of 15 hands and under worked well, as did compact horses of other breeds that stood 14.2 to 14.3 hands (58 to 59 inches, 147 to 150 cm). Larger crossbred horses were acceptable for regular work with plentiful rations, but proved less able to withstand short rations and long journeys. Riflemen with tall horses suffered more from fatigue, due to the number of times they were required to mount and dismount the animals. Animals used for draught work, including pulling artillery, were also found to be more efficient when they were of medium size with good endurance than when they were tall, heavy and long-legged.^[60]

When war broke out in 1914 the British Army had only 25,000 horses. They were essential for pulling heavy guns, transporting equipment, supplies and the wounded, and for riding. As the war progressed 469,000 horses and mules left the British countryside for the front, but still more were needed.

The Remount Department looked for help overseas, eventually spending over £36,000,000 buying animals around the world, especially from America. In today’s money that would be about £1,550,160,000.

Hundreds of horses were shipped to Europe every day in cramped and difficult conditions. After being carefully checked and passed fit for service they were sent to the front.

War Horse is a tale of fiction but weaves fact throughout.  It hones in on the sad plight of the horse during the war  and reveals aspects which has been forgotten with modern generations.

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The War Horse Puppets at the National Theatre.

Now playing to packed theatres on both sides of the Atlantic is  the National Theatre’s remarkable production of War Horse. I

War Horse: Fact & Fiction explores the hugely popular Michael Morpurgo novel alongside touching real-life stories of war horses and the men who depended on them.

22 October 2011 - August 2012

Open daily 10.00am-5.30pm

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THE HORSE IN THE WAR

Warning there are graphic images of dead horses in the following pages.  

The Boer War.

Around 16,000 Australians volunteered to fight for Britain against the Dutch-Afrikaner, or Boer, settlers in South Africa from 1899 to 1902. It remains Australia's third-worst conflict in terms of casualties. The first Australian troops and their horses sailed in late 1899 and were involved in major action by January 1900.

The main commercial and strategic reasons for the war were that the British wanted the gold mines of the Boer states.

The British Army purchased horses and mules from all over the world for service in the Boer War in South Africa:

Sir Fredrick Smith’s book “A Veterinary History of the War in South Africa 1899 to 1902” gives figures for casualties of horses as a daily loss of 336 and a total loss of 326,000 for the war. The 6th Inniskilling Dragoons lost 1 horse for every 3 miles the Regiment traveled, a total of 3,800 horses; the regiment started the campaign with about 680 horses the average size of a mounted unit at that time.

Because of this horrific loss of horses during the Boer War, the British Army totally reorganized its Veterinary and Remount services which were small, haphazard and generally unit controlled so were anywhere from very good to extremely poor.

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World War 1(The Great War) 1914-1918

By the end of August 1917 there were over 360,000 horses serving in France and Flanders as cavalry and draught and pack animals. Thousands of these animals were killed or wounded by gas, artillery and machine-gun fire, while many others succumbed to fatigue and disease.

Above Illustrations.  During the war  Fortunino Matania mainly worked for the British magazine 'the Sphere' as their star illustrator, usually producing one full page illustration or more per weekly issue, often for the opening cover page.

This is one of Matania's most famous war-time illustrations. It was published in countless magazines worldwide during the war and afterwards. A bit melodramatic for present day tastes perhaps, such scenes must nevertheless have been experienced by soldiers countless times during the war, which perhaps goes a long way towards explaining the illustration's popularity.

Below:  a French version, slightly altered .

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Australian War Horses

With the outbreak of the 1st World War on 4 August 1914, Australia offered 20,000 troops to Britain. Four Lighthorse Regiments of 600 men were raised and one of the requirements to join was to provide your own horse which, if deemed suitable, was purchased from you by the army. The army now had a dilemma. Draught and pack animals were needed to make up the requirements for the new field artillery, engineer, signal and transport units. These draught and pack animals were now purchased from the same sources as they had in previous years been hired from (Livery stables, Farmers and Coaching services).

