ARMY HORSES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 85, 20 January 1938, Page 10

ARMY HORSES

SOMEi CELEBRATED ANIMALS, The “Army Quarterly” for October contains a paper on celebrated Army horses. The number of those heroes which has come of Arab or Indian stock Is remarkable. We are told of Arth, a white Arab which carried Colonel Mussenden, of the Bth King’s Royal Irish Hussars, through the Great War, and mention of him brings up the unique fact that that regiment, when it arrived in France from India in 1914, was entirely mounted on Arab horses. The men who rode Arabs as troop horses praised them highly as “trusty companions who never failed to do their best.” Quicksilver, Sir- Percy ’Laurie’s grey charger, an Irish horse whose wounds and services in war have won for him wound stripe, medals, and the Order of the Blue Cross, would appear to be the most notable of the horses still surviving. After many vicissitudes in France and Germany he has served with his master in the mounted branch of the Metropolitan Police, appearing in many a ceremonial function and parade, and is now gone with him into retirement.

A remarkable charger, Leopold XII, was first discovered tied to a tinker’s cart at York. Having bought him as a remount, his owner, Captain M. P. Ansell, trained him to be not only a cavalry charger, but a show jumper, hunter, and steeplechase winner. Coalbox, the pony mascot of the 2nd King’s Royal Rifle Corps, was a Germany pony who strayed into the lines of the battalion at La Clyte, in Belgium, in 1914. He served with that battalion till his death in 1921. Ghe of his hoofs is now in the regimental museum at Winchester, where it is hoped it will soon be rejoined by his parade head-collar, medal ribbons, and regimental badge. Of the older horses brought before us, a remarkable one is a Persian troop-horse of just over 14 hands, who served in the 1850’s with the 15th Hussars, and carried with ease in an 800-mile march a gigantic trooper who weighed in marching order over 22 stone. The two, crossing' the broad and dangerous Kistna, scorned the. ferry-boat, and taking to the water in full equipment as they were, landed .safely on the opposite side.