The Doughboy Foundation’s mission is to keep the story of "the War that Changed the World" in the minds of all Americans, so that the 4.7 million who served in the U.S. Armed Forces during WWI will never again be relegated to the mists of obscurity.
LEARN MORE
The Doughboy Foundation’s mission is to keep the story of "the War that Changed the World" in the minds of all Americans, so that the 4.7 million who served in the U.S. Armed Forces during WWI will never again be relegated to the mists of obscurity.
LEARN MORE
In 1914-1918, despite efforts to mechanize the army, animals still provided more reliable and versatile power than motorized vehicles. It was said, and without exaggeration, that nearly anything that moved during the war had a horse or a mule hitched to it!
Hundreds of thousands of animals were purchased in the U.S. and shipped to Europe in the four years between 1914 and 1918.
Click to jump to Where They Came From, Purchasing, and Shipping, or just scroll down.
Mules at a Purchase Depot
Date: 1918
On May 19, 1917, the Christian Science Monitor, a major national newspaper, published the following:
Mule and Horse Buying
Washington, D.C. - Orders have been issued by the [U.S.] War Department, for purchase of 250,000 horses and mules for the Army, at a cost not to exceed $100,000,000.
(in 2017, one hundred years later, this $100 million would be equivalent to $1,940,666,660, or nearly $2 billion.)
The British felt that, for political reasons, their buying operation should be headquartered in the British commonwealth country of Canada. But it was well understood that Canada did not have nearly enough animals to meet the need, and that most of the purchases would actually come from the U.S.
With the huge numbers that were involved, the operation in the U.S. was streamlined early-on, using experience and contacts forged by the British only a few years earlier, as they bought animals for another conflict, the Boer War, fought in South Africa. The last Boer War horses left the U.S. in 1902, and a decade later, it was not hard to re-start the procurement operation.
An extensive network of British buyers fanned out across the U.S., inspecting and accepting or rejecting animals based on age, conformation, size, weight, and overall suitability. It was not necessary for the animals to be well trained; in fact, many were hardly what would be called “green-broke.”
They could not have any physical issues that would lead to early breakdown, such as crooked legs, swollen joints, deformed hooves, eye problems, or evidence of chronic disease. Ideally, they would be of a stocky build and not overly tall, since most of these animals were being bought as draft animals, not as riding horses.
The British had their own ideas as to what constituted the ideal cavalry horse, and what the U.S. Army wanted as a cavalry horse did not meet the British requirements. As well, it soon became apparent that the cavalry as a fighting force was not going to play a large role in the fighting in France. Officers still were issued horses, just as today they might be allotted a Jeep and driver, and those horses were of the general cavalry specification, not draft horses.
But the vast majority of horses and mules bought and sent to France or other fronts were draft-type animals plus some pack mules.
Whether bought by European countries before the U.S. entered the war, or by the U.S. in 1917-1918, they began their journey on a farm, horses coming usually from the American mid-west but sometimes from as far west as Texas, Wyoming, Idaho, or Montana. Mules came from Missouri, Kansas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia – states that raised cotton, and used hundreds of thousands of mules in the cotton fields.
Dealers assembled groups of animals from farms to show the buyers, who looked at hundreds of horses or mules a day. The exclusive overarching contract with the British was held by Guyton and Harrington of Lathrop, Missouri, and they then contracted with dealers around the country.
As soon as it was agreed that a particular animal passed the buyer’s scrutiny, it was branded, mainly to keep some tally of which were accepted and which were rejected. Some of the rejects were also marked, usually on a hoof, to make sure they were not presented the next day!
With this new demand causing a spike in the horse and mule market, were the sellers motivated to breed more animals in hopes of making yet more money the next year?
The answer is no.
It is important to remember that every horse or mule that was used during the war was already foaled and on the ground by 1914. There was no increase in production in the horse and mule industry, as happened in, for instance, the wagon industry.
The foals of 1914 would have been only three-year-olds by 1917, ready for training and possibly sold into service that year or the next. All the other horses that went to war were born before 1914, and bred before 1913 (an equine pregnancy lasts 11 months). And, not knowing how long the war would go on, but with no real reason to believe it would last for even a decade, breeders were not moved to try to increase their breeding operations.
Horse dealers (as opposed to breeders) did grow their businesses, reaching out to larger numbers of farmers and breeders to pull together herds of animals for inspection and purchase by the military.
Army Mallein Testing and Branding
Date: 1918
In both the U.S. and Great Britain, horses were still seen in city streets in 1914, but they had begun to be replaced by motorized vehicles, including passenger busses and cars. In Great Britain in 1911, slightly fewer than 50% of horses lived on farms and only 35% of the 2,600,600 working horses were used for farming.1
The situation in the U.S. was somewhat different, with a total horse population estimated at some 30 million, of which eight million were broken and trained, and the majority of animals lived and worked on farms across the country but with the largest numbers concentrated in the mid-western agricultural belt.
