In the literature evoked by the great war somewhere can be found a tribute to nearly every kind of living thing that worked and died for victory.
The human elements receive the lion’s share-perhaps it was theirs. Horses are portrayed sometimes in romantic colors-cavalry sweeping through a French valley, with flying pennants and drawn swords, perhaps a gun team coming into action in a cloud of dust. But these were isolated cases, thanks to barbed wire and mud. Yet every night on the western front essential things-food, water and ammunition- we’re brought forward along the roads or trails, too soft or dangerous for motor transport, by mules or horses whose work remains untold and unsung. The author had occasion to care for several horses in the British sector which glorified this service through many months of war-such a horse was Joan. Of whom the following story is true.
When I first saw her in ’15 she was already an old soldier-and I a green reinforcement-standing in a muddy, bleak field near the ruined village of Elverdinghe, on the first hard standing she had seen since Aldershot in August, ’14.
She was not the Major’s charger, nor the Quartermaster’s well groomed and overfed hackney, nor even the well-bred dun pony that was daily fed on lumps of sugar for delivering unnecessary dainties and necessary drinks to the officers’ kitchen, but only a typical English shire cart horse which, according to the stable piquet, had “ come through the retreat “ with several other horses in our string.
I remember seeing her little during those first strange weeks in that forward billet, but when we moved back into rest at the end of a long march I saw at the end of the column two steaming horses in an overloaded wagon almost touching the one in front-Joan and her teammate, of course called Darby.
