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CHAPTER ONE
The morning of 16th November 1915 was cold, grey and miserable. It had rained for most of the night and showed no sign of letting up; it was half light and looked like being one of those November days when it really wouldn’t get much lighter. The wind howled around the corners of the warehouses and whistled through the gantries of the cranes on the dockside. These were Southampton docks, and the long train that had arrived at dawn after travelling overnight from Thetford in Norfolk carrying the horses that belonged to a Brigade of Field Artillery was about to be unloaded. Several hundred horses had travelled overnight in what had once been cattle trucks, but since the beginning of the war had been used for nothing other than ferrying horses to the dockside.
Southampton was their port of embarkation and they were on their way to the muddy, squalid horrors of the Western Front. In one of these trucks was Cupid, a pretty five-year-old bay mare, and as the sliding door of the truck was opened she felt the rush of the cold air flooding in, and it made her shiver. Slowly the horses were led from the train. When Cupid’s turn came, the wooden ramp which was used to lead the horses down from the truck, which had once been covered with coconut matting to provide some sort of grip, was in such a slimy state that it was almost impossible for a horse to pass over it and remain upright. Some had shied at it, some had tried to jump over it; each horse was led by two men, one either side to steady their perilous descent. Cupid managed by chance to stay upright and soon found herself standing with her companions tied to a rail in what had been, at the beginning of the war, hastily erected and temporary horse lines which now showed signs of the wear and tear caused by the many thousands of horses that had passed through them in the first fifteen months of the war.
After the long journey in the stifling heat of the cramped and badly-ventilated wagon, where the steam and stench of the horse dung hung heavily in the damp air, the chill of this November morning made the horses hunch. They were stiff from lack of movement and the only shelter was the flapping canvas of the walls and roof of the so called horse lines. Not only was it perishing cold, it was frightening. The unfamiliar noises from the ship’s sirens and the swarming flocks of screeching seagulls that landed all about them, scavenging for any scrap of food and fighting each other over the freshly-laid horse droppings for any morsel that could be found, were very disconcerting. There were men everywhere, shouting, running, marching. Hundreds of soldiers were stacking kit-bags on the dockside. Others were manhandling the guns, ammunition wagons, forage wagons and all manner of other equipment required by a brigade of artillery. All of this was being made ready to be winched aboard one of the ships. The dockers would argue with the soldiers, and the ship’s crew would argue with the dockers, and all the time the rain lashed down in torrents. The whole place stank of coal smoke from the trains, and the ships, and the chimneys of the fires that heated the offices on the quayside. The smoke swirled in the damp air, and everything seemed to be the same cold grey colour.
At last the horses were watered and fed. It was now over twelve hours since they had last been watered, and although the water was foul and black with coal dust, they relished every last drop of it. Cupid had been with the Brigade since the day after war had been declared on 4th August 1914, and the last fifteen months had changed her life beyond all description.
Cupid was a hunter, a lightweight, standing at about fifteen hands high. She had been born in 1909 and bought in 1911 as a fifteenth birthday present for a boy called Vernon. Both she and Vernon loved hunting and she had had three idyllic years in the Essex countryside. The flat grasslands which still covered much of south Essex in those happy days before the war were ideal for her. The country was dotted with huge elm trees now long gone, and the fields on the home farm where she lived grew the sweetest grass during the long summer months. Life for Cupid was perfect. Vernon’s father, who had bought Cupid for his son in 1911, commanded the local Territorial Field Artillery Battery. On the day that war was declared, the Battery had been mobilised and become part of the Brigade that now languished on the dockside at Southampton. On the day of mobilisation all the horses, bar one, from Cupid’s stable were press-ganged into the Battery; namely, Cupid, Flashlight, Nimrod and Polly, also one of the carriage horses. Frolic, the only horse to be left behind, was old and not very sound, otherwise she too no doubt would have been called up. One of Vernon’s father’s first duties on mobilisation was to buy horses for the Battery, and on 22nd August 1914 he wrote home:
I have, since the declaration of war, been working 15 to 18 hours a day. On the day of mobilization I was ordered to buy 131 horses for my Battery, which I did between mid-day on the Wednesday & 11 a.m. on the Sunday, very good horses too I bought, they are all standing in the lines beside me now as I sit writing on my forage wagon, all hogged and trimmed & looking like regular Battery’s horses. On the Sunday we had to harness up & hook in our new horses & march to our war station 17 miles away, all done up to time. I have all my hunters here and one of the carriage horses.
