War Diaries Talk

Horses

  • cotula by cotula

    The needs and condition of the horses would have considerable impact on the men. When supplies were drawn for a unit using horses, a large part of the bulk would be for the horses. When the horses were suffering, whether from the conditions, tiredness, etc., it affected the morale of the men. A great deal of the men's time was taken caring for the horses, the more difficult the conditions, the more time it took them and the less rest the men and horses got too.
    I cannot be alone in being disappointed that we are not tagging important aspects of the use of horses in the war.

    Posted

  • peterr1006 by peterr1006

    I have to agree with the last sentence above. I am classifying the Diary of a Mobile Veterinary Section (possibly a private diary though this is not clearly the case) and there a number of aspects of their war for which no provision is made to identify the activities Although it is known that horses were sold to slaughterhouses towards the end of the war I was not aware that payments were being made and received in the early stages of the war. However, I have come across the following comments in the Diary I am currently classifying from August 1914:-
    "Handed over 100 frcs the price of one dead horse - 3rd Division Ammunition Column."
    Later, on the same page, "Received 1050 frcs from Captain Lake for 7 horses destroyed."
    Finally, "Paid to Major Arnold - Base Paymaster 1050 francs for 8 horses destroyed."

    Posted

  • Poodle by Poodle

    I've also tagged a Mobile Veterinary Section and wished I could have added more about the horses. It was very hard to read about the poor horses, especially their fate towards the end of the war and afterwards. I am now tagging the 19th Hussars which my great uncle served with, until he was badly injured in 1918. There are more references to horse casualties than ORs being killed or wounded. The men obviously cared greatly for their horses. I know more about their rations, than the men's food. I've read how they spent ages building shelters for the horses. It's been upsetting to read about the distress of horses during battle. I am getting near to tagging the charge they made in October 1918 - where the CO led them, and "fell while gallantly charging some German machine guns". Well, what can you say to that?

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    The issue of having tags for horses got raised at a Project meeting yesterday and for now it won't be implemented.

    The answer was that we need to remember what the remit of the Project really is. It is not a transcription project and it can't cover everything. The three main aims are listed here http://www.operationwardiary.org/#/about under "Project Outcomes". Right now, no-one on the Academic team is convinced of the need to include detailed information about horses.

    What I would suggest:

    Continue to hashtag horses if you wish, although to be honest the word is so common in the diaries that I'm not sure it's useful to do this on its own any longer.

    If you have some information on horses that you feel is interesting, worth preserving and/or makes the argument for having tags for horses then tell us about it and link to the page it is on. Add any such details to this thread and see if YOU can convince the research team!

    (how to link to the page if you don't know. Once you have finished tagging the page, go to the "Profile" link at the top of your diary classification page and scroll down to "Recent Pages". Click on the one you want and when it opens, copy the link from the top browser bar and paste it here)

    Let's see what we can find?

    Heather

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    It's also worth noting that while the research team might not be interested in horses themselves, that doesn't mean you can't be! Other Zooniverse projects have enjoyed great success when volunteers began following their own research interests as well as those of the academic team. As Heather rightly says, hashtagging everything with a very general term like #horses is unlikely to be useful, due to the sheer number of times horses are mentioned. But if you find yourself interested in particular aspects of the use of horses on the Western Front, why not discuss it with your fellow volunteers here and agree a series of hashtags to use that will allow you to follow your own research interests when the data being generated becomes available? Coordination is key with this sort of thing, so don't be afraid to put your hashtag suggestions up here!

    Posted

  • cotula by cotula

    Having tried to research the purchasing/requisitioning of horses in a specific area, and find out more about what happened to them with the EEF, I understand the approach here. Much of the record (correctly for the time and purpose) treats horses as 'equipment', so there is little detail in most Unit diaries.
    I agree, just tagging #horses is unlikely to be helpful, but I need to think about what tags to suggest. Those things which had an impact on the men and the fighting of the war have to be the area we should focus on, e.g. problems with unsuitable equipment, lack of water and feed, numbers out of action through sickness or injury.

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    One of the things I had not realised until tagging these diaries was just how many horses were involved and just what huge logistical problems this must have presented in trying to keep them fed and watered. Those of you who are hashtagging horses still, how about posting here some links to examples of the daily struggle to keep the horses in good condition.

    I spotted this one http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/subjects/AWD000118o tagged by @suesb which states that a Divisional Ammunition Column sent 1000 of its horses back from the line due to water difficulties. 1000 horses!! I had to look at the page to be sure it was correct!

    Anyone got any more?

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    Those of you in the West of England might have seen the programme last night on the Army's WW1 remount centre in Shirehampton. I found it very interesting and the sheer scale of what they were doing was most impressive. They had about 7000 horses at this place at its peak and they were bringing about 1000 horses a week from the US on ships - I had no idea such a thing had been done. For those who haven't seen the programme it's here for the next 6 days http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b045gjql (sorry if those outside the UK can't open the video - I'm not sure if it's UK only for BBC video links)

    Anyone got any good horse-related snippets from diaries yet?

