THE ANIMALS OF THE FORCE.
A happy lot--The mud season in Flanders--The effects of mustard gas--The
character of the mule--Forage difficulties--The French object to our
horse ration--The Americans side with us--The animal record in 1918.
No two officials at G.H.Q. had a better right to be proud of their
departments than the Director of Veterinary Services (Major-General
Moore) and the Director of Remounts (Brigadier-General Sir F. S.
Garratt). These two were responsible for the welfare of the half million
animals of the B.E.F., and there was never a collection of war animals
that had a better time.
It was a commonplace of German criticism of Great Britain's military
position before 1914 that the possibilities of a big quickly-trained
British Army were negligible, because, whilst rank and file might be
raised quickly enough, three things could not be improvised in a hurry:
knowledge of staff work, of gunnery, and of horse-mastery. The German
now knows that he was wrong, and in no particular was he more wrong
than in regard to horse-mastery. It is admitted over all the Continent
of Europe that horse-mastery in the "improvised" British Army reached
the highest standard of the campaign.
In this matter the horse markets of Europe spoke after the Armistice
with no uncertain voice. When the British Army was disposing of its
superfluous horses, everybody rushed to buy them. Prices touched a truly
extraordinary level. The unhappy taxpayer amid all his burdens saw a
golden stream flowing into the Treasury, because his Army was a humane,
conscientious, and skilful horsemaster. The military advantage to
transport through keeping the Army's animals fit and well is so obvious
that it need not be dwelt upon. The advantage to the _morale_ of the men
is not so generally appreciated, but was none the less real. It helped
to keep our men in good heart that the animals who worked with them, and
for them, were in good heart and condition. To British men with their
fine tradition of humanity to animals it would have been demoralising to
have seen their brutes hungry and suffering. Finally, the world markets
came forward with their evidence that the British Army policy of
kindness to its animals was not only good for transport and good for
_morale_ but also good for business.
By the Spring of 1919 we had sold out of the Army 252,676 animals
(horses and mules), of which 235,715 were sold for work and 16,961 for
meat. The total realised was £8,493,920, of which £8,081,607 was
realised from the working animals and £412,313 for those animals which,
because of old age or disablement, it was more merciful to send to the
slaughter-house. In addition a small item of £18,696 had been realised
from by-products, for our Army administrators, whatever might be thought
to the contrary, did study economy, and the animal which fell by the
wayside was usually put to some use. At least its hide was saved, and,
if transport were available, its fat and bones also figured in a
"salvage" return.
This money was mostly foreign money, too. It was the policy of the Army
not to "profiteer" in the United Kingdom. Indeed, within our home
borders it was rather to help the small farmer with cheap animals than
to seek to get the best out of the market.
* * * * *
The mobilisation of the horse strength of Great Britain in 1914 was
wonderfully assisted by the willing and instructed patriotism of
farmers, landowners, and hunting men. It yielded far better results than
were anticipated. One calculation makes it that 17 per cent. of the
total civilian horse strength of the country was mobilised.
But, of course, there was a tremendous gap between this result and the
needs of the New Armies. A wise prescience at the very outset decided to
reinforce horse strength with mule strength. Before the end of 1914
mules imported from abroad were being tried as substitutes for horses in
the Army. Some of the experiments did not give promising results. The
mule, for example, did not prove possible in gun teams. But it
established itself in a very wide range of general utility and
materially helped to win the war.
The improvisation of remount depôts and of training centres for horses
and for men who for the first time had to handle horses was the first
big problem. The winter of 1914-15 was a hard time. But extraordinary
results were won by the cordial co-operation of the "horsey" men of the
country. The hunting, coaching, and racing stables were great pillars of
strength. By the spring of 1915 the position in the United Kingdom was
good.
In the winter of 1915-16 most of the difficulty had to be faced by the
B.E.F., France. We had a great concentration of troops in Flanders. The
mounted units were made up in the main of men new to horse-management.
The animals had to be nursed through a winter in what was the wickedest
country conceivable for horses. Stable accommodation was, of course,
absent. Not 1 per cent. could be housed in existing stables. Labour and
material were lacking for the building of new stables. Most of the
animals spent the winter in the open. The mud was a cruel enemy. In that
highly manured country a horse standing out in the mud had its hoofs
attacked at once. A "greasy heel" soon became a purulent sore.
The "Mud Season" opens in Flanders in October and lasts until June; and
Flanders mud has a body and aroma all its own. A great French Marshal of
a by-gone age committed himself without reserve to the opinion that
"Flanders was no place to fight in." Thomas Atkins, as he pushed
obstinately and irresistibly through the mud towards some pill-box
objective, has endorsed that high strategical judgment. Perhaps in a
future war, if there is going to be a future war, Flanders will be a
closed area and no Army will be allowed to go there to fight under
penalty of a _procès-verbal_. That should be done if only for the sake
of the horses.
