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.