The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
The history, power and prestige of the cavalry horse
After mounted regiments’ animals bolted in London this week, Lucy Denyer peers inside the Army’s stables
Sixteen years ago, when I was newly married, I would set my weekday alarm for an ungodly hour in the morning, cross London yawning and, by 6.30am, be trotting around Hyde Park on an enormous dark beast called Vesta – a Household Cavalry horse known as a “Cavalry Black”. My heart would generally be in my mouth: I was always terrified that Vesta – despite assurances that she was the gentlest of rides – would one day bolt, attempt to jump the Albert Memorial and chuck me off. The ground was a very long way down.
So I felt for the riders of Vida and Quaker, two of the five Household Cavalry horses that were spooked by building noise during a routine exercise on Wednesday afternoon and went on a six-mile rampage through London, smashing into buses and galloping through rush-hour traffic. Three soldiers were taken to hospital, and a fourth person was injured. The images of a blood-streaked, wild-eyed Vida were both awe-inspiring and shocking. Neither horse may ever return to ceremonial duties.
The mounted regiment of the Household Cavalry is a particularly British tradition: we’re all familiar with their gleaming helmets, adorned with yak-hair (for the officers) and horsehair (for soldiers, or troopers as they’re known), plumes fluttering in the breeze. There they trot, in perfect formation, clinking and jangling, the soldiers on board ballasted by their cuirasses (the metal breastplate) and encased in thigh-high boots adorned with spurs, riding one-handed, sword aloft, eyes front, faces set.
They have been doing so since 1661 when their predecessors were formed by King Charles II; it now consists of the two senior regiments of the British Army: the Life Guards (who wear red tunics under their cuirasses, and in the depths of winter, red cloaks with blue collars); and the Blues and Royals (who wear blue tunics and blue cloaks).
My husband was commissioned into the Household Cavalry as a Blue and,
The horses are at least 16 hands high, carry 16 stone of soldier and kit and serve for 16 years
in the first year of our married life, served at Hyde Park barracks in the mounted regiment, hence my riding privileges. I learnt a lot during that year: that horses are bought annually on buying trips to Ireland where the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, accompanied by the commanding officer of the mounted regiment and the riding master, acquire a selection of draught horses that would go on to serve for 16 or 17 years.
I discovered that they have to be a minimum of 16 hands high, wide enough comfortably to carry a soldier’s saddle, strong enough to carry about 16 stones-worth of soldier and kit, and jet black with as few markings as possible (bar the trumpeters’ horses which, like Vida, are greys, historically because the trumpeter always rode next to the commanding officer to ensure he was visible). Each intake is named for a letter of the alphabet.
I learnt about Sefton, the Household Cavalry horse that survived horrific injuries after a 1982 IRA bomb killed four Blues and Royals and seven horses, all commemorated annually on Cavalry Sunday. I thrilled to the sight of the Musical Ride, where horses perform extraordinarily graceful feats to music; I spent a weekend as the guest of the regiment’s official hunting officer in a freezing cold cottage in the middle of Leicestershire where whisky and a labrador were necessary accoutrements for warmth; I stood in the excruciatingly ugly officers’ mess above Hyde Park and marvelled that right here, in prime central London, lived more than 100 horses and the soldiers and officers who rode them.
I watched my husband, who had never been a rider, learn to master his charger (the name given to officers’ horses), a beautiful sofa of a horse named Empress; I ran him hot baths every weekend when he returned from his 12-week riding course stiff as a board and barely able to walk and I watched him “pass out” from riding school on Rotten Row in Hyde Park, cantering forwards, sword flashing, roaring instructions to his soldiers behind him, urging them onward in their mounted charge.
It was magnificent and thrilling, and for him, who had only ever wanted adventure and to see the world, the most extraordinary experience – even more so when, a few months later, he rode on the wheel of the late Queen’s carriage as she trundled to declare parliament open, accompanying her into the gateway of the Houses of Parliament and waiting solemnly for her nod of acknowledgment for his role in protecting her.
