"In dreary, doubtful waiting hours
Before the brazen frenzy starts,
The horses show him nobler powers;
O patient eyes, courageous hearts."
Into Battle, Julian Grenfell, 1915
In the days of horsed cavalry, a soldier's mount was a living, breathing
companion. It galloped into the jaws of death at the sound of the bugle
and the nudge of spurs. It carried its rider over arid deserts, across
swollen rivers, up near-sheer mountains. Whole societies functioned
because of the warhorse - the Huns, the Mongols, and the tribes of the
North American plains. Horses were worshipped as gods - the centaurs of
ancient Greece, Tziminchak of the Aztecs, while the Roman emperor
Caligula intended to make his horse a consul!
Most of us have only ever seen warhorses at the movies - the Scots Greys
at Waterloo, the Light Brigade at Balaclava, Taras Bulba's Cossacks on
the Steppes and Custer's cavalry at the Little Big Horn. This book
celebrates the color and nostalgia of a fighting past, from eohippus the
first horse to Sefton, the last warhorse injured in the line of duty.
Not forgetting the stark reality of thousands of animals sacrificed for
men's greed and ambition, those killed on campaign, the maimed
cab-horses and fodder for the knacker's yard.
