ABSTRACT
In November 1918 the War ended, and with it its insatiable demand for horses. As part of its demobilization, the British Army put into operation a system of casting and disposal so efficient that it was returned to its peacetime strength of around twenty thousand horses in less than nine months. Although horses rarely featured in official memorials to the War’s dead, the British people nevertheless found ways to remember them. As a relatively ‘safe’ topic, veterans talked about their horses, and told stories of their shared adventures and exploits. Veterans wrote about their horses in their memoirs, and shared these memories with their families. Local communities celebrated their veteran war horses, and took great pride in each individual’s exploits and longevity well into the 1930s. However, these positive associations with the soldier’s horse were to come under increasing strain during the inter-war period. In the British Army, the rapid mechanization of its cavalry, artillery, and logistics regiments effectively severed the soldier from the horse for the first time in British military history. In this increasingly horse-illiterate age, the military horse was slipping from sight and mind.
