Percy from the Pews
The superb documentary War of the Birds screened by the ABC brought home the dramatic role pigeons played in carrying desperate messages that saved many Allied lives in World War Two. The odds were against them getting through, and there was a big toll of birds lost, but others succeeded and were rightly decorated for their aerial bravery.
We should also give a timely salute for the invaluable contributions made by other non-humans serving the Allies in World War One – the horses and pack mules sent into the battlefields of Flanders and France as beasts of burden, hauling guns, ration carts and ambulances, day and night, often in atrocious conditions in the mud and hell of the fighting.
I touched on this in a previous article ( Trinity … and hell on earth ) of the horror that was the Western Front, at Passchendaele, the Third Battle of Ypres. Man’s inhumanity to himself was bad enough, and what happened to his four-legged friends was as appalling.
There were shocking statistics. We know of the human loss – we are much less aware of the fate of a million horses sent to France between 1914 and 1918. Only 62,000 returned.
Through the centuries mankind has always exploited the horse in time of war, the rider, flourishing lance or sword, charging his noble steed head-long at the enemy. Heroic stuff, but we tend to recognise the brave warrior and overlook the courage of his mount.
But on their sacrifice as beasts of burden consider this. The British Army recorded that between the Somme in July, 1916, and the Armistace in November, 1918, 58,090 horses were killed and 77,410 wounded by gunfire. There were another 211 killed and 2,220 wounded by poison gas. And several hundred more were killed by aircraft bombing. As well, thousands were lamed by nails and blades on the battlefield.
The British Army shipped nearly six million tonnes of fodder over the English Channel during the war, and it has been noted that this was just a bit more than the weight of ammunition sent. And the fodder was never enough – when corn supplies ran short the horses became emaciated.
This sobering information came in an article by UK Daily Mail writer Max Hastings, and yes I know he has upset with recent comments he made on Australian soldiers in World War Two. But in his horse facts he has provided an insight into a generally neglected aspect of World War One.
He noted that as the death toll grew, the stables of Britain could no longer meet the supply demand, and many horses were still needed to work on the farms and for transport at home. Some went from Canada and the US to fill the gaps, but there was also an important Australian equine contribution to the war effort, as Hastings fully acknowledged: “Many of the horses and ponies which served with Allenby’s army, fighting the Turks in Palestine, came from Australia. Australian cavalry took part in some of the last traditional charges in history, during the advance on Jerusalem in 1917.”
And, at the end of the human bloodshed in Flanders and France, what of the horses that survived? Hastings wrote that few returned to Britain. Most were sold, “ending their careers on French dinner tables”.
