With regard to the exercising, Miss Bather writes: “This is fraught with difficulties and anxieties, especially with a new lot of horses. To set the pace someone responsible has to lead the string with the quiet horses that will face the traffic; but though all army horses are supposed to be broken in, I have known our string resemble a Wild West Show!”
An eyewitness described an occasion when she happened to meet Miss Bather’s “lads” out for exercising. One of the horses had taken fright, and, breaking loose, had become entangled in barbed wire near the road. The onlooker states that the girls behaved with the utmost coolness, extricating the struggling horse with courage and skill, and successfully preventing a stampede among the other horses.
During the first year of her work about 500 horses passed through Miss Bather’s depôt, and in June, 1917, she completed her second year of work.
Miss Dorothy Ravenscroft is another lady who has been doing similar work for the War Office.
She is responsible for a remount depôt at Chester, where, with the help of twelve girl assistants, forty horses at a time are prepared for active service. The horses here are mostly officers’ cobs and chargers, and, as at the other depôts, the girl workers do the entire work of the stables, as well as the exercising, grooming, and feeding of the horses.
The post of superintendent of a Remount Depôt is one of considerable responsibility, for the success of a depôt depends largely upon the personality of the responsible head. Her life is necessarily one of continual anxiety, not only for the horses, but for her girl workers, who need to be chosen carefully; the work is far too great a strain physically and mentally for girls under twenty. Writing to a friend recently, a superintendent said with truth: “One’s nerves need to be made of iron; I am wondering how much longer mine will stand the strain.”
This is a question that women must be asking themselves in almost every branch of war work to-day, for all work just now is at high pressure. But the women at home are inspired with the same spirit as the men in the trenches, and are equally prepared to go on until they drop.
DR. FLORENCE STONEY MISS EDITH STONEY
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