Many of the WW1 centenary commemorations earlier this month focussed not only on the humans who lost their lives during the war, but also on the animals who gave their all in the service of their country.

Gervase Phillips, a historian at Manchester Metropolitan University has looked at the plight of animals during the conflict.

More than 800,000 horses and mules were serving the British war effort by August 1917, with an average mortality rate reaching 28.5%.

They were used mainly as draught animals, pulling artillery and supplying ammunition, equipment and rations to soldiers in the trenches. But there was also a close bond between the horses and their handlers.

Gervase said: “The bond between soldiers and their horses could be incredibly close. Horses are naturally gregarious creatures and form close attachments to other horses and also to people, particularly those who care for them and groom them, an activity that mimics how horses bond socially and which we know reduces stress and anxiety in equines.”

“For their part, many veterans who worked with horses subsequently recalled that it was their horses they spoke to of the fears and anxieties they could not share openly with their human comrades and of the intense feeling of loss they experienced when a particulate favourite was killed.”

The main problems that faced the horses on the Front were the same as those that troubled their human counterparts – bullets, shell-fire, gas, mud, cold and wet.

While the British army are generally considered to have cared for their horses well, some disastrous mistakes were made.

Gervase said: “In late 1916, the decision was taken that all horses should be fully ‘clipped out’ , to ease grooming and prevent mange. There followed one of the harshest winters on record and the army lost thousands of horses to the cold, all wholly unnecessarily. The environmental hazards were great elsewhere too.

“In East Africa, a British field force lost all its horses to an infection carried by the tsetse fly. On the eastern front, certain equine diseases, such as glanders, reached epizootic proportions and, again, killed thousands of animals.”

Only a small number of these horses came home, about 125,000 were repatriated to Britain, while others were sold to civilians on the continent, or in the case of another 35,000 were slaughtered for human consumption.
The final death toll for horses and mules came to millions.

In addition to the well-known horses of the war, such as Warrior, the mount of Winston Churchill’s friend General Jack Seeley, there were also hundreds of thousands of mules, who Gervase says are often “unfairly overlooked”.

He said: “Leaving aside British ‘horse snobbery,’ the North American mule is a handsome, robust fellow, big – often topping 15 hands – and strong too.
“In wartime, his services proved invaluable. Mules are tougher than horses, they take less looking after and are less fussy about what they eat. They are, on the whole, brighter too. They have a reputation for obstinacy and ill-temper but, treated with proper respect, they are biddable and hard-working.

“On the Western Front, the army came to depend on the stoic mule in the worst conditions and on the most active sectors. He could take the cold and the mud and he held his nerve under shell fire while he did his job. He was a good comrade and a good soldier and Tommy learned to love him.”

Gervase Phillips will be speaking at Withington Library on August 31st between 2pm and 5pm, as part of the Withington First World War Commemoration Afternoon. He will also be taking part in the “Animal Worlds” strand of MMU’s Humanities in Public festival, in October.

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