Horses carried us to first war as a national force

On Remembrance Day every year we honour the people who died in the service of their country while at war. On many occasions when people went to war they were accompanied by animals, many of which also lost their lives in service to their country. In 2013 the Australian War Animal Memorial Organisation introduced the purple poppy (purplepoppies.com.au), worn to remember the animals that served and died in conflict. In 2019, February 24 was named as the official Animal Remembrance Day but on November 11 many people still honour those thousands of creatures who were wounded or killed in action.

Horses figured very high on the fatality list in some of the earliest wars. During the Second Anglo-boer War, the first war in which Australians came together as a national force rather than separate colonies, the army ran on horses. Australia took 16,314 to South Africa over the course of the war, using them primarily for mobility, rather than cavalry charges against the enemy. About 60 per cent of the horses used by Australian troops died during the conflict, as a result of either being shot or injured during fighting; from exhaustion from being overloaded, overworked or underfed; and some died of disease. A smaller number were killed and eaten during long sieges.

Although we know few of the names of horses from this conflict, they are honoured in a moving memorial to Boer War horses in Port Elizabeth, one of the earliest memorials to animals in war.

By World War I, cars and trucks had mostly taken the place of horses, but they still played a vital role, primarily pulling guns or munitions in carts across terrain unsuited to cars. In the Middle East they were used for cavalry charges across stretches of land without roads and inaccessible to mechanical vehicles.

The war made famous horses such as Bill the Bastard, who earnt his name