“You’re doing something which is unique and extraordinary,” says James Gaselee, a former Life Guard who commanded the Mounted Regiment six years ago and led the parade at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in May 2018. “I genuinely loved every day I was in command there, and missed it hugely when I left.”
It’s hard work, though. It starts with that 12-week riding course in Windsor, followed by another four weeks of learning to ride in, and clean, the ceremonial state kit, helmet, sword and all. Soldiers and officers are assessed constantly during this period and might go back a few weeks if they’re not progressing fast enough.
The horses have to become used to all manner of sights and sounds, be they red buses or startled pigeons. The advertising boards that roll from one ad to the next with a loud click were known to set horses off. The mounts are exercised and groomed every day come rain, shine, snow or sleet. Stables require mucking out, brass needs polishing – as do the boots, which are best made to gleam with the aid of polish and a heated-up metal spoon.
Around high days and holidays things become even more frenetic. Gaselee remembers celebrating Elizabeth II’s 90th birthday at the Windsor Horse Show, finishing at
10pm on the Sunday, returning to Knightsbridge with the horses by first light on Monday, doing a 3am rehearsal for the State Opening on Tuesday morning, a string band rehearsal for the Queen’s Birthday Parade on the Wednesday, carrying out the State Opening on the Thursday and then the first rehearsal for Trooping the Colour on Saturday. “By the end of that we were on our knees,” he laughs. “But in many ways it was fantastic. We finished that week and the regiment as a whole couldn’t quite believe what we’d achieved.”
The Sussexes’ wedding, meanwhile, “was phenomenal – a real highlight for all of us”. Gaselee, the son of a Lifeguard turned racehorse trainer had taken on a newly passed-out charger named Oracle that he was bringing on himself, which he rode on all state occasions and also used for showjumping. “He was very talented and we clicked,” recalls Gaselee. “Unless he was at grass I rode him every day for three years, so we knew each other really well.”
For the wedding, Oracle had equine earplugs inserted. The streets of Windsor are very narrow and we knew the wall of noise would be quite overwhelming,” explains Gaselee. “You do your best to innoculate the horses [to the hoopla]. They hang bunting and flags up in their stables so they get used to it – but the noise is very different.”
Other precautionary measures were taken: not only the early morning full rehearsal, but a really good exercise on both the day and the day before, to ensure the horses were calm. Afterwards, everyone – eventually – got a break with the regiment’s annual three-week trip to summer camp on the Norfolk coast, a chance to take a holiday from the routine of London, get some proper equine training in, and for both horses and soldiers to enjoy a gallop on the sand.
Of course, the regiment’s role hasn’t always been purely ceremonial. Since the Restoration, the four antecedent regiments of today’s Household Cavalry – the 1st and 2nd Life Guards, the Royal Horse Guards (The Blues) and the 1st (Royal) Dragoons – have fought in every major British Army campaign, from Waterloo to Sudan,
Crimea to the Boer and the First and Second World wars.
About a million horses were sent to the frontline in the First World War; only about 62,000 survived. Many were shot in situ at the end of the war – cheaper than bringing them home.
Horses were game-changing in early warfare, allowing reconnaissance and forward-operating troops to advance far faster than infantry units; they have, writes Catherine R Franklin in the “been the silent partner of soldiers in war since ancient times” and although they were ultimately replaced by mechanised weapons systems, “the horse proved to be the most flexible and mobile asset available to armies for more than 30 centuries”. Horses, she points out, “did more than bear their masters – they participated in battle, biting and kicking both human and equine foes; they instilled fear with their tremendous bulk and speed”.
They continue to instill awe today. Why do we still wheel them out for every state visit, whether for friend or – as in the case of Xi Jinping’s visit to London in 2015 – potential foe? “The Chinese and Russians might be able to goose-step in time better than we do, but there’s something about what we do which the rest of the world can hugely admire,” says Gaselee. “As a country, we’re incredibly lucky to have this unbroken history and tradition.
It’s not an anachronism, it demonstrates stability.”
Not, perhaps, for the riders of Vida and Quaker. But it’s unlikely that the horses of the Household Cavalry will stop trotting round Belgravia any time soon. I’m only sad I can’t be there with them anymore.