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CHAPTER 1
Cupid
Concerning the war I say nothing — the only thing that wrings my heart & soul is the thought of the horses. ... I walk round & round this room cursing God for allowing dumb brutes to be tortured — let Him kill his human beings but how CAN HE? Oh, my horses.
— EDWARD ELGAR
The astonishing thing is that in the highly mechanized 1914–18 conflict, whether in Europe or the east, cavalry was even given a role to play. Indeed, British prime minister David Lloyd George would complain in 1934, the year Dorothy Brooke founded her equine charity, of the "ridiculous cavalry obsession" of British officers in the Great War.
In an era of weaponry capable of blasting a unit to heaven from the other side of a valley, cavalry seemed to belong to an earlier age of the rapier and hand-to-hand combat. Geoffrey Brooke's famous charge on Moreuil Wood in 1918 was rather more an anomaly than the norm, and certainly the carnage it caused among men and horses was no recommendation for the use of equines in combat. "Cavalry lost much in popular esteem during the War," wrote Ernest Harold Baynes. "There was no field for cavalry's salient characteristics." Yet those characteristics were to have a use, though not in the European theater where so much of the world's attention was focused. Thanks to these equine soldiers, the Great War "was won for the Allies beyond all question when the whirlwind campaigns in Palestine and Syria turned an enemy flank, and forced Turkey to capitulate," weakening Germany's foothold in the region.
Philosophers fancied the world captured in a dewdrop; poets have seen war's horror and life's hope in a soldier's tear. Even so, the huge, unknowable story of English horses in Egypt during and after the Great War is epitomized in the brief, brave life of Cupid, a bay mare born and bred in the meadows of Essex.
Foaled in 1909, Cupid had been given as a present to Vernon Laurie, fifteen-year-old son of City broker Ranald Laurie, in 1911. Shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in early August 1914, Cupid and three other Laurie horses — Flashlight, Nimrod, and Polly — were joined to "B" Battery 271st Brigade Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA); Ranald was commander of the local Territorial Field Artillery Brigade and was responsible for purchasing horses for it. After training in England, Cupid joined other horses selected for active service in a crowded sailing across the Channel to Le Havre, where they boarded a "filthy, damp and cold" train for St. Omer, then on to Lynde in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region.
There, many of the horses had to be reshod since the glutinous, gluey mud had robbed them of their shoes, as with the boots of their human counterparts. It was here that Cupid, who had been exposed to gunfire in the training camp in England, first got to experience the real thing amid the rain and wind. She spent almost two months in northern France before being sent with Vernon to Marseilles, where she, Flashlight, Nimrod, and Polly boarded the SS Andriana. With them were a contingent of Australian Walers and troops and Bosche, a small yellow dog with a curly tail who had followed Vernon back from a café in Marseilles. They were all bound for Alexandria.
The voyage lasted four days. While the seas were generally calm, there was prolonged rolling that unsettled the horses, already agitated from the stifling heat down in the horse decks. The cramped conditions could be tragic. An officer of the Second Royal Irish Regiment, Maj. Patrick Butler, was to write about one such sailing in which he saw a horse "behaving like a mad thing, [who] threatened to smash his way out of his pen." Because of the close quarters in which all the animals were crammed, it was impracticable to use a bullet on the maddened horse, so the grooms bled him to death. "Poor beast," added Major Butler, thinking of what awaited all the horses, "his troubles were over early." During the sailing, the Lauries' Nimrod, who had failed to eat, weakened and then collapsed. This had already happened with several of the horses. Even though the conditions were crowded, they did not prevent the use of a gun: the "echoing crack from a .45 revolver was heard more than a few times," writes Martin Laurie. Nimrod could not be made to stand, though Vernon and the other men tried for an hour. So a shot rang out; Nimrod's lifeless body was dragged overboard, and Vernon watched the corpse as it floated away in the ship's wake, his face wet with tears.
By February 12, 1915, a month after the Turkish army began its march toward the Suez Canal, and a few days before they were driven back toward Beersheba in the Negev Desert, horses and men had reached port in Egypt and entrained for Cairo, whence they headed for Mena Camp in the shadow of the pyramids at Giza. During their six weeks at Mena Camp, Cupid was ridden around the ancient tombs and learned hard lessons in less interesting novelties, such as the flies and sandstorms that tormented animals and men alike.
