WOMEN GROOMS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXXI, 22 February 1916, Page 3

WOMEN GROOMS.

LOOKING AFTER THE HORSES. The following delightful article is written, by a worker in q, Women's Remount Depot, "somewhere in England' ':— I am very sorry for the girl who tries to deceive,our "boss" about her knowledge of horses. On your first morning, to arrive in the coldj grey dawn, after rising at the unusual hour 'of six o'clock —to pass through the door into the blackness of the riding school, where sixty horses are tethered in a double line—to look round for someone with authority in the few glaring spots of light that "throw strange monster horse shadows on to the gaunt walls —and then to be told, "Start watering from that end." It is disconcerting enough in any case, as you slip by a pair of possibly tactless heels to where you guess some horse may own a head and a headstall, and then to lead him to the trough, where other dim figures are holding other animals, trampling, snorting, biting, kicking. You are not nervous (absurd idea!), but the effect is weird-, grotesque in the darkness, and, as I said before, I am sorry for the girl who comes as a pretender. OUR BOSS. . But,' then, nobody could deceive our '"boss" unless with pen and ink; never face to face. I would wager that, if losing meant eating our hundred horses one by one, with their snoes thrown ml A wonderful woman she is, with the keenest green eyes in the | world, and straight brows, almost' startlingly black, against her pale face j and soft grey hair. She has a voice so deep and powerful and clear that i .•you shut your eyes and almost say it! is a man's voice, and then you realise' a tender tone in it that no man could have, and you just say to yourself, as I say a hundred times a day, "What an absolute topper she is!" j It would be a pleasure to go on writing about her, but perhaps yuu have said all when you have said "that she can do anything with any horse and j that there is not a girl in the place who does not enjoy obeying her. She is a born commander. And it is so rare an instinct in woman that I doubt if there be one in a thousand who could command such absolute, unwavering confidence. , ' FEARLESS HORSEWOMEN. ! And it is her personality backed up by her knowledge that has made our depot the suecessfiil concern it is. The more j 7ou know of horses, and especially of the raw, rough brutes, many of them thoroughly vicious, which are bound to be among any lot.picked out, at random from the army type of animal, the more wonderful it. seems that we should run them without a man on the premises.- Wonderful. Why, it comes near to being incredible'/ And without her it would be incredible. Some of our girls are fine, fearless' horsewomen, and before we have been here long we are all fairly competent, grooms; but it is she who tackles the' dangerous horse" first, she who is always on the spot in every emergency, and she, too, who organises everything from ordering the tons of hay, oats, bedding, etc., to noticing that our stray cats get a saucer of milk in the harness-room at tea-time. Nothing escapes her vigilant eye nor ever seems to perturb the humor in her face. | With a savage horse she is a marvel, and so calm about it into the bargain. '■ She .tamed one who came to us with the cheerful reputation of having halfkilled six men running till nobody dared go into his box. Only the other day I was absolutely defeated by a black fellow we call the Snorter or the Warhorse. He bit, he kicked, ne struck at me with his forelegs. ... I He seemed as supple as indiarubber,' and those wicked hoofs came crashing round within an inch of me time after time, till "at last I went limping off on one foot and a half to say I couldn't get near him. Well, she came and talked to him'and showed him (only showed him) a little short thick stick, j and he stood like a lamb after the first five seconds. | NO PICNIC. For the remount depot is not a picnic. Now that we have roused the curiosity of a larger public than the small boys who came tumbling out of the cottages and the grinning motorists m passing ears, to whom our string or horses ridden at exercise by ladies on cross saddles was an object of amusement, we are ahvays seeing our-' selves in illustrated papers labelled "Smiling Dianas/ or something equally foolish. 1 If we are Dianas, we get far hotter,' dirtier, and more tired than would be at all dignified in & goddess. Of course it looks, very jolly to see us all going, out for a pleasant ride in the country. "Those girls are having the time of their lives/ people probably say when they see us. So we are. I, Cannot deny it. But I think some of, our friends who last saw us, say, in <i. London ball-room, would realise the' other side of the picture if they could look in one morning at a time when1* they are generally in bed and see the erstwhile fine lady in her riding breeches and shirt, with her sleeves rolled up over her elbows, busily engaged in cleaning a dirty old cartnorse, or a charger back from the front with filthy coat, or raking refuse out of the stalls. Our "boss" has no room for the type of applicant who "loves riding, don't you know, but couldn't' possibly do stable work." LOVE OF THE HORSE. We are doing men's work, as much of it as then could d.o and considerably i more than men would have done in those dim, distant days -before the war had taught most of us to put our backs I into a job of .work and keep them there. I It seems a long, long while since one' strolled out after breakfast in wellcut habit and shiny boots to where our well-mannered hunter awaited us in the yard with a stud groom and a j helper or so in attendance. But every time our back aches under a truss of hay or a sack of oats we are braced up by the. thought that we (and we hail from New Zealand, Ireland, the North Country, as well as England proper) are taking our share in the work that they are doiifg across the sea —there where our hearts are. And in that thought we go on cheerfully as before. For we are a very merry crew, mostly under twenty-five I should imagine, I and we get to love the horses as if they were our own. There is beautiful Venus, the chestnut mare, for whom I always steal a few minutes from my other charges to make her coat glow in the sunlight. And old Pasha, whoj looks like a cross between a camel and ] a clothes-horse, and who knows at! least seventeen methods of either nip-! ping or kicking you, even he has his j genial moments —at the drinking trough, for instance. And Satan, who never goes out except with our roughrider ; it takes several of us to hold him like a rising balloon till she jumps into the saddle, and then away they go in the maddest series of v rushes across the paddock. And Bajby, our young carthorse, who weight's 15cwt or so and comes bounding down the riding school to her morning drink in charge of a wee wisp of a girl you could almost pick up in your hand. Yes, when all is said and done, I suppose it is mainly our love of horses for their own sakes that brings us and keeps us here, although *I shall be late for the evening feed if I write another word." But it is the love of the horse. — S. R. Church, in the Daily Mail.