Not long afterwards Vernon, who was now eighteen, had also joined the Battery; he and Cupid were now together again, which was a relief to them both as they settled into their new disciplined lives. Cupid and Polly were from now on to be Vernon’s personal horses. The first few months of the war were spent at a place called Abberton, just south of Colchester, where both men and horses lived under canvas until the weather deteriorated and then, as the days shortened and the bitter east winds howled their way across the North Sea, farm buildings, cottages, and any other available roof space was requisitioned by the military. Many of these places are now lost beneath the deep waters of the reservoir built in the 1930s.
On the day of mobilisation, the men of this Territorial Brigade, who had been part time soldiers, training at weekends and going on summer camp each year, suddenly found themselves full-time soldiers. They had had to leave their civilian jobs and their wives, mothers and families. Many of them had been farm labourers or ploughmen, some had worked on the railway others as draymen or in factories, and adjusting to their new life was not easy. Fortunately many of these men had at one time worked with horses, and because horses were the mainstay of army life, man and beast had to know each other and work well together, and it wasn’t long before a strong bond was built up between them.
On 22nd December 1914, Vernon wrote
We are billeted in a small cottage and the horses are in two stables about ½ mile apart. It has rained almost every day since I have been here and so the place is rather muddy! But it is ripping to have all these horses and several of our own amongst them, we have a good mixture of horses and men. One splendid man, an ex sailor, awful rough chap who has annexed two horses to look after, both of them frightful kickers, but good workers. He always collects all the bread over from meals and gives it to his horses. Another man has 2 beautiful roans & almost sleeps with them. Nearly all the men are careful and fond of their horses now. One gets a nice variety to ride and I have had some great cross- country rides.
Like the men, the horses had come from all walks of life. Some, like Cupid and her companions, had been hunters. Others had been carriage horses, some had come straight from farms and others had pulled brewery drays or milk floats, and this new disciplined life was difficult for them. The carriage horses and dray horses were not used to pulling guns and ammunition wagons, and they had to work as a team. The military saddles didn’t fit properly and were uncomfortable, the harness used by the army was different and hard to get used to, and the schooling for all of them was monotonous and hard work. Keeping a Brigade of artillery mobile was in itself a full time job; there were farriers and blacksmiths, saddlers and harness makers, wheelwrights and carpenters, all of whom worked tirelessly day and night to keep everything in working order, for this was a Territorial Brigade, and unlike the regular army their equipment was old, second hand, out of date and not up to the hard work put upon it by active service. Most importantly, the Brigade relied on fit and healthy horses, because without them it could go nowhere.
During the last two months of 1914 the Brigade was deployed on the Essex coast; a German invasion was very much expected and many long, cold nights were spent on the foreshore of Mersea Island and other such places waiting for dawn to break, with orders to open fire on any German warships or submarines that might be seen, and that could be heralding the invasion. They would watch and wait in silence in the perishing cold, listening to the waves breaking, and in the early hours great skeins of geese would fly over, as well as thousands of duck heading for their morning feed. When daylight finally came, only British warships could be seen patrolling the grey waters and never a shot did they fire. The invasion never came, and the remainder of the winter of 1914/1915 was spent monotonously on or around the Essex coast.
The horses needed to be kept fit. Fortunately for Cupid and Vernon, one of the best ways of keeping a horse fit was to go hunting, so as many days as possible were spent doing what they loved most. Commanding officers encouraged the men to go hunting; it improved their horsemanship, steadied their nerve and was very good for the horses.
