FROM HORSE TO HORSEPOWER

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4326, 10 August 1937, Page 2

FROM HORSE TO HORSEPOWER

A famous brigade of Hoyal Arti!lery, the 24th Field Brigade, stationed at Waterloo Barracks, Aldershot, are to lose their horses to-morrow. They will be almost immediately.” Artillerymen shed tears yesterday when their horses were auctioned at Alton, Hants, as a step in the changeover to mechanised units. ...” Irresistibly the mechanisation of the Army marches forward. Every week we read announcements of the sort quoted above —announcements which form the last chapter in the story of the horse as man’s ally in war. The first words of that long and glorious story were written hundreds upon hundreds of years ago, when mounted man was so rare that fabulous tales were told of strange creatures, half-men, half-horses, galloping about like the wind. The Greeks had a word for them, but “ Centaurs ” were no monsters of fable alone, they were probably the Scythians mounted on horseback.

Some authorities declare that chariots and cavalry were used in China in 2600 n.c., but the more generally accepted date for the appearance of mounted warriors is about the year 1060 b.c. Frequent references are made in the Bible to “ chariols and horsemen,” and Josephus states that the army of Israelites that escaped from Egypt numbered 50,000 horsemen and 600 chariots of war. Which is quite long enough ago to make an impressive thought that only in the present century have we found a way of dispensing with horses in warfare.

Having grasped the idea that here was a useful asset in the art of waging war, those early pioneers were by no means sure of "the best way of using their mounts. One of the most popm lar practices was to use horses and a chariot as a comfortable method for a general to arrive at battle, and, still more, as a speedy means of escape afterwards.

It took a Jong time for the notion to sink in that charging horses, linked to a chariot, with an armed man thrown in, were a terrifying force with which to oppose infantry. When this camo to be realised there were some pleasant improvisions devised, such as the chariot with scythes fastened to the spokes said spikes pointing downwards to catch %uy of the enemy who tried to escape h'r throwing themselves underneath.

When chariots were superseded and the horse alone used to get speedily to a battle, there was another interval before it was realised that there was no need to dismount on the field.

The horseman found gradually that, from his superior position, he" could fight far more successfully than the man on foot, and when years more had passed he learned that by “ keeping his seat ” at the gallop and at the same time wielding a spear or sword he could turn himself into a highly efficient projectile weapon. With eacli new development in the art of fighting from horseback the infantry set to work to devise ways of overcoming the new threat, and through the ages there has been a ding-dong struggle for superiority, in which cavalry and infantry has in turn been victorious.

In one department alone, however, cavalry had no equal. Its pre-eminence on outpost and other detached service, whether its men were scouting, raiding, or patrolling, was such that until a quarter of a century ago none dreamed that there could ever be a rival.

Then came tae aeroplane, timorously at first, then used with greater and greater confidence. As the pilots returned with thei? bird’s-eye-view photographs of the enemy’s dispositions, who was there left to say that one must rely on the cavalry for reconnoitring duty ?

Horse was being vanquished by horsepower.

The first words of it were clearly written in the early days of the GreatWar, and soon we may be reading the end of the chapter.

Petrol and heavy oil tractors and caterpillars, lorries, and aeroplanes have combined to banish the horse from the Army of to-day, but its services in the Army of yesterday will remain a pleasant memory of days when even war had something of romance about it, when personal valour counted for more than the skill of rival chemists, and the efficiency of a man depended not upon a sparking plug, but upon his steed. . . .