One of the greatest difficulties with which the cavalry had to contend throughout the operations arose from the constant struggle to keep the horses sufficiently fit to carry on. This is, of course, always the case in war time, but the difficulties in the Syrian campaign were probably greater than in any previous one in which the British Army had taken part.
Climate.—To begin with, the climate encountered included every extreme of heat, cold, drought, and rain. For the first three weeks from the commencement of the 1917 campaign, the weather was extremely hot, the temperature running up to 110° in the shade. For two days, November the 10th and 11th, matters were rendered worse by a burning hot east wind, which raised clouds of suffocating dust. Then the rains broke, and, for the next six weeks, constant wet, deep mud and piercing cold winds were the order of the day. After a short period of good weather, the cavalry moved to the Jordan Valley, where they spent the summer of 1918, under conditions of heat and discomfort which have already been described. Finally, in the following winter, the horses found themselves sometimes standing in six inches of snow.[28]
Condition.—In the second place, the health of the[Pg 312] horses was in an unsatisfactory state when the cavalry operations commenced.
Whatever their outward appearance might have been, and it varied considerably in different units, their internal condition was by no means good. The great bulk of them had taken part in the advance across Sinai, and had been in Egypt for a long time prior to that. Two years of unaccustomed and indifferent forage, added to the large quantities of sand they had consumed in their food while in the desert, had more or less permanently injured their digestive organs. It is true that sand colic, that scourge of the desert, had almost ceased to trouble the force by the end of the summer of 1917, but the dire effects of the sand were evident in every post-mortem. In a large number of cases the membrane of the stomach and intestines was freely marked with the scars of old ulcers, and in some instances large portions of it had sloughed away. Sand muzzles were almost universally employed up to the commencement of the advance on Beersheba, but it was impossible to prevent sand getting into the forage; indeed quantities of it had been purposely placed there by the dishonest native merchants, in order to increase the weight of bales and sacks.
It is probable that 90 per cent. of the draught horses of the artillery and transport had strained their hearts to some extent during the terrible work in the heavy sands of the desert. The writer carried out, or was present at, upwards of twenty post-mortems on draught horses that died during the advance across Sinai, and, in every case, found an enlargement of the heart greater than could possibly be accounted for by the age of the horse. In one instance, the wall of the heart was ruptured right through. This horse had been led four miles back[Pg 313] to camp after first showing signs of extreme distress. On arriving in camp he drank well, ate a bran mash, and lived for six hours afterwards, a wonderful example of endurance.
The experience of the campaign proved that horses cannot be in too 'big' condition at the commencement of operations, provided they have been kept adequately exercised while being conditioned. The really fat, round horses finished both series of operations in better condition than those which had looked harder and more muscular, but not so fat, at the beginning. This was especially the case in the first series, during which the shortage of water was so acute.
Forage.—During both campaigns the forage was of very poor quality and woefully scanty. Up to the commencement of the 1917 operations, the daily issue had consisted of 10 lb. of barley, gram or maize and 10 lb. of tibben (chopped barley straw) and burs?m (a kind of hay made of a coarse species of lucerne, of good feeding value and much liked by the horses). The food value of the whole daily ration was about 23 per cent. below that of an average horse in England doing the same work. The barley and tibben, being produced in Egypt, were very dusty, and contained a large proportion of earth and small stones. The gram and maize were of fair quality, but the latter was sometimes issued whole, and, when issued crushed, was often very dusty. The daily ration during operations in both campaigns was 9? lb. of grain per day, and nothing else. So that the horses were called upon to do very much harder work on less than half the amount of food to which they had been accustomed, and only about 36 per cent. of the normal ration for such horses in England.
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For the first month of the 1917 campaign this ration was exclusively gram. As the horses had previously only been accustomed to a small proportion of this grain in their daily feeds, it caused them to scour badly, thus increasing the weakness engendered by hard work and starvation. It is difficult to understand why gram was decided upon in preference to barley, of which there was plenty available, but, at all events, the lesson was taken to heart, and, for the remainder of the campaign, the marching ration was always barley.
From the 25th September 1918 till the cavalry left the country in November 1919, all forage was bought locally. It was generally of good quality, and there was a certain amount of grazing available.
Water.—The water difficulties during the 1917 operations have been referred to before. Prior to this campaign it was generally accepted that cavalry horses could continue to work for a maximum period of about sixty hours without water, after which it would be necessary to give them some days' rest; Arab ponies were thought to be able to last about ten hours longer. During the Darfur Campaign, Kelly Pasha[29] marched ninety miles in three nights and two days with a mounted infantry regiment equipped with the hardy little mules of Abyssinia. All these estimates were proved to have been erroneous. It has already been pointed out that one battery of the Corps marched and fought for nine consecutive days, during which period its horses were only watered three times,[30] and this was no isolated example. Even when water was obtainable, the difficulty of raising[Pg 315] it from very deep wells, and the pressing need for haste, often resulted in many horses being unable to drink their fill.
During the advance across the Sinai desert a number of experiments had been carried out, both by the Royal Army Veterinary Corps and by the commanders of different units, with a view to ascertaining whether horses would do better, under the existing conditions, with two drinks a day or three. The usual plan was to select a large number of horses of the same type and of about equal condition, and put half of these on two waterings and half on three. The result of these experiments was conclusively in favour of the two drinks a day. Not only did the horses on this régime improve in condition quicker than those which were watered three times, but it was proved by actual measurement that they drank more water in the day. By the time the force arrived at El Arish, watering twice a day was generally accepted as the standard.
Later on, during the period between the second battle of Gaza and the commencement of General Allenby's operations (May to October 1917 inclusive) many of the horses of the cavalry division in the line had so far to go for water that they could only be watered once a day. It is probable that this resulted in some loss of condition, though, as there were other contributory causes, such as the periodical long reconnaissances, the heat, dust and flies, it is not possible to apportion the blame exactly. During operations, so long as the horses got water once a day, they kept fairly fit, and, given anything in the nature of bulk food, such as might be got in many countries by grazing, there seemed no reason why they should not have been able to continue indefinitely on this régime. During the Beersheba-[Pg 316]Jerusalem operations, however, the average number of waterings per horse in the Corps was only one every thirty-six hours.
During the 1918 campaign there was no lack of water, except for the few days during which the 4th Cavalry Division was advancing on Damascus east of the Jordan. At all other times, water was always available for horses at least once a day.
When marching in waterless country, the writer used to have a large biscuit tin full of water (or, better still, a petrol tin, when it could be 'acquired') carried on the dash-board of every gun and wagon. At each hourly halt the horses' mouths, nostrils, and eyes used to be wiped with a wet—not merely damp—cloth, and this always seemed to refresh them greatly, and to relieve the symptoms of distress due to thirst. A little water was also mixed with the feeds, and, when the grain was crushed, or there was any bran available, it was found that horses which were off their feed owing to exhaustion would often eat well if fed by hand with small balls made of grain slightly moistened with water. This plan was suggested to the writer by the late Brigadier-General Paul Kenna, V.C., 21st Lancers, who had used it successfully in the Sudan Campaign.
Much has been said and written about the ability of horses to scent water afar off. The experience of ............