Bosche was not permitted in the camp (or was not well concealed enough to remain there). After some searching and asking around it was determined he could be looked after at the Cairo Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) while the regiment was at Mena Camp. Vernon described the SPCA as having in its care hundreds of horses, mules, and donkeys, as well as camels, other dogs, and even a kangaroo that had been brought along as mascot of an Australian regiment. Concern for animals was by no means unique to just a few in the British forces and did not go unnoticed among the locals. Sapper H. P. Bonser wrote of a day visit to Cairo in 1916 during which, while other soldiers visited the red light district, he and a mate fed four starving cats with meat they had bought specially, an act that touched native Cairenes standing nearby. "This caused quite a stir," Bonser remembered. "The men made friendly noises, and a number of them offered sweetmeats." Afterward, he wrote, whenever he and his fellow soldiers were in the neighborhood, the locals remembered their act of kindness, dubbing them "The askaris [soldiers] who fed pussini."
Cupid would spend April to July 1916 in the machinery-clogging sands near El Shatt (Mina'ash Shatt), later the site of an infamous World War II refugee camp, where the Suez Canal is linked to the Gulf of Suez. Despite the oppressive heat, she and the other mounts were well watered. This was thanks to the camels. Throughout the desert sorties, these animals steadily carried water and food for the horses — indeed, without them, "General Allenby himself admits that he could not have hoped either to take Beersheba or to press through Palestine after its capture." On a reconnaissance mission in the desert, Cupid just missed the fate of ten horses and thirty-two camels unlucky enough to be with them. While they were gathered in one area being watered, a pair of German planes appeared without warning, spraying bullets over the terrified animals tethered to their watering troughs. A soldier was killed as well, but Cupid lived.
Six months later, the brigade marched from El Shatt north to Moascar near Ismailia and on to Kantara (El-Qantarah el-Sharqiyya) and El Gilban (Sheikh Abu Gilban), and then in February 1917 they began their trek along the ancient caravan route into Palestine. Their menagerie now included not just Bosche but also a goose named Lordy, a friendly bird whom the men could not leave behind or even imagine wanting to eat, though few were not hungry. Lordy traveled on horseback or on mechanized transport and was fed bread scraps. No one, writes Martin Laurie, would ever have considered eating him. Nor did Bosche have to worry about keeping up; he hitched a ride with the ammunition column, "lying in the sun on top of one of the wagons and being spoilt rotten by the men who drove them."
The Battle of Romani, fought on August 3–5, 1916, had proved to be a decisive step forward in both the defense of the Suez Canal and the decision taken afterward to send British forces deeper into Ottoman Palestine. Australians commanded by Gen. Harry Chauvel and Turkish forces under German general Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein, supported by the German Air Force, clashed in what Stuart Hadaway describes as "a First World War battle won principally by cavalry, albeit ones who used their horses to gain superior mobility before fighting on foot." The fact that the horses were rarely engaged in direct combat did not keep them out of harm's way: many died from heat exhaustion. It is terribly easy to see why. "The load carried by a Mounted Rifleman's horse in the field is considerable," wrote Lt. A. Briscoe Moore of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles in late 1916. Aside from the rifleman himself and his heavy kit, haversack, food, and all manner of bags, sacks, and supplies for horse and man, each horse carried a weighty bandolier of ammunition around its neck. Under this weight, in torrid heat, with constant shortage of water and seldom enough rest, a given desert campaign horse had more to worry about than shellfire. "Since leaving their quiet homes in south Essex some two and a half years before," writes Martin Laurie, "the horses and men had travelled some 3,800 miles through England, France and North Africa." These were not, he points out, animals whose normal day would have included anything much beyond a hunting excursion, delivering beer or milk, or ploughing a field. Yet as unfamiliar to her as her new war service was, Cupid held up under her duties without apparent difficulty.
Conditions combining sandstorms and lack of water for bathing were barely endurable, even for hardened soldiers. Sapper Bonser described how "it was impossible to see a man twenty yards away" in one of these storms, and how the sand got absolutely everywhere: "all over our perspiring bodies, sand on every mouthful of food we ate, and a sip of tepid water left sand on our lips." Hence the delight of arriving at El Arish on the Mediterranean, a town of largely mud brick dwellings; the outskirts of the town were surrounded by fruit plantations. There, after pitching tents under the date palms, men and horses were able to bathe in fresh, cool saltwater waves. The relief was brief; soon the brigade was on the road again toward the ancient city of Gaza, its white minarets and white walls sharply outlined against the distant Mediterranean Sea. This lovely vision was to be smashed to pieces during the First Battle of Gaza, fought on March 26. Vernon and Cupid could only watch, since the brigade was held in reserve and under cover, but both spent another of their nine lives as enemy fliers took note of their location and directed gunners to start firing toward them. When the brigade itself was called into action, Cupid again made it through safely. The EFF was defeated in this first battle with the Turks, as well as in their second attempt in April. Needing rest, Cupid's brigade was sent to a camp near Deir al Belah ("monastery of the date palm"), a former crusader stronghold southwest of Gaza, trying to survive the heat, the flies, and the lack of adequate water. Hot days, frigid nights, and sand "frequently as deep as their knees and hocks" made every step an ordeal. The third and, for the British, successful Battle of Gaza began on October 27, aided by the Royal Navy's bombardment from the sea, and by November 7 the city was taken from the Turks. Sapper Bonser, riding through later with his cable team, remembered "an untidy dilapidated Gaza from which most men had fled. Here and there a dark face peeped stealthily from a doorway, but, apart from the troops hurrying through, it was a place of desolation."
