HOW CAVALRY HORSES BEHAVE IN WAR.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue IX, 27 August 1898, Page 264

HOW CAVALRY HORSES BEHAVE IN WAR.

A veteran cavalry horse partakes of the hopes and fears of battle just the same us his rider. As the column

swing’s into line and waits, the horse grows nervous over the waiting. If the wait is spun out he will tremble and sweat and grow apprehensive. If he has been six months in service he knows every bugle call. As the call conies to advance, the rider can feel him working at the bit with his tongue to get it between his teeth. As he moves out lie will either seek to get on faster than he should or bolt, lie cannot bolt, however. The lines will carry him forward, and after a minute he will grip the bit, lay back his ears, and one can feel his sudden resolve to brave the worst and have done with it as soon as possible. When the troopers begin to cheer and the sabres to flash the horse responds. An exultation fills his heart, he will often scream out, and his eyes blaze and are fixed steadily in front. No matter how obstinate he was at the start, he will not fail as the lines

carry the last fifty feet of space. If a volley comes and he is unhurt he will lower his head, and then take a sudden breath for the crash. If charging infantry he will thunder straight at a man and knock him down; if against a line of horsemen he will lift his head and front feet as if going over a fence.

A nmn seldom cries out when hit in the turmoil of battle. It is the same with a horse. Five troopers out of six. when struck by a bullet, are out of their saddles within a minute. If hit in the breast or shoulder, up go their hands and they get a heavy fall; if in the leg or foot or arm, they fall forward and roll off. Even with a f<x>t cut off by a jagged piece of shell a horse will not drop. It is only when shot through the head or heart that he comes down. He may be fatally wounded, but he hobbles out of the tight to right or left, and stands with drooping head until loss of blood brings him down. The horse that loses his rider and is unwounded himself will continue to run with his set of fours until some movement throws him out. Then he goes galloping here and there, neighing with fear and alarm, but he will not leave the field. In his racing

about he may get among the dead and wounded, but he will dodge them if possible, and in any case leap over them. When he has come upon three or four other riderless steeds they ■fall in’ and keep together, as if for mutual protection, and the ‘rally* on the bugle may bring the whole of them into the ranks in a body. A horse which has passed through a battle unwounded is fretful, sulky, and nervous —the same as a man—for the next three or four days. His first battle is also the making or unmaking of him as a war horse. If the nervous tension has been too great he will become a bolter in the face of danger, and thereby become a danger in himself. If the test has not been beyond him, he will go into the next fight with head held high and flecks of foam blowing from his mouth as he thunders over the earth.