The advance to Damascus and Aleppo in September and October 1918 proved with what a small amount of transport cavalry can operate, when local supplies are available. As already explained, during this advance no transport accompanied the divisions, except ammunition wagons and a few motor ambulance cars.
The opportunities for cavalry making a raid such a great distance into enemy country have seldom occurred in the past, and are likely to become even more rare in the future. When they do occur, however, the experience of this campaign points to the conclusion that there can be few countries in which cavalry can operate as such effectively, where they would not be able to dispense almost entirely with transport. The fact that mounted troops can move freely, denotes that the country is not excessively mountainous, and is, therefore (excluding desert land), more or less cultivated, thus providing food for man and horse. It must be remembered that much of the country through which the cavalry passed between the 25th of September and the 28th of October is poorly cultivated, and all of it had been mercilessly laid under requisition by the Turks and Germans for the supply of their armies. Yet it was found possible to secure food and forage for three cavalry divisions, a total of nearly 20,000 men and[Pg 323] a similar number of horses, without extreme difficulty, and without in any way depriving the inhabitants of essential food.
If, however, the country through which it is proposed to advance is incapable of supporting the force, sufficient transport must be taken to carry supplies for such a number of days as may be requisite. The pace of the cavalry will then be, to a great extent, limited by the pace of their transport, and for this reason every effort should be made to increase the mobility of cavalry transport vehicles.
Vehicles.—At the beginning of the 1917 operations the cavalry ammunition columns and supply trains were equipped partly with G.S. and partly with limbered G.S. wagons. During the subsequent operations, both at the beginning, when movement took place over a sandy or dusty plain, and later on, when the whole country was a sea of mud, and vast areas were under water, the G.S. wagons were constantly in trouble. The experience of the whole campaign was overwhelmingly in favour of the L.G.S. wagon. The sole advantage of the G.S. wagon lies in its greater capacity for carrying bulky loads. For this reason it is very suitable for use in barracks or standing camps, where such stuff as hay, straw, etc., have to be carried. As regards weight, however, the L.G.S. wagon holds its own against the G.S. on roads, and is superior in roadless or hilly country. That is to say, the L.G.S. wagon, with two men and four horses, can, in such country, carry more than two-thirds of the load possible for the G.S. wagon, with its three drivers and six horses. Further, the lower centre of gravity, four large wheels and much greater lock angle of the former, enables it to cross country over which the latter cannot move at all. One advantage claimed for the G.S. type is that the wagon body[Pg 324] is supposed to be capable of being used as a pontoon. The writer has tried it as such, in peace time, and his experience has decided him that he would rather swim.
The above remarks are, of course, to be taken as applying to cavalry transport only.
There is one weakness in the L.G.S. wagon which is commended to the notice of the Royal Ordnance Corps. The bolt which fastens the wagon body on to the carriage passes through the axle. Towards the end of the campaign, after several years' hard and continuous work, a number of these axles began to break, and always at the place where the bolt passed through them. It is suggested that, in future manufacture, the fastening might consist of a steel collar over the axle, instead of a bolt through it.
Horses.—The remarks on type, which have been made with regard to the cavalry riding horse, apply with equal force to the cavalry draught horse. Many of our English draught animals were of far too heavy a type, either for horse artillery or for cavalry transport. It is sometimes argued that a proportion of heavy horses is very useful when wagons begin to get stuck in boggy places. But it is not much use having these equine Samsons at all, if they are not available at the time their services are required. And this is what invariably happens. Nothing in the nature of a cart horse can live with cavalry in a march of forty miles, and, in this campaign, there was one of over ninety miles on end, and marches of forty, fifty and sixty miles were comparatively common. If heavy horses are forced to keep up with cavalry over such distances, they very soon give up the unequal fight and die; if they are allowed to go their own pace, they are a day's march in rear[Pg 325] at the end of twenty-four hours, and the transport thus requires an escort of a size that can ill be spared from the fighting forces.
Another advantage of having a lighter-built, better-bred type of horse for transport, is that they then form a reserve for the cavalry. In the artillery it is the rule for riding and draught horses to change places frequently, thus resting both kinds in turn. This custom might profitably be employed occasionally in the cavalry.
The Australians have an admirable type of cavalry draught horse: 15 to 15.2 hands high, short-backed, well-coupled, and showing a good deal of breeding. The disappearance from our English roads first of the coaches and then of the horse-drawn buses, has deprived us almost entirely of our once fine type of light draught horse, and it seems as if we shall, in the future, have to depend more and more on the Dominions for our supply of such horses. There were a certain number of Canadian horses in the Corps transport. They were hard and sound, but of a coarser type, with heavier shoulders and less handy than those from Australia.
Other transport animals.—At different times, camels, mules, and donkeys were used by the cavalry for transport purposes. The first named are, of course, entirely unsuitable, except for work in the desert, but, as we had some 30,000 of them in our possession in 1917, a legacy from Sinai, and there was a shortage of other transport, they were largely used during the 1917 operations. No attempt was made to keep up, or even near, the cavalry on the march, but the camels worked in a system of convoys along defined routes, forming dumps behind the advancing line of cavalry, from which the divisional trains drew supplies. The uselessness and danger of camels in[Pg 326] mountainous country was convincingly demonstrated in the mountains of Jud?a and in the two trans-Jordan raids, and, after the second of these, the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade was disbanded, and the cavalry saw no more of the patient but unl............