Taking the city had been excruciating for everyone. "Our horses are rather pulled down by excessive work," Vernon wrote on November 12. The animals were tasked with carrying ammunition, work that was hard on the horses in the humid heat. In what remained of the year, Martin Laurie writes, "There was very little rest for either man or beast" in the quest to pursue and capture the Turkish army. As the brigade prepared attack for Mulebbis (Peta Tikvah, an Orthodox Jewish religious settlement dating from the nineteenth century) on December 26, Vernon's father wrote of a landscape soggy as a wet sponge, entirely lacking in roads, in which one lost all sense of direction and where, in the vacant sparseness, it was easy to look at the fact that men and animals were reduced to half their rations and wonder whether they would end up with nothing to eat at all in a countryside denuded by Turkish forces. Yet by January, the constant rains had abated and conditions improved to the point where the horses could be allowed to graze on fresh grass. "What a relief the green was, from the glare of the sand, and how greedily the horses cropped the sweet grass and young corn," wrote one soldier. The Lauries wrote of witnessing friendly interaction between brigade members and people in one of the villages close by their camp. Commanders gave permission for horses from the brigade to be lent by day to farmers for their spring ploughing, the Turkish Army having taken all the villagers' able-bodied animals. Army veterinarians did what they could for the animals, whose hooves had never been trimmed, whose unhealed pack sores from poorly fitting harnesses were never treated. Some of the men could not bear seeing these donkeys being overloaded, whipped and otherwise abused. Sapper Bonser related how one of his unit, a young soldier from Sheffield, described as "a rough handful," actively intervened when he saw Syrians goading their donkeys with sharp packing needles. On one occasion this soldier tussled with a Maronite priest who was about to jab his donkey with a needle. Taking the priest's clenched fist, he drove the needle into the man's own hand, prompting him to topple with a scream off the back of the donkey. "Our young driver walked off with the needle," Bonser wrote; it has to be wondered, however, whether this resulted in a needle-free life for the priest's animal.
By March, little Bosche, who had survived so many near disasters and did not even allow the first two battles of Gaza to separate him from his soldiers, had disappeared, as had the goose Lordy, also never seen again. This depressing news was counterbalanced by Ranald Laurie s investiture in Tel Aviv with a medal awarded him for his service during the First Battle of Gaza. The ceremony took place at the Jewish Agricultural College, where the medal was presented by His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught, the popular governor general of Canada and father of Princess "Pat," for whom the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry was named. As Ranald pointed out later, the medal was "subsequently removed and handed back to do duty at another investiture of another Division another day & so on," lending the ceremony an unexpected surreality.
By summer Vernon had been posted to command of the Division Ammunition Column (DAC), and with him Cupid reached Haifa in October and then Acre, en route to Beirut. "This part of the journey was to be very hard on the horses," says Martin Laurie, "and the men; the weather was excessively hot and they were plagued by torrential thunderstorms." Faithful Cupid went wherever her master did, sometimes with him leading her, as Vernon did when, on the way to Sidon, troops had to crawl along paths cut into seaside cliffs, stretches of which were barely wide enough for a single horse. Vernon and Cupid arrived in Beirut on October 31 to find that the Turks had surrendered the previous day. No one knew what was coming next. Germany was still very much in the fight, and it was considered possible that the men and horses who had made it this far into the eastern Mediterranean might have to ship out again for France, where most of them had started almost four years earlier. Beirut was certainly a milestone for Cupid, as Martin Laurie writes. She had been at war for four years, two months and twenty-seven days, and she had obediently and bravely traveled over four thousand miles. Ranald Laurie was disturbed by the condition of the horses after this massive journey, their sides "thin as rakes" from lack of forage and supply. Nonetheless, Cupid and Polly, though in poor shape, served in their turn as Vernon rode back and forth from the docks, accompanying convoys of feed and supplies for animals and men. They were engaged in this daily exhausting shuttle when word came, with the ringing of bells, that Germany had signed the armistice on November 11 and that hostilities were to cease at 11 a.m.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Dorothy Brooke and the Fight to Save Cairo's Lost War Horses"
by .
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