Horses of The Great War, The Story in Art.

[Toby Brayley]

Horses of the Great War, The Story in Art.

John Fairley.

ISBN 1473848261

Published by Pen and Sword and retailing at modest £25.00 Fairley’s work has 134 pages containing over 65 stunning colour artworks. A quick flick of the pages and I was pleasantly surprised by the number of these that I had not seen previously; something I was not expecting. I was again satisfied to see works by my favourite artist Lucy Kemp-Welch, but her presence was to be expected on the pages of a work such this.

I will not divulge too many of the artworks within the book as I feel it would spoil the reader’s enjoyment. The first image you are greeted with is “The Charge of Flowerdew’s Squadron” by Sir Alfred Cummings, portraying the charge of Lord Strathcona's Horse at the Battle of Moreuil Wood in March 1918. This choice of this magnificent work immediately sets the tone of the book; to see a full blown cavalry charge enacted as late as 1918 already casts aspersions on the common belief that the Cavalry, or even the horse had no part to play in a modern warfare where the machine gun, artillery and all of the recent innovations had cast our equine companions to pages of history nearly four years before.

The book starts with a brief introduction of horse life in the civilian world, namely in London. Interesting facts and statistics take us through their hard daily routines and usage to their unceremonious end in the capital’s slaughterers’ yards then taking us on to the recruiting and procurement of the War Horses, again packed with facts and anecdotes from the period. I found the segment on the purchase of horses and their transport across North America very interesting, all accompanied by plenty of fantastic full page artworks by artists whose letters home and experiences feature in the text.

The rest of the book takes a reasonably brief, but more than adequate look into the use of Allied cavalry on the Western front, Salonika and the Middle East, offering a refreshing take on the actual successes and failures of the cavalry throughout the war. Further artworks by Bastien, Munnings and many others make a welcome appearance, all full page and in a quality print. Other chapters tell the story of the horses and the much forgotten mules of the artillery and transport units. The book finishes up with life on the home front and then finally the end of the war and the demobilisation and disposal of the horses; the facts and figures within this chapter do not make easy reading, no matter how many times you are exposed to them. All of the chapters are packed with facts, statistics and interesting stories that will more than hold the attention of most readers and especially those readers new to the subject. For myself the superb, well-chosen and varied style of artwork throughout really is the star attraction of this publication.

As the title suggests, this is no great in-depth study on the procurement, care or tactics in relation to equine usage during the war, for such information you will need to seek the works of Graham Winton or David Kenyon. However the information within is interestingly presented in a not too sentimental way (as with many previous such works, as it is a rather emotive subject) but in a passionate and digestible fashion; this is not entirely a “picture book” as I had rather cynically and perhaps rather ignorantly first thought. I would consider myself well read and somewhat knowledgeable in the subject and the text did offer a number of new insights and plenty of accounts from individuals I had not come across previously. It is very refreshing to see a break away from the usual depiction of the cavalry in the Great War that has suffered from “the amnesia of hindsight” over the decades. The authour is not overly biased and just as importantly not overly sentimental in his approach. Fairley’s work does go a small way to setting right a few myths and this impressed and rather surprised me.

At times the information can perhaps be somewhat simplistic and I would question some of the author’s nomenclature (Romney instead of Romsey), I also found the cropping and positioning of some of the artworks a little odd but these are just minor irritations within a brilliant work. I admit to biased on the subject, as you can imagine, especially as the 10th and the 11th Hussar’s get a brief mention, but the very affordable price for a book of this quality is worth it for the stunning artwork and the stories behind those pictures alone.

Toby Brayley 16/12/2015

[sassoon]

Thank you for this post. This is something I will look into.

(Sorry for the late reply but only saw this now).

[Steven Broomfield]

And (as ever), Goodbye Old Man appears, I believe, unattributed to Blue Cross.

[David Filsell]

Steven,

Was it not a magazine illustration later used by the Blue Cross?

David

[Steven Broomfield]

That I don't know. What I do know is that Blue Cross owns (and has done since Adam was a lad) the original. It hangs about 10 feet from my office, but no-one ever attributes it.

My understanding is that Matania gave it to Our Dumb Friends League (of which The Blue Cross Fund was a subsidiary) to make prints for sale to raise funds.