SAD FAREWELLS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22949, 29 January 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

SAD FAREWELLS

By the time these lines are read tho famous First King's Dragoon Guards, newly home in England from India, will have said sad farewells to their noble companions, the horses that have borne them. The Scots Greys, as we remember, have saved their mounts, and soon they, with three other regiments, will be the only cavalry left to the Army, all the remainder having surrendered horses for mechanical traction. As'it is, Army horses have been disappearing at the rate of a thousand a year for ten years, and this year we had, throughout the Empire, only a little over 11,000, assisted by 818 mules, with an Army donkey to carry the military washing at Gibraltar, and an ox to draw the official dustcart in Mauritius. , So another cycle nears completion. Wo began as horsemen warriors, developed as infantry, bred towering war horses weighing a quarter of a ton, abandoned these when gunpowder blew armoured men out of the field, and then built up lighter cavalry, which has lasted until our own age. The latest example 'inet its doom during tho Great War, when cavalry, except in thinly occupied areas, was useless.