[Illustration: THE EAST RAMPARTS]
As every civilian stay-at-home knows, the Army is an entirely foolish
organisation with no knowledge of practical affairs. But I doubt whether
any civil organisation would have carried the same number of horses
through the same conditions with the same small percentage of losses.
The Army did not tackle the problem in any hide-bound way. A good deal
was left to the initiative and enthusiasm of individual officers.
Some general principles were set down. Within the boundaries of those
principles there was wide scope for personal ingenuity, and as the good
thing that one officer worked out soon became the property of all the
Division, a very high standard of horse-management was reached.
Will it shock some old retired officers to hear that authority, the
highest authority, abolished the clipping of horses that year in
Flanders? Horse-clipping was once a sacred institution, with its fixed
dates and ritual, in the Army. That year in Flanders horse-clipping was
abolished, and the horses became wild and woolly but withal happy. I
used to love to see their flowing locks streaming in the cold wind as
they stood out in the lines, coated like St. Bernard dogs, and quite
comfortable. "Stables" became more arduous as horse-coats became longer,
but the horses flourished in the open with just break-winds, and
sometimes thatch rain-shelter overhead. I would never want to see a
finer lot of horses than those of the early Spring of 1916. They were
hairy and they were lean, and they would eat their nosebags, if given a
minute's grace after the feed was finished; but they were full of heart
and of work.
The enemy was the mud. We found that if the horses were given good
standings and their feet kept out of the mud the rain did not trouble
them at all, and the wind troubled them little. But once off the pavé
roads all Flanders was semi-liquid, and the problem at horse-lines was
first to secure a solid "standing," next to secure a solid road in and
out to that standing, and finally to secure a solid road to and from a
solid watering place. A unit that built for its horses elegant brick
standings in the middle of a field, and forgot the rest, found after the
first rain that its lines were surrounded by a sea of mud. Then the
horses had to be given temporary refuge in the paved street of an
evacuated town, whilst a saddened unit faced scorn and obloquy and the
necessity of constructing another brick standing on another site, _not_
an island site this time.
Standings were usually made of bricks, and the Army requisitioned all
the brick yards in the occupied area. Shell-ruined villages were another
source of brick supply. Rubble brick was of no use for standings; the
bricks had to be set properly; rubble was lost in the soil within a day.
One officer got excellent results by preparing a well-sloped bed;
enclosing it with great logs, treating it with a thin layer of straw,
and close-setting the bricks over that. It seemed a poor use to put
straw to, but that stand lasted out the winter wonderfully well.
The difficulty of getting good accessible watering places was very
great. Water, of course, there was in abundance, but the horses would
ordinarily have to go up to their bellies in mud to get at it. To set up
troughs accessible by some firm road was necessary, and the site of the
troughs had to be soundly paved. One Pioneer officer settled his
watering problem ingeniously. He had secured a pump and some hose, and
he sank a little well just on the edge of his horse-lines, and was able
to water by troughs set up on the brick standing. Watering by bucket was
forbidden except on the road, for the reason that there was never any
certainty by bucket watering that a horse would get enough to drink, and
a horse kept short of water for long is soon a lost horse.
Losses from enemy action were not very high among the horses until the
last phase. There was, on the whole, little cavalry work except at the
end of the campaign and at its very beginning. Our air supremacy usually
saved horse-lines in the rear of our lines from very severe shelling.
But horse and mule losses increased greatly when the enemy began to use
mustard gas. That proved deadly to animals. The ground where a mustard
gas shell had fallen was infected for many hours afterwards. If horses
were picketed on it, or even passed over it, casualties were high. The
irritant poison of the gas attacked their skins wherever the hair was
thin, and caused the most dreadful wounds. Precaution, however, was
prompt, and an effective curative treatment was found in a dressing,
the chief ingredient of which was chloride of lime.
From the spring of 1918 the British Army horse had to suffer severe
attacks from the air. We had by then established a very great transport
superiority, and the enemy devoted a good deal of his air strength to
bombing attacks on our horse-lines, with a view to lessening our
transport strength. At first these attacks were very deadly. But the
position was soon met. Horse-lines were cleverly concealed. The animals
were separated into small groups. The lines were protected by bomb-proof
traverses of earthwork, which localised the effects of explosions.
In the summer of 1918 the wastage of animals had been cut down to the
lowest percentage reached in the whole campaign. This meant that battle
losses were being compensated for by a very low sickness rate, achieved
by careful and skilful horse-mastership. The British Army, which had
been always an army of horse-lovers, was now also an Army of skilled
horse-masters, and in spite of bombing raids, of long-distance shelling,
and of poison gas, the death rate kept dwindling. At this time forage
difficulties were acute, but there had been close organisation to grow
fodder in Army and Line of Communication areas, and our animals always
had a decent ration.
