Remembrance day is for all those fallen as Britain revisits the war horse
This is the second in Paper Horse’s series ‘Horse Guards of London’
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, Britain falls silent in remembrance of those who served in conflict. Among those whose service is recognized is that of the horses that went to war alongside generations of soldiers. In stables – located nearby the Cenotaph in Whitehall where wreaths were laid for Remembrance Sunday this week – reside the horses that carry on the military tradition, the Horse Guards.
During the First World War, horses carried cavalrymen into battle, transported ammunition and supplies, pulled heavy artillery and ambulances, and helped move wounded soldiers from the battlefield. The horse’s military role in Britain has become largely ceremonial – widely-associated with the tourists and sentry posts on Whitehall, the trooping of the colour and state ceremonies.
But the role of the war horse is being revisited. The Russians have been utilizing horses in the Ukraine war on the frontline for logistical reasons – navigating difficult terrain – and for avoiding drone detection. In Ukrainska Pravda – an online news publication – in January this year, Mykola Hrytsenko, Chief of Staff of the 4th Operational Battalion of Ukraine’s Rubizh Brigade, described how a Russian horse was initially mistaken for a stray animal. “At first, the large heat signature looked like a stray animal. Getting closer, we realised it was something else,” he said.
This summer the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment comprising The Life Guards and The Blues and Royals, left the pomp and ceremony of the nation’s capital to experiment with the concept of using horses on the modern battlefield. Soldiers and horses were in the countryside finding their way through woodland, mud and difficult terrain. Horses, it seems, could be useful in reconnaissance and patrol work in places where conventional military vehicles might flounder. “A mixture of military mounted skills and trying out some new things with the horses in a different role,” is how Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin McNeil, speaking to Tim Cooper, BFBS Forces News, described the exercises.
Camouflage netting was experimented with and horses have, in any case, a stealth factor. “You would think a 60-kilo animal would be quite easy to spot, but funnily enough we were getting 150m to each other before they were spotted,” Lance Corporal of Horse Ben Chapman told BFBS Forces News, referring to an exercise involving creeping up on an opposing team.
A horse in nature is a lot less conspicuous than an armoured vehicle. Their heat signature is small – invaluable in being able to avoid drone detection. “A horse in a forest is a normal context to be in, and that plays to our advantage versus an armoured vehicle, which has a very mechanical profile to it and thermal profile with it, as well as sound.” Lieutenant Colonel Ben McNeil said.
As silence falls tomorrow morning in Britain, horses deserve the people’s thoughts. More than one million horses and mules were deployed by the British Army during the First World War. The army had to source animals overseas because Britain could not supply enough – more than 600,000 horses and mules shipped from North America to support the war being waged in Europe. Equine casualties among Allied forces ran into the hundreds of thousands, with Britain and France alone losing more than 1.6 million horses and mules. Mortality rates were as much due to exhaustion and disease as from direct battle deaths.
There are no definitive plans to put horses into active military operations but the summer exercises showed potential and if nothing else, provided a change of routine for both soldiers and their mounts. “It shows the utility of them,” said Lt Col McNeil. “Whilst we give our soldiers the opportunity to do something different and they really enjoy it and are enthused by it, it could grow into a capability that the British Army could use in the future.”
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