He represents the ideal of the war horse: frugal to an amazing degree, he lives contented with a handful of oats or barley, and when no other fodder is available, he will munch on the thatch of the peasant huts. He sleeps in mud and snow and the next day will put in the longest march with no complaint. Slower than the thoroughbred, he surpasses him in endurance and hardiness . . . and what a charming animal (15–16 hands) with his lean body, expressive head and intelligent eyes. He loves his master and will follow him like a dog. When his master rides another, he sulks and shows his jealousy. Grateful, he responds to each caress and falls in with the mood of his owner. In combat he takes part with unrestrained rage: mane flowing, with bloodshot nostrils, he kicks and bites the enemy’s horses with the greatest furor. No one in our European world can imagine the Cossack’s attachment to his horse: how often have I witnessed hardened warriors crying like children when their horses fell to enemy bullets!25
The communists carefully nurtured the Don horse associated with the Russian cavalry and the Cossacks after the 1917 revolution in order to staff the regiments of the Red Cavalry of the Soviet Union. They evacuated the breed east of the Ural Mountains during World War II to protect it from the German invasion, and it is still an important riding breed in Russia today.
The Cossacks of the Caucasus, the Kuban, and the Terek hosts, rode horses of the Kabarda and Karabakh breeds. The two breeds are closely related. The Kabarda is common in the north Caucasus Mountains of modern Russia. The breed numbers today are very small. The Karabakh is the national horse of Azerbaijan. Both breeds are small high-quality mountain horses, in the 14 hands range, with a strong Arabian influence. They made excellent cavalry horses, but because pasture was not plentiful in the Caucasus Mountains there was always a problem finding enough of them to mount the Cossack regiments. Cossacks of the east (Ural, Orenbourg, Ussuri, Siberian, Seven Rivers, Amur, and Trans-Baikal) rode smaller and more primitive horses. In the extreme east the Trans-Baikal Cossacks rode the Mongolian horse that hadn’t changed since the time of Genghis Khan.26
The Don and Siberian horses were not exclusive to Cossack regiments; the regiments of the regular cavalry rode them as well. War correspondent Stanley Washburn reported on Russian horses in general and the horses of a regular cavalry lancer regiment in particular during the summer of 1915:
I have never seen mounts in finer condition, and I believe there is no army on any of the fronts where this is more typical than in the Russian. On this trip I have been in at least fifteen or twenty cavalry units, and, with one exception, I have not seen anywhere horses in bad shape; the exception had been working overtime for months without chance to rest or replace their mounts. . . . I had a good chance to note the condition of both men and mounts, which were excellent. The latter were Siberian ponies, which make, I think, about the best possible horses for war that one can find. They are tough, strong, live on almost anything, and can stand almost any extremes of cold or heat without being a bit the worse for it. These troops have had, I suppose, as hard work as any cavalry in the Russian Army, yet the ponies were as fat as butter and looked as contented as kittens. The Russians everywhere I have seen them are devoted to their horses.27
The steppe and mountain breeds of the Russian cavalry had direct connections to the horses which the best of the steppe horseman rode for centuries. In World War I they demonstrated that the steppe horses remained war horses of the first order.
The Australians were another force well mounted on horses which were unfamiliar to most European armies. The horse of the Australian light horsemen was the New South Wales horse, or “waler” for short. The waler was descended from the original horses brought to the Australian New South Wales colony from the Cape colony with the first fleet in 1788. Over the first half century of the colony various breeds were combined with the original Cape horses to meet the saddle horse requirements of the colony where primitive conditions and long distances demanded a strong horse, able to subsist simply, and capable of sustained work. Breeding for these characteristics produced the waler type horse. The quality of the horse’s military attributes attracted the attention of British remount officers, who began purchasing walers in the 1840s for British cavalry units in India. A steady remount trade developed which confirmed and encouraged the characteristics of the waler. During the Boer War, the waler type became the standard of Australia’s own mounted forces.