Eventually some of the ancient and worn-out pre-war equipment was replaced and life began to be more efficient; the men and horses became more used to their new way of life. At last the spring arrived and Cupid relished the sun on her back and the occasional feed of fresh green grass; also, she was reunited with her old friends Nimrod, Flashlight and Polly. They had been separated during the winter and it was reassuring for her to be with them again. All the horses were much calmer now; they were very fit and much more used to the discipline and routine of their new life. One of the most testing and frightening parts of their training had been their first visit to the firing ranges on the coast. The roar of the guns and the screech of the shells whistling through the air had been terrifying, and the stench of the burnt cordite that filled their nostrils and stung their eyes took a good while to become used to. Luckily for Cupid, when she was first taken to the ranges it was Vernon who had taken her, and they trusted each other.
In May 1915, Cupid had her first experience of a long railway journey. The Brigade left Colchester for St Albans, where the Division of which it was part was concentrated; there was a rumour in the air that they were about to be sent abroad. This first train journey, unlike the one that she had just undertaken on that cold November night, had in fact started out quite pleasant; it was summer, the weather was warm and the sun shone. The railway trucks were open-topped, so the air stayed fresh as they rattled through the pretty countryside. But as the night gathered in so did the clouds, the great black clouds of a summer storm. Some time around midnight the rain began and was soon torrential. Everything was soaked, horses, men and equipment. By the time they reached their destination, Boxmoor Station near Hemel Hempstead, the horses were cold and steaming and the men bad-tempered. It took an age to unload the train. The horses were first; they were led into the station yard, where the men rubbed them down with straw, to help regain their circulation while they waited patiently for the guns and other equipment to come lumbering off the train.
When they finally moved off to their new camp at Gadebridge Park, about a mile north of Hemel Hempstead, the lanes and tracks had become a quagmire and the guns and the wagons became stuck up to their axels in the mud and had to be abandoned until the morning. The men became bad-tempered and the horses struggled to cope. Cupid, Flashlight, Nimrod and Polly arrived bedraggled at their horse lines at nine o’clock in the morning and at last were fed and watered.
The storm had passed and the sun thankfully shone again. The tired men were desperately trying to make some order from the chaos that had resulted from the storm, and the guns and the rest of the abandoned equipment were finally dragged into the camp. Officers were giving orders, NCOs were shouting and the horses were now being formed up into lines. Row upon row of horses were lined up and tied to ropes strung between stakes. They had been hastily groomed and made to look presentable, but they were unsettled and too close together and had started to become irritable with each other. Some kicked out at their neighbours, some kicked out at the men. One of the lines broke and several horses bolted; confusion reigned, and it was some time before order was at last restored.
Cupid and her friends were standing near each other when a very smelly motorbus, its engine belching black, oily smoke, appeared at the horse lines. The bus had attempted to negotiate the same route up to the camp as the Brigade had taken during the night, but it had become completely stuck in the deep mud, eventually being pulled out and dragged the rest of the way by a team of gun horses. It was only the last hundred yards or so that it had made under its own steam. It was filthy dirty and the red- faced driver was ordered to remove it and get it cleaned. One or two of these new-fangled machines were beginning to appear among units of the Territorial Army and they were not universally popular with the men. They were smelly and always breaking down, and the unfortunate drivers and the mechanics who looked after them were the butt of many jokes. The dozen or so men who disembarked from the bus were from the Divisional Artillery Veterinary Section, and were there to inspect all the horses to make sure they were fit enough for active service; this would take the rest of the day. When they had finished, several horses were led away, either consigned to the knackers yard or, if they were lucky, returned to civilian life. Mercifully, Cupid, Nimrod, Flashlight and Polly passed out fit for duty.
Three months passed at St Albans, during which time the Brigade were re-armed with new 18-pounder guns. This involved two more journeys by train to Salisbury Plain and back, to practise with their new guns on the Plain. The rumours continued that they were about to go abroad, but still they remained at St Albans. Eventually at the end of August one more railway journey took them to Thetford, in Norfolk, where they would remain, under canvas in deteriorating weather, until the journey that had brought them here to Southampton on that miserable November morning.