    Posted

  • David_Underdown by David_Underdown moderator

    I believe the total tonnage of feed and forage shipped to France exceeded that of ammunition over the coruse of the war.

    Posted

  • cotula by cotula

    Some suggestions for tags: #horsesfit/well #horsestired/exhausted
    Also, important for horses, but more generally important for effect on fighting: #roadsgood #roadsbad #no/badwater

    How I wish I could go back and add these tags!

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Great suggestions, @cotula. Although it's frustrating not to be able to go back and add these tags, we at least have the vast majority of the work still ahead of us, so we should be able to use them very effectively as we get more and more diaries released.

    One quick thought: the addition of the slash invalidates the section of the tag appearing after it, so we'll need to come up with a form that avoids that. I'm doing some clearing out of the forum at the moment, and hope to reorganise things a little too, pending more substantive changes by zooniverse. Hopefully then it'll be easier to get a more comprehensive and easy to find list of hashtags.

    Posted

  • Jan_Greenslade by Jan_Greenslade

    Pack pony and cart brings rations, saving much time, loss of men/weapons to do same.

    Image AWD00014bd

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    What about having a look at some of the ailments the horses came down with? Here's a mobile veterinary section diary page which describes ringbone - yes I had to look that one up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringbone , lameness, sprained ligament, sore back and "debility" which I assume means the horse was so worn out it couldn't go on.

    Page is here http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/subjects/AWD0000wyf

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/subjects/AWD0000wts Horses tested with Mallein - had to be destroyed. The Mallein test is an allergic hypersensitivity test to determine if the animals had the infectious bacterial disease glanders. If they show swollen and puffy eyes then they had it and presumably the only option was to destroy them?

    Seem to be a lot of admissions to the MVS for "debility" again and also quite a lot with lameness, sprained tendons and so on. There are some with actual wounds but so far it seems to me that horses that had been just generally worn out and over-worked, considerably outnumber those actually injured. Anyone doing a MVS diary like to comment?

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    That's certainly what I'm finding with the 8th MVS. Most horses are shot because they've gone lame or simply got worn out on the road.

    Posted

  • SarahPowell by SarahPowell

    From what I've seen of the 7th MVS so far, I would agree that most horses are picked up because they are injured or exhausted from overwork, not because of actual combat wounds. It really is amazing to become aware of the sheer scale of the use of horses in WW1, both in combat and as work/transport animals. I started tagging conditions that I thought might be more unusual, but of course some of these (e.g. laminitis, strangles and especially debility) have turned out to be pretty common. I haven't been tagging descriptions such as 'lame' or 'sprain', though, so I haven't been particularly consistent. Maybe some kind of tag to distinguish between combat and non-combat injury would be useful, although it might not always be easy for a non-specialist to decide which was which. I will have a think about this as I carry on with 7th MVS.

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    I think one thing this has shown is that the MVS diaries are very detailed in their description of what was wrong with each horse and in some cases what they tried to do about it. Maybe we can start to list some of the treatments here too though I suspect for some the only treatment was rest and time. Certainly any researcher wanting to finds out about horse ailments simply needs to go through an MVS diary!

    As well as the MVS diaries for each Division it seems there was a HQ diary for the Director or Assistant Director of Veterinary Services for the Division too, so it will be interesting to see what further detail they might have.

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    We really must get a hastag list set up around this - I'm sure it's going to be a really useful resource for people with an interest in this area. Hopefully the proposed changes to Talk will make it easier to set up and maintain.

    Posted

  • cotula by cotula

    How do we get a hashtag list started, ral104?
    Modification of previous suggestions, to take out / symbol:
    #horsescondition - to cover remarks such as fit and well, very tired, exhausted
    #roadscondition - good, bad, stony, deep mud etc
    #watersupply - none, good, bad water [even if we are not seeing this much now, it is very likely to come up elsewhere/other times, and is important for horse and man]

    It is going to be difficult for us as non-experts to tag specific reasons why horses need treatment, without researching each one. Add to that, I have not seen much that is very specific yet. How would we hashtag in cases I have seen, where they simply state 'horse shot'? Or another case, where a horse was shot because of a fractured hock - with no indication how the injury was caused? Would it be possible to get a list of the infectious diseases horses in WW1 were known to have suffered from, so we could have #horseinfection?

    Posted

  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist in response to cotula's comment.

    For now, I've been listing new hashtags in the Objects section of the Help Board, here: http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/boards/BWD0000009

    Once we have the talk pages better organised, I hope we'll have a more obvious home for them! But I'll start some new threads there now covering the tags you suggest, so at least we can make a start on using them.

    Unfortunately, I also know next to nothing about equine diseases and so on, but I'll see if I can find any sources of info. Perhaps there are other volunteers here who might also have experience in that area?

    Posted