During World War I, Australia exported over 160,000 walers to serve with the Australian Imperial Forces and 19 other nations. The appearance of walers in World War I reflected their diverse origin. The Australian official history of the war described the not-always-attractive Australian horses in the Middle East and why they made excellent cavalry mounts:
The horses of a light horse regiment were not uniform. They included every kind of animal; large sturdy ponies, crossbreds from draught Clydesdale mares, three-quarter thoroughbreds, and many qualified for the racing stud-books. As a consequence of such mixed breeding, they frequently offended the horse-lovers eye by their faulty parts. But one quality they all possessed which made them superior to the horses from other lands: they were all, or nearly all, got by thoroughbred sires. This quality, reflected throughout in their spirit and their stamina, was their distinguishing characteristic. During sustained operations, on very short rations of pure grain and no water over periods which extended up to seventy hours—when horses of baser breeds lost their courage and then their strength—the waler, though famished and wasted, continued alert and brave and dependable. The vital spark of the thoroughbred never failed to respond. As long as these horses had strength to stand they carried their great twenty-stone loads jauntily and proudly.28
Lieutenant Colonel R. M. P. Preston, British cavalryman, described the performance of the walers in the history, The Desert Mounted Corps. Preston concluded that “there is no doubt that these hardy Australian horses make the finest cavalry mounts in the world.” The walers had a special relationship with their riders. The light horsemen took a national pride in the quality of their mounts and developed strong bonds with them. Many of the mounts were the personal horses of the troopers, sold to the government upon enlistment, and then reissued to the trooper. Few other combatants in World War I were as isolated from their homeland as were the Australians. Many of the men were gone from Australia for four years.29 This isolation brought the troopers even closer to the walers who represented a link to home.
The story of the Australian walers had a chilling ending. In February 1919, as the Australian forces were preparing to sail for home, the order was given to destroy all horses over eight years old. The expense of shipping and the extensive quarantine requirements necessary to prevent any exotic diseases entering Australia prompted the order. Worse, the command ordered the younger animals sold on the open market in Egypt. The thought of selling the younger horses for local use caused a near riot within the Australian regiments. The troopers preferred to give their mounts a quick and humane death rather than condemn them to a life likely full of pain and abuse which the troopers knew to be typical of working horses in Egypt.
Eventually, the Australian command changed the order so that the best mounts went to the British cavalry remount detachments set up to support British forces in the Middle East. To honor their remaining mounts the Australian Mounted Division held a final race day. Then, the bulk of the horses were led out to the olive groves outside Tripoli where they were fed a last bag of grain before special squads of marksmen put them down.30
Horsemanship
Horse equipment changed little during World War I. The standard army saddles developed in America, Britain, and Germany in the nineteenth century proved to be functional and offered little room for improvement in the twentieth century. Russian army tack resembled standard European models with the exception of the Cossack units. The Cossack riding gear, as did many aspects of Cossack service, continued to adhere to the traditions established on the steppe. Thus, the Cossacks rode in a traditional Cossack saddle rather than
a government issue one. Captain Tikhotsky of the 1st Kuban Cossacks described the saddle and the horsemanship of his men: “The Cossacks rode on their own kind of saddle consisting of a light wooden frame covered by a soft leather pillow. At the trot, canter and gallop the riders stood in the stirrups, bodies leaning forward—the seat similar to the modern form of equitation called the Forward Seat.”31
The Russian regular cavalry rode in the traditional European style and were equipped comparable to their European counterparts. However, during the second year of the war they dramatically departed from a thousand years of military riding tradition. In 1915, the Russian cavalry abandoned the curb bit, and after that point all Russian cavalry rode only in the snaffle bit. Captain Littauer stated that the “experiences of war proved them [the curb bit] to be not only unnecessary but even a handi-cap in cross-country riding, and they were sent to our wagon transport. From then on we rode on snaffles.”32 The Russian cavalry did not experience any great impact in changing the horse bit since their own Cossacks had always only ridden with just the snaffle. The snaffle remained the Soviet cavalry standard bit through World War II.