The continued resupply of horses was a major issue of the war. One estimate puts the number of horses that served in World War I at around six million, with a large percentage of them dying due to war-related causes.^[61] In 1914, estimates put Britain's horse population at between 20,000 and 25,000. This shortfall required the US to help with remount efforts, even before it had formally entered the war.^[61][62] Between 1914 and 1918, the US sent almost one million horses overseas, and another 182,000 were taken overseas with American troops. This deployment seriously depleted the country's equine population. Only 200 returned to the US, and 60,000 were killed outright.^[61] By the middle of 1917, Britain had procured 591,000 horses and 213,000 mules, as well as almost 60,000 camels and oxen. Britain's Remount Department spent £67.5 million on purchasing, training and delivering horses and mules to the front. The British Remount Department became a major multinational business and a leading player in the international horse trade, through supplying horses to not only the British Army but also to Canada, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, and even a few to the US. Shipping horses between the US and Europe was both costly and dangerous; American Expeditionary Force officials calculated that almost seven times as much room was needed per ton for animals than for average wartime cargo, and over 6,500 horses and mules were drowned or killed by shell fire on Allied ships attacked by the Germans.^[62] In turn, New Zealand lost around 3 percent of the nearly 10,000 horses shipped to the front during the war.^[63]

Due to the high casualty rates, even the well-supplied American army was facing a deficit of horses by the final year of the war. After the American First Army, led by General John J. Pershing, pushed the Germans out of the Argonne Forest in late 1918, they were faced with a shortage of around 100,000 horses, effectively immobilizing the artillery. When Pershing asked Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France, for 25,000 horses, he was refused. It was impossible to obtain more from the US, as shipping space was limited, and Pershing's senior supply officer stated that "the animal situation will soon become desperate." The Americans, however, fought on with what they had until the end of the war, unable to obtain sufficient supplies of new animals.^[64]

Before World War I, Germany had increased its reserves of horses through state-sponsored stud farms and annuities paid to individual horse breeders. These breeding programs were designed specifically to provide high-quality horses and mules for the German military. These efforts, and the horse-intensive nature of warfare in the early 20th century, caused Germany to increase the ratio of horses to men in the army, from one to four in 1870 to one horse  to three men in 1914.

The breeding programs allowed the Germans to provide all of their own horses at the beginning of the war.^[62] Horses were considered army reservists; owners had to register them regularly, and the army kept detailed records on the locations of all horses.

In the first weeks of the war, the German army mobilized 715,000 horses and the Austrians 600,000. Overall, the ratio of horses to men in Central Powers nations was estimated at one to three.^{[65][note 2]}

The only way Germany could acquire large numbers of horses after the war began was by conquest. More than 375,000 horses were taken from German-occupied French territory for use by the German military. Captured Ukrainian territory provided another 140,000.^[62]

The Ardennes horse was used to pull artillery for the French and Belgian armies. Their calm, tolerant disposition, combined with their active and flexible nature, made them an ideal artillery horse.^[66] The breed was considered so useful and valuable that when the Germans established the Commission for the Purchase of Horses in October 1914 to capture Belgian horses, the Ardennes was one of two breeds specified as important, the other being the Brabant.^[51]

The Germans were not able to capture the horses belonging to the Belgian royal family, as they were successfully evacuated, although they captured enough horses to disrupt Belgian agriculture and breeding programs. Horses used for the transport of goods were also taken, resulting in a fuel crisis in Belgium the next winter as there were no horses to pull coal wagons. The Germans sold some of their captured horses at auction.^[67]

How the Horse helped to win the war

Prevented by the Allies from importing remounts, the Germans ultimately ran out of horses, making it difficult for them to move supplies and artillery, a factor contributing to their defeat.^[53]

Casualties and upkeep

Battle losses of horses were approximately 25 percent of all war-related equine deaths between 1914 and 1916. Disease and exhaustion accounted for the remainder and the Germans specifically targeted horses with gunfire.^[59] The highest death rates were in East Africa, where in 1916 alone deaths of the original mounts and remounts accounted for 290% of the initial stock numbers, mainly due to infection from the tsetse fly.^{[note 3]}

On average, Britain lost about 15 percent (of the initial military stock) of its animals each year of the war (killed, missing, died or abandoned), with losses at 17 percent in the French theatre. This compared to 80 percent in the Crimean War, 120 percent in the Boer War and 10 percent in peacetime.^[62]

During some periods of the war, 1,000 horses per day were arriving in Europe as remounts for British troops, to replace horses lost. Some horses, having collapsed from exhaustion, drowned in ankle-deep mud, too tired to lift their heads high enough to breathe.^[59]

Equine casualties were especially high during battles of attrition, such as the 1916 Battle of Verdun between French and German forces. In one day in March, 7,000 horses were killed by long-range shelling on both sides, including 97 killed by a single shot from a French naval gun.^[68]

By 1917, Britain had over a million horses and mules in service, but harsh conditions, especially during winter, resulted in heavy losses, particularly amongst the Clydesdale horses, the main breed used to haul the guns. Over the course of the war, Britain lost over 484,000 horses, one horse for every two men.^[69] A small number of these, 210, were killed by poison gas.^[36]

Feeding horses was a major issue, and horse fodder was the single largest commodity shipped to the front by some countries,^[70] including Britain.^[71] Horses ate around ten times as much food by weight as a human, and hay and oats further burdened already overloaded transport services.

