Diary reveals vital role war horses played
Bob Longden has pored through his father’s trio of 100-year-old diaries from World War I countless times.
The weatherbeaten entries are brief and matter-of-fact, but the New Zealand Army’s affection for their war horses shines through.
Longden’s late-father, Ralph Longden, who served the New Zealand Mounted Rifle Brigade in Sinai and Palestine, wrote daily from 1916 to 1918.
Horses were vital in World War I – the last era to rely on horsedrawn transport – yet their part has often been forgotten, Longden said.
But at last they’re getting recognition.
A bronze 300kg horse statue – commissioned by the Waikato Combined Equestrian Group – has been created by former Defence Force artist Matt Gauldie to honour 10,000 horses sent to World War I and 8000 to the South African Boer War.
Only one horse returned from the Boer War and four from World War I.
‘‘The men got attached to the horses,’’ Longden, 85, said.
Horses feature in almost every one of Ralph’s diary entries, including their feeding schedule, health, grooming and inevitably – deaths. One of the entries from November 15, 1917, details a battle with the Turks that left about 100 men and 40 horses dead. A further 39 wounded horses were left to die.
Another entry notes that the horses had gone without water for three days.
‘‘There is nothing dramatic about any of his writings, it just states facts. But it was always the horses, the horses, the horses.’’
After the war, live horses were shot or sold.
‘‘They [the troopers] were bitterly disappointed when they had to leave them behind.’’
The life-size horse statue will be unveiled at Hamilton’s Memorial Park on Saturday at 11.15am.