British war plans for obtaining horses at the outbreak of the war had been based on a system of annual payments to horse owners who had agreed to maintain horses fit for military service, that could be provided within days and at a set price if needed. The call-up of these animals was referred to as “impressment,” and it worked as planned – except for the fact that no plans had ever foreseen the scale of the war that unfolded in 1914. Within weeks after the war started, all the horses that were available in England and Ireland for impressment had been turned over to the army – and everyone could see that far more were going to be needed very soon.
The demand for army horses had never been a significant part of the overall horse industry in Great Britain, and if there was a large and sudden increase in army needs, the domestic market could not support it. At least once before, during the Boer War (1899 – 1902), the British had supplemented their domestic supply with overseas purchases, largely from America. This is what led to the nearly-immediate purchase of American animals, purchases which eventually reached the hundreds of thousands.
Unloading mules from the train into pens at Newport News.
France also made large purchases in the U.S. The Danville, Kentucky Advocate Messenger reported on January 22, 1915 that "The French government has decided to mount its cavalry on horses from the Blue Grass exclusively, it was revealed when R.F. Carman, one of the best-known turfmen in the country, left for Lexington and Louisville, Ky., with an order in his pocket for the purchase of 60,000 remounts for the French government. This is but the initial order, and Carman states that he is going to buy all the horses he can get hold of."2
There are no records available on how many horses Carman was able to buy, but 60,000 would have been a very large number if he wanted Thoroughbreds, a breed mainly used for racing. The annual foal crop in Kentucky hovered around 10,000 per year even many years later, and finding 60,000 horses of appropriate age and training status in 1915 would have been doubtful.
Just as in England, military needs were not a big driver for horse and mule production in the huge horse market in the United States. The dollars that the British and U.S. Remount services paid were, however, certainly welcome!
In 1914, horses and mules were still traded as a commodity all over the United States, but the largest markets were in the mid-west and to some extent in the south, where agriculture still depended on horse and mule power to pull farm equipment in the fields. Early in the war a vast web of suppliers soon developed, driven by the lure of selling to the British army purchasers.
The Midwest, bread basket of the country and home to millions of acres under cultivation, became the supply hub for horses and mules. Lathrop, Missouri became the center for British purchases because it was the headquarters of Guyton and Harrington, the company that had the exclusive contract to supply British purchasing needs. It had a network of sub-contractors in Kansas, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. The animals that came from west of Missouri generally shipped through Lathrop, while those that originated further east were shipped through a network of depots to the embarkation points on the east coast.
The far western states were somewhat represented but could not supply the sheer numbers of animals that the Midwest could. Also, the west did not typically supply draft animals, and the light draft horse and draft mule were what was wanted. Still, the supply network went as far as Montana, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. These animals had very long train rides to get to the depot in Lathrop, and even further to get to the east coast.3
Shipping and Receiving at St. Nazaire Dec. 1918
Date: 1918
"The steamer appeared to be close to us and looked colossal. I saw the captain walking on his bridge, a small whistle in his mouth. I saw the crew cleaning the deck forward, and I saw, with surprise and a slight shudder, long rows of wooden partitions right along all decks, from which gleamed the shining black and brown backs of horses.
'Oh heavens, horses! What a pity, those lovely beasts!' 'But it cannot be helped,' I went on thinking. 'War is war, and every horse the fewer on the Western front is a reduction of England's fighting power.'
I must acknowledge, however, that the thought of what must come was a most unpleasant one, and I will describe what happened as briefly as possible.
'Stand by for firing a torpedo!' I called down to the control room.' 'FIRE!' A slight tremor went through the boat - the torpedo had gone. The death-bringing shot was a true one, and the torpedo ran towards the doomed ship at high speed. I could follow its course exactly by the light streak of bubbles which was left in its wake. I saw that the bubble-track of the torpedo had been discovered on the bridge of the steamer, as frightened arms pointed towards the water and the captain put his hands in front of his eyes and waited resignedly. Then a frightful explosion followed, and we were all thrown against one another by the concussion, and then, like Vulcan, huge and majestic, a column of water two hundred metres high and fifty metres broad, terrible in its beauty and power, shot up to the heavens.
'Hit abaft the second funnel,' I shouted down to the control room. All her decks were visible to me. From all the hatchways a storming, despairing mass of men were fighting their way on deck, grimy stokers, officers, soldiers, grooms, cooks. They all rushed, ran, screamed for boats, tore and thrust one another from the ladders leading down to them, fought for the lifebelts and jostled one another on the sloping deck. All amongst them, rearing, slipping horses are wedged. The starboard boats could not be lowered on account of the list; everyone therefore ran across to the port boats, which in the hurry and panic, had been lowered with great stupidity either half full or overcrowded. The men left behind were wringing their hands in despair and running to and fro along the decks; finally they threw themselves into the water so as to swim to the boats.
Then - a second explosion, followed by the escape of white hissing steam from all hatchways and scuttles.