In 1917, Allied operations were threatened when horse feed rations were reduced after German submarine activity restricted supplies of oats from North America, combined with poor Italian harvests. The British rationed hay and oats, although their horses were still issued more than those from France or Italy.

The Germans faced an even worse fodder crisis, as they had underestimated the amount of food they needed to import and stockpile before the beginning of the war.

Sawdust was mixed with food during times of shortage to ease animals' sense of hunger, and many animals died of starvation. Some feed was taken from captured territories on the Eastern Front, and more from the British during the advances of the 1918 spring offensive.^[62]

Animals bolstered morale at the front, due to the soldiers' affection for them.^[51] Some recruitment posters from World War I showcased the partnership between horse and man in attempts to gain more recruits.^[53] Despite the boost in morale, horses could also be a health hazard for the soldiers, mainly because of the difficulty of maintaining high levels of hygiene around horses, which was especially noted in camps in Egypt.^[72]

Horse manure was commonplace in the battle and staging areas on several fronts, creating breeding grounds for disease-carrying insects. Manure was supposed to be buried, but fast-moving battle conditions often made this impossible. Sanitation officers were responsible for the burial of horse carcasses, among other duties.^[73]

Many horses died as a result of the conditions at the front—of exhaustion, drowning, becoming mired in mud and falling in shell holes. Other horses were captured after their riders were killed. Horses also endured poor feeding and care, poison gas attacks that injured their respiratory systems and skin, and skin conditions such as mange.

When gas warfare began in 1915, nose plugs were improvised for the horses to allow them to breathe during attacks.^[53] Later, several types of gas masks were developed by both the Central and Allied nations,^[74][75] although horses often confused them with feedbags and destroyed them. Soldiers found that better-bred horses were more likely to suffer from shell shock and act up when exposed to the sights and sounds of war than less-well-bred animals, who often learned to lie down and take cover at the sound of artillery fire.

Veterinary hospitals were established to assist horses in recovering from shell shock and battle wounds, but thousands of equine corpses still lined the roads of the Western Front.^[53] In one year, 120,000 horses were treated for wounds or disease by British veterinary hospitals alone.

Ambulances and field veterinary hospitals were required to care for the horses, and horse trailers were first developed for use on the Western Front as equine ambulances.^[61]

Calais, France. 31 March 1919. A horse float used for conveying sick horses at the Australian Veterinary Hospital in Calais. Left to right: Driver W. D. B. Wood; Sergeant Tilley. Note the dog left background.

Disease was also a major issue for horses at the front, with equine influenza, ringworm, sand colic, sores from fly bites, and anthrax among the illnesses that affected them.^[76] British Army Veterinary Corps hospitals treated 725,216 horses over the course of the war, successfully healing at least 529,064.^[36]

When the war ended, many horses were killed due to age or illness, while younger ones were sold to slaughterhouses or to locals, often upsetting the soldiers who had to give up their beloved mounts.^[53]

There were 13,000 Australian horses remaining at the end of World War I, but due to quarantine restrictions, they could not be shipped back to Australia. Two thousand were designated to be killed, and the remaining 11,000 were sold, most going to India as remounts for the British Army.^[28]

Of the 136,000 horses shipped from Australia to fighting fronts in the war, only one, Sandy, was returned to Australia.^{[77][note 4]} New Zealand horses were also left behind; those not required by the British or Egyptian armies were shot to prevent maltreatment by other purchasers.^[78]

The horses left behind did not always have good lives - the Brooke Trust was established in 1930 when a young British woman arrived in Cairo, only to find hundreds of previously Allied-owned horses living in poor conditions, having been sold to Egyptians after the cessation of the war.