But it was through the unsparing work of the men, with brain and hand,
that the horses were so happily situated. The public at Home can never
express sufficient gratitude for that work--work which had little
glamour or hope of reward, but which was as necessary to victory as that
of rifleman and gunner.
The final triumph of our Army horse administration was in the summer of
1918, when it was able to take up a big part of the burden of horsing
the American units arriving in France. That, again, was a factor of
victory. Without transport or gun-horses the American troops could not
have given their magnificent help in the last stages of the campaign.
In the sum the story of the British Army horse in the Great War is a
thrilling one. Our Home horse-lovers opened the chapter gloriously. The
British Navy followed up by making it possible to transport remounts
from all parts of the world. Then the men of the Old Army and of the New
Armies showed what grit and resource and kindness could do. So we rode
home to victory.
The record of the animals of the B.E.F. should do something to dissipate
the marked prejudice against the mule in Great Britain. People here do
not understand its virtues as a draught animal. Granted that the mule is
not suitable for heavy draught work and may prove a serious nuisance on
a farm if it cannot be kept within its proper bounds--for a mule has an
omnivorous appetite--still there is a very wide field of usefulness for
this animal in city work, such as bread and milk and parcel carriage and
light van work generally; also as a transport animal for the small
farmer. The mule eats much less than the horse, has a longer working
life, is less liable to disease, needs less attention. The mule's rough
commonsense, which teaches him to be very careful of himself, is a
positive advantage. Given decent treatment, a mule is a reliable,
good-natured, and likeable animal. He has not the same charming manners
as a well-trained horse, but he has plenty of character, and it is
mostly good character.
The wicked mule does exist, but he is the exception, not the rule. One
champion wicked mule I can recall. He was as big as a horse, black in
colour, and on the near side had a blood-shot fiery eye which was a good
danger signal. On the off-side he had a white eye. This was a deceptive
white-flag signal, for the beast kicked with equal viciousness on both
sides. Likewise he bit from all points of the compass. The one thing
that soured his life was the fact that he couldn't sting with his tail.
To groom Belial--that was his name--he had to be put in slings. But he
was an easy animal to shoe. Hold a shoe with the nails fixed in the
proper position, and the animal would attach itself firmly to the shoe
with one kick. An occasional Belial excepted, the mules were a pleasant
lot.
The mule is a hard worker but a sensible worker. He will not try to
overtax his strength, and he goes on strike firmly if asked to do too
much. "I may be a bit of an ass," the animal tells you, "but none of
this heroic business of the Arab steed breaking his heart with a mighty
effort for _me_."
This attitude is not poetic, but it is practical. And the mule
compensates by standing mud better, eating less, and putting up with
poorer food than the horse. The mule, however, is very particular about
what he drinks. Water that the horse will swallow greedily the mule will
turn up his Roman nose at. If you are watering mules and horses at the
same stream, the mules must have first drink, for they will not touch
the muddied water, though horses have no objection to it.
G.H.Q. during the last stages of the campaign had a hard task to keep
the animals of the B.E.F. properly fed. At the outset of the War the
horse ration erred, if anything, on the generous side, and a good deal
of it wandered into the mangers of the civilian animals of the country,
much to their contentment. As the war dragged its exhausting length
along, money became scarce, food supplies scarcer still, and transport
facilities scarcest of all. Then the ration of the animals had to be
cut to a point which represented just sufficient and nothing more. Even
so, it was a much better ration than the French gave their horses, and
there were repeated efforts by the French Authorities to persuade us to
come down to their animal ration. Those efforts naturally had a much
greater chance of success when the union of the command made Marshal
Foch the Generalissimo of all the Armies in France.
But our High Command was stubborn in its championship of the animals.
There was a very strong representation of the cavalry on the Staff; and,
besides, the British as a race have a sentiment about animals which is
not shared to the full by the Latin races. The average British soldier
would as soon go short of food himself as see his animals hungry. At one
time the British War Cabinet yielded to the strong representations that
were being made that the British Army wasted resources and transport in
its feeding of the animals, and ordered a heavy reduction of the horse
ration. Even then the British Command in the Field did not give up the
cause for lost, continued to argue the matter, and by pointing out that
a vast amount of extra work was just then being thrown upon the animals
by the reduction of Field Artillery ammunition teams from six horses to
four, secured a compromise decision which made a much smaller reduction
in the ration.
