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warhorse
I have no understanding why I love
horses. I never had one and I was so few times in a setting to pet
one. I just love horses. Maybe it’s because I’m, like so many
people, cut off big animals and bound for dogs and cats. Maybe it’s
because horse is so beautiful and elegant being, smart and gentle.
Maybe it’s because I feel a burden of the injustice done by humans
to that exuberant animal.
In
the war drama film War Horse, directed by Steven Spielberg
(2011), proudly emotional drama that tugs the heartstrings of not
only horse lovers, pays a long due tribute to the warhorse. And, if
you were not touched by the Spielberg’s lyrics, read the gruesome
data below (just a selection of data on horses employed in cavalry
and armor & supplies transport, artillery in particular; most of
them died of overwork, disease or malnutrition):
The
Civil War is not normally called a horse’s war, but it most
certainly was: cavalry and artillery horses, draft and pack horses
and mules, approximately one million on the Union side alone. During
the Boer war of 1899-1902, the British army lost 347 thousand out of
the 518 thousand that took part; only a tiny fraction, no more than
2%, were lost in battle. In the Word War I, the German army mobi-
lized 715 thousand horses and the Austrians 600 thousand; more than
375 thousand were taken from German-occupied French territory and
captured Ukrainian territory provided another 140 thousand. Between
1914 and 1918, the US sent almost one million horses overseas, and
another 182 thousand were taken overseas with American troops; this
deployment seriously depleted the country's equine population - only
200 returned to the US. During some periods of the war, one thousand
horses per day were arriving in Europe as remounts for British
troops, to replace horses lost. The |
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greatest use of horses in
any military conflict in history was by the Germans in WWII: despite all
the propaganda about Blitzkrieg and German war machines, 80% of their
entire transport was equestrian. German Army entered World War II with 514
thousand horses and over the course of the war employed, in total, 2.75
million horses and mules (as opposed to 1.4 million in World War I); the
fighting force involved an average of 1.1 million horses throughout the
war. Most died in service, as did the majority of the 3.5 million horses
mobilized by the Red Army between 1941 and 1945.
The
horse abuse as a warhorse dates back through several millennia of history.
Many decisive battle moves were executed by cavalry and chariots. Nomadic
peoples from Asia, horse people in true sense, almost completely overran
Europe as riders-warriors. There is a hypothesis that they did not sustain
a stronghold in Europe because grasslands of central Europe could not
support their horse herds. Each Mongol warrior would enter a campaign with
up to ten horses - most of them were worn out and abandoned during the
campaign. Below is an art tribute to warhorse, a commercial version of the
mosaic perceiving the battle at Issus (333 BC) by IVENZO Marble
Mosaic Tiles and Borders; rollover to see the two details of the Roman
floor mosaic originally from the House of the Faun in Pompeii.
NOTE:
The above numbers are from A History of Warfare by John Keegan
(1993).
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