In 1934, the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital was opened by the trust, and is estimated to have helped over 5,000 horses that had served in World War I; as of 2011, the hospital continues to serve equines in the Cairo area.^[79]

^{The Walers}

By the 1860’s to 1870’s approximately 40,000 horses a year from Australia were being sold to the British Army in India  By the 1880’s this figure had risen to 50,000. The large majority of these would have been draught animals for pulling guns and supply wagons as well as pack animals.

Cobb and Co. bred what were called coachers, a cross between a standard bred or trotter and a draught horse with possibly some thoroughbred in the strain as well. These horses were between 14.5 and 16 hands tall, wide chested strong and muscular, well known for their speed and stamina. These horses proved so successful that they were in great demand by the British Army in India and thousands upon thousands of surplus Cobb and Co. horses were exported to the Indian remount service. The British Army in India considered these New South Wales horses (it did not matter from which state they came from) the best they could get and always demanded “Walers” for their best Troops. Riding horses, gun horses, light draught, heavy draught, packhorses and polo ponies were all known as Walers.

Artillery horses in their compartments aboard the transport ship Mashobra.in 1915

Transport-With several horses in his charge a digger waiting for orders to embark., Port Melbourne

1914-1918. London, England. A sergeant from the Army Service Corps (ASC) holding two light draft horses typical of the horses used by the ASC and Artillery. The photograph shows the near and off sides of ride and drive light draft horses with the typical harness. (Original photograph held in AWM 255, Item 2.) (From Great Britain. War Office. Arsenal, Woolwich. no.749)

Ribecourt, France. c. 1918. British Army cavalry, horse drawn transport, motor cyclists and pack horses crowding a road and environs captured recently from the German Army. (Donor British Official Photograph D2375)

Nesle, France. c. 1917. British Army soldiers with horses and horse drawn wagons in a street showing some of the damage carried out by the German Army as it was being driven from the city by the British Army. (Donor British Official Photograph D1083)

.

Double and single sand sledges towed by horses and used for moving wounded soldiers across the desert. (Donor Mr Withers) 1916 Egypt, Frontier, Sinai

Gas shells are dropping near and about and the limber driver who has his gas mask on is seeing that his horses are also safeguarded with theirs. 1918

http://cas.awm.gov.au/item/C01624

Two unidentified soldiers in a corner of the Square just after two horses had been killed by shellfire.

21 April 1918France: Picardie, Somme, Corbie

Albert, France. March 1918. British Army ammunition limbers and horses destroyed by the German Army in a battle near the town. (Donor German War Museum: Bufa 7995)

MAGDHABA, PALESTINE. 1917. BRITISH AND AUSTRALIAN SERVICEMEN WITH THEIR HORSES NEXT TO AN AUSTRALIAN GRAVE IN THE DESERT. (DONOR S. CLEREHAN)

GALLIPOLI, 1915. Dugouts used as stables showing horses standing inside the sand-bag entrances with their attendants. (Collection A. D. Hood, Donor J Borstel) 

Tel-El-Kabir, Egypt. c.1916. Two horses pull a sled like contraption with a canvas covering, which serves as a desert ambulance, past the tent lines.

At War's End

A group of Arabs sitting with their saddles and bags near some buildings with their captured horses. Note the condition of the horses and cattle. (Donor D. Saal) Damascus

‘Burying dead war horses’, Western Front, c1917. NAM. 2007-03-7-144

Training horses to cover riflemen 1919

Sergeant Spencer Gwynne of the 10th Light Horse Regiment sitting on his horse as it lies on the ground. Many soldiers from the light horse regiments taught their horses to lie down, a very useful form of protection if caught in the open under fire from an enemy. (Donor R. Gwyyne) 

Equitation training (art of riding a horse), using a method of tying horses together to prevent them from running away. A group of soldiers are in the background.c 1917 New South Wales, Sydney

Broadmeadows, Victoria. c. 1914. Members of the 8th Light Horse Regiment training with horses and rifles at the Broadmeadows Camp. (Donor J. Campbell)

The bay gelding 'Marcus' which is typical of the Australian horses which served throughout the campaign in Sinai and Palestine, 1916-1918.

Palestine. Turkish tranches used for protecting horses against air raids, possibly beside Wady Ghuzze 

Gallipoli C 1915-05 Horses tethered in trench stables (Donor P. Smith Estate of R.C.N Smith 

Dummy horses being made by Corporal Smith and another man, 6th light horse Regiment in the Jordan Valley about 1918-09-04.   (Donated by Mr W. M. Campbell)