[Illustration: THE ARMY COMMANDERS]
The French Authorities without a doubt honestly believed they were in
the right and that we were "coddling" our brutes, for they made another
effort to get "unity of animal ration" as a kind of logical sequel to
"unity of command." This time they made an agreement with the Americans
that the latter should come down to their scale of animal ration.
Without a full knowledge of what they were doing, the Americans agreed
at first; and it looked as if the British horse also would have to have
his ration reduced. But with more complete knowledge of the facts the
American Army reversed its previous decision and decided that it could
not come down below the British animal ration. A whinny of joy would
have gone round the British horse lines at this decision if it had been
promulgated in horse language, for it saved the situation. I am honestly
of opinion that it had its effect, too, in bringing the campaign to its
triumphant conclusion. In the last stages between August and November,
1918, I do not think that the rapid pursuit of the enemy would have been
possible if the horse ration had been reduced further than it was in
July, 1918. As it was, that reduction put a stop to the decline in the
sickness rate and caused it to increase slightly.
G.H.Q. did its best to make up for the reduced ration by organising
local growth of fodder crops wherever there was a chance, and there was
instituted an Inspectorate of Horse Feeding and Economies. The
I.Q.M.G.S. had to oversee all animals, except those on charge of
Director Remounts and Director Veterinary Services, to advise on all
matters of forage, to seek means of economy and generally to supervise
the "horse-mastery" of units.
Horse-masters can best judge the rights of the fodder position for
themselves by noting the actual animal ration. Taking an average of
25,000 horses, light _and_ heavy, the weight of the rations at the time
of the controversy was:
lbs.
American 23.6
British 22.2
French 16.1
Twenty-two pounds weight of food per day is not excessive for a horse
doing hard work; and that was the _average_. After the heavy horses had
their higher ration the light horses had to be content with less.
Probably the French never saw our point of view and suspected that there
was not much more than English obstinacy in this determined stand for
the welfare of the dumb beasts. But the controversy was carried on with
good humour all the same, and in the end "those curious English" had
their own way.
Whenever questions such as this arose between the Allied Forces it
proved in practice that the Americans usually had the deciding voice.
Perhaps it may be recorded without hurting anyone's feelings that the
American as a matter of instinct was inclined usually to take the French
side, because his stronger sympathy was in that direction; after
experience he was inclined usually to take the British side, for his
manner of thinking was more on our lines.
The animal record for the last year of the war was a fine one. The
sickness rate was brought down to a figure practically as low as that of
a big stable under peace conditions, and this--the result of good
horse-mastery--helped to make up for battle casualties and casualties
from bombs. (It was in January, 1918, that the enemy first instituted a
definite policy of searching out our horse-lines and subjecting them to
aeroplane attack in order to cripple our lines of supply). In June,
1918, the sickness rate was actually lower than at any period in the
history of the force (7.7 per cent. as against 12.05 per cent. in May,
1917). Losses of animals in battle showed a marked reduction. The
general reduction in losses was partly due to a decrease in the losses
from enemy bombs, as a great deal of work had then been done to conceal
and protect horse-lines from aircraft attack.
In July, 1918, the horse situation was even better, and the sickness
rate for the month was 7.5 per cent. (compared with 7.7 per cent. in
June and 8.73 per cent. in May). Unfortunately it was necessary that
month to reduce the hay ration by one lb. per day. (A more considerable
reduction proposed was abandoned, as I have pointed out). The shortage
in the supply of animals as compared with requirements, a shortage
principally due to the needs of the new American units, was met by
various expedients. Nearly 25,000 animals were made available by
reductions of the horse strength of artillery units. A further 14,000
were saved by giving 6-inch howitzer and some 60-pounder batteries
mechanical transport. Another means of economy in horse-flesh was worked
out--the setting up of a "Category B" in animals. Those which were not
quite fit for arduous work with a fighting unit were withdrawn to units
whose demands on them were less exacting.
In August, 1918, when our great attack began, the animals with the Force
had heavy losses. Battle casualties were high, partly because of the
large employment of cavalry, partly because of the intensive war from
the air against horse-lines. The precautions against this kind of attack
which we had developed could not be kept up during the rapid advance,
and horses in the fighting line suffered severely from bombs as well as
shell fire. But that was part of the necessary price of victory. What
was a matter for real regret, however, was the increase in the sick rate
which accompanied the revival of intensive operations. We all felt sorry
that the forage ration had been reduced, even though slightly, for there
was reason to think that even this slight reduction in the forage ration
had made it impossible in some cases to keep the animals up to the best
standard of condition. Very hard work was being done on a ration which
was cut very fine.
After November 11th, when the Armistice was signed, our animal sickness
rate was only 9 per cent., and later, as we began to sell off our
animals, the advantage of humane treatment told in the market rates.