The institutionalized training systems of Europe’s cavalry produced uniformly competent horsemen. Most of the cavalry of the period trained in the manège tradition. The various approved cavalry seats varied only in the details. The military stirrup was not as long as it had been in midcentury—causing a moderate and natural bend at the knee. “[The] flat of the thighs and inside of the knees lightly pressed against the saddle, legs from the knees downward slightly behind the perpendicular, toes a natural angle, heels forced downwards and pressure of the stirrup iron on the sole of the boot.” The position of leg was slightly forward of the hips.33
Though the manège form, including a long stirrup, was still the predominant accepted riding style among the cavalry forces of World War I, things began to change just before the war started. One of the most important innovations in horsemanship since Xenophon came about just before World War I and influenced all military riding during the interwar years and continues to be the largest influence on sport riding into the twenty-first century. This was the advent of the forward seat. In its early days it was often referred to as the Caprilli or Italian seat, after its inventor, Italian cavalry Captain Federico Caprilli, an instructor at the cavalry school at Pinerolo, from 1903 to 1907. Caprilli developed the forward seat while scientifically improving the ability of cavalry horses to go cross-country and over obstacles. His conclusions and methods rocked the horse world because they were the opposite of the “scientific” methods taught by the classic riders for hundreds of years.
A horse’s center of gravity at the halt is a vertical line through its withers, while the rider’s center of gravity is through his body sitting in the saddle behind the withers. Much of riding theory is concerned with bringing these two different centers of gravity into harmony, permitting the horse to be balanced while carrying a rider. Classical riding’s solution to the problem of the different centers of gravity was to keep the centers of gravity as close as possible by bringing the horse into balance as he moved. As discussed previously, this was termed collection. A horse’s natural movement put the center gravity even further forward of the withers as he picked up speed and his head and body extended. Classical riding tried to control this by collecting the horse—bringing the horse’s head back using the bit, and by bring the horse’s hind legs under him. Thus, as the horse picked up speed the rider helped the horse maintain his balance by keeping it collected, thus keeping his and his rider’s centers of gravity as close together as possible.
Caprilli recognized the problem exactly as the classical riders did but completely rejected their solution. Caprilli believed that the way to balance the horse was not to collect the horse by bringing the horse to the position of the rider, but rather, to move the rider to the horse’s center of gravity. This required shifting the rider forward, closer to the horse’s withers, and, at high speed, out over the horse’s neck. At slow gaits, merely shortening the stirrup and moving the ankle position back under the hip had the effect of slightly inclining the upper body of the rider forward over the withers. As speed increased, the rider extended the reins and allowed the horse’s head to naturally extend. The rider did not lengthen the reins, instead the reins were extended by moving the hands forward causing the rider’s upper body to lean further out over the horse’s withers, and raising the rider’s rear out of the saddle. The rider then balanced himself through his legs pressing down into the stirrups. Caprilli reasoned that by allowing the horse to run naturally cross-country, allowing him to use his neck to balance, the horse was less likely to stumble and could more easily negotiate obstacles.
