The Importance Of Horses In World War One

Horses were an extremely important part of Great Britain 's fight during World War 1, affecting every aspect of the war. Throughout the war these beasts of burden were in high demand for their necessity for the movement of supplies and men along with their use to carry men into battle .

In the beginning of World War 1 Britain had an insufficient amount of horses, therefore the government knew that they were going to need a large increase in their amount of horses if they were going to have a chance in the war. The British government were willing to do almost anything to get horses, including shipping horses from other lands, while enemies were desperate to discontinue the trade of horses to Britain. When the war began on July 28, 1914 the British

The government began to ship over 1,000 horses out of the United States to Britain everyday. These ships would have to transfer these wild horses over 4,000 miles of North Atlantic sea. This dangerous transfer quickly became a popular target for enemies of the British. These enemies would target there horses in many different ways including demolishing the ship while it was inroute or poisoning the horses before they boarded so that they would die at sea and never make it to their final destination. This struggle for horses even from the beginning of the war shows how important the animals were to the fight in the war. Countries were willing to ship these animals thousands of miles while enemies were willing to spend time and money to target these

In the beginning of World War 1 this form of fighting in which two armies would use their cavalry to charge at one another was very common because of its multiple advantages including that the troops had a greater mobility, a larger impact, and the riders had a higher position. For these reasons this type of fighting was a favorite of many generals, including the British cavalry which in 11918 had over 75,000 horses that were used in charges. However, this type of fighting worked well in the beginning of the war, some may argue that it had become completely useless by the end of the war because of the proliferation of war technology. Although horses were used less often by the end of the war compared to the beginning, it does not change the fact the cavalry battle tactics were still being used until the very end of the war. One example of this attack happened in 2March of 1918 when over 150 horses of the British cavalry charged on German fire. This attack went terrible for the British cavalry with only 4 horses returning from the charge; the rest being shot down by German machine gun fire. Although this shows how the new technology could easy take down hundreds of horse, one also needs to take into consideration the date of the battle. March 1918 was only 8 months before the end of the war, meaning that cavalry charges