Though a relatively simple system, the new technique was strongly opposed by traditionalists, including the prestigious French cavalry school at Saumur. However, as Caprilli enthusiasts easily dominated the international horseshow competitions, the new riding style began to attract serious attention. The British and Italian cavalry embraced the system prior to World War I, with corresponding improvements in the quality of troop riding. A large portion of the Russian army was already using the Caprilli system but didn’t realize it. The Caprilli riding method was largely a scientific explanation of the short stirrup style of the Middle Eastern and Asian horsemen of the steppe. The Cossacks were already, unknowingly, using the system. After the war its merits for jumping horses and for cross-country riding received almost universal acceptance. Most postwar cavalry forces adopted the forward seat, after modifying it for their own situations, while still retaining elements of classical riding form and technique. This occurred in the United States, where the American cavalry’s most outstanding horseman of the 1920s and 30s, Colonel Harry D. Chamberlin, toned down the Italian’s extremely forward position of the rider, to a more secure but still forward position known in the United States as the balanced or military seat.34
In many of the World War I cavalry formations horsemanship was not only good but was exceptional. The Russian Cossacks, despite a very unorthodox style, were exceptional horsemen and capable of extraordinary gymnastic feats while riding at a full gallop. Cossacks wore no spurs. A short whip, called a nagaika, typically stuffed in the boot when not used, aided control of the horse. The Russian army made no attempt to train the Cossacks to ride in a European cavalry manner. The army also did not attempt to interfere with Cossack horse training.35
The Russians were not the only cavalry who incorporated natural horsemen into their forces. The Australian light horsemen were also, for the most part, exceptional horsemen who the army made little attempt to train. They were “not mere riders of educated horses, but men who had from their school-days undertaken, as a matter of honor and pride or of necessity, the breaking and backing of bush-bred colts and the riding of any horse that came their way. Their horsemanship came next to, if not sometimes before, their religion.”36 The quality of the light horse regiments was largely due to channeling the talent of the troopers rather than disciplining them to the army’s ways.
Horse Mastership
Horse mastership in most of the armies was well developed. Again, this was a product of the increasingly professional and scientific approach to horse care evident in all of the armies, and the influence of formal cavalry schools. Veterinary services in all the army’s were much more robust and capable. The British cavalry had taken the lessons of the Boer War to heart, and horse care became the foundation of the British cavalryman’s duties. The travesties of the Boer War were not repeated. The French were an exception and continued to exhibit some of the same bad habits that had been characteristic of French cavalry since the Napoleonic period. French cavalry continued to considered dismounting an undignified act for a cavalryman. The French were astounded to see columns of British cavalry walking their horses. British observers commented on French cavalry who remained mounted even when halted for hours. “At times, they [the French cavalry] remained weeks without unsaddling. The
y had difficulty in watering their horses as often as was necessary. No later than the last of October [1914], the best commands had lost 2/3 of their horses, of which half were lost from overriding.” Simple horse care habits such as feeding and watering during breaks, or loosening a girth, were not emphasized in the French cavalry.37 Still, the type of wholesale wastage of horses due to neglect that was common in the Boer War and the American Civil War did not occur in World War I.
Cavalry in Battle: Megiddo and the Palestine Campaign of 1918
Though not representative of the employment of all war horses and riders in World War I, the dramatic success of the Desert Mounted Corps in the Palestine campaign was a demonstration of the potential that existed in mounted units during the war. It was also history’s last decisive use of large mounted formations in battle.38
At the beginning of the war, British strategy in the Middle East was defensive and focused on protecting the Suez Canal. After the failure of the British amphibious operation at Gallipoli, the troops were evacuated to Egypt. This increased troop strength in Egypt gave the British forces sufficient capacity to consider offensive operations to remove the Turkish threat to the canal. The British decided to methodically move their defensive line across the Sinai Desert. Despite Turkish opposition, by January 1917 the British had established a solid defensive line well away from the canal.
With the canal well protected, the British determined that by attacking the enemy’s alliance and knocking out the weakest member, Turkey, Germany’s other allies, Bulgaria and Austria, might also collapse. In support of the new strategy, the British determined to launch an offensive into Palestine in the spring of 1917, with the ultimate campaign goal of knocking Turkey out of the war. In the fall of 1917 the new British commander, General Sir Edmund Allenby, former commander of the BEF cavalry division, and later the British cavalry corps in France, organized an offensive that resulted in the capture of Jerusalem on December 9, 1917. The key to the success of the offensive was a bold mounted effort by the Desert Mounted Corps (DMC), led by the Australian Mounted Division (AMD) and the famous charge at Beersheba by the light horsemen. Requirements in France delayed continued offensive operations, but in September 1918, sufficient troops returned to the Middle East from France for Allenby to again attack.
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