The white steam drove the horses mad. I saw a beautiful long-tailed dapple-grey horse take a mighty leap over the berthing rails and land into a fully laden boat. At that point I could not bear the sight any longer, and I lowered the periscope and dived deep."1
The S.S. Armenian, sunk on 18 June 1915 off the coast of England, with a loss of 1422 mules and 29 crew.Dying at sea was not actually as likely as it might have seemed, though it certainly did happen, particularly before the U.S. Navy entered the war. One of the first actions of U.S. involvement was to convoy horse and mule transport ships across the Atlantic, protecting them with warships equipped to hunt and sink German submarines. With the British shipping an average of 3200 animals a week, and sometimes many more, the ships and their live cargo were certainly a prime target. As the German officer noted, these animals were essential for the war effort, and anything that could be done to limit the flow was going to help the German cause.
Though the numbers do not quite add up to the same totals as cited in other works, a careful tally by one authority states that of the 703,705 animals shipped from Atlantic ports during the entire war, 13,724 were lost at sea. Of these, only about half (6,667) were lost to enemy action (either shellfire or sinking), with the rest lost due to illness, on-board fires, storms, and other non-battle sinkings.2
This list is at least a partial tally:
SS Marquette - 491 mules and 50 horses
SS Norseman - 1,100 mules of which 740 were saved, because ship was beached
SS Crosshill - Mules on board (number not known)
SS Palermo - 858 mules and 163 horses
SS Cameronian - 877 mules
SS Eloby - 32 mules
SS Hyperia - Mules on board (number not known)
SS Japanese Prince - 310 horses and 505 mules, ship damaged but mules escaped
SS Armenian - 1422 mules
SS Georgic - horses on board (number not known)
SS Argalia and SS Athenia - total of 899 horses
The horses and mules that were bought in North America and shipped to Europe had a long journey before they ever got on a ship.
Horse corral at Camp Lewis, Washington.
During their pre-purchase inspection they were ridden (in the case of cavalry mounts) or driven (all others) as a test of wind – that is, of inherent lung problems.3
By November 1, 1914, (less than 60 days after England entered the war) purchasing offices for the British remount service were located in Kansas City, Denver, St. Louis, Chicago, and Fort Worth, as well as Toronto, and six major dealers/associate dealers were involved.4 Within a few months the process had expanded to multiple other states and twice as many dealers. The animals were assembled in the dealer’s yards, shipped in and out by rail, using either existing stockyards or in some cases newly built facilities.
Vast numbers of animals were held in pens, waiting transport to the next stage of their journey, a remount station somewhere between the point of purchase and the east coast. It was in these pens that they had their first opportunity for infection with one of the several respiratory diseases that plagued the shipping process. Equine influenza, generic pleuropneumonia chest infections referred to as “shipping fever,” and strangles were the most common ailments. The first two were not generally fatal, but caused significant debility.
Strangles was more severe, with mortality figures nearing 10%. All could take weeks to clear, with strangles taking months in some cases. There were no tests to determine if horses were infected, and the sheer number of animals being handled would have made individual testing and isolation impractical in any case. With so many animals passing through each facility, bacterial and viral contamination of fences, troughs, buckets, etc. was a fact of life. For more on these diseases, see the Veterinary Corps page.
It is hard to imagine the sheer scale of the procurement operation and the numbers of animals involved. Photos show remount facilities with barns and pens stretching into the distance, filled with hundreds or thousands of animals.
They could not have been treated as individuals; the numbers were simply too great. Instead, it was a sort of mill, through which living animals passed.
Immediately after being purchased and before being sent to a port, the animals might spend from three to ten days waiting for sufficient numbers to build up to make a train load feasible. During this time they were tested to determine if they were carriers of glanders, a serious illness (also transmissible to humans) for which there was not a specific treatment but there was at least a fairly reliable diagnostic, the mallein test. The test took several days to run and so was not practical to do before horses were purchased. See the Veterinary Corps page for more information. Because glanders had a high fatality rate and was also a human contagion, horses that tested positive for glanders were immediately segregated and usually were put down. At the depots, there were always “sick pens” and horses with various degrees of respiratory illness.
Both the U.S. and Britain had standards of care that exceeded what was found in many other parts of the world, and in some cases, those standards were upheld. But many times, the numbers involved overwhelmed the system. Thus, though by U.S. law animals were not supposed to stand on rail cars for more than 28 hours straight, (later extended to 36 hours under war conditions), in fact these limits were at times exceeded, until death aboard the trains became a significant problem and was addressed by building facilities along the major routes where the animals could be unloaded, offered feed and water, and the opportunity to rest unhindered by the constant movement of the train. About 5% of animals died between initial purchase and boarding a ship.5
Some horsemen today regard a trailer ride for a horse to be as taxing as walking the same distance, because in order to keep his balance, the horse must continually brace and shift. The conditions in the rail cars, where the animals were packed in at every angle, must have been even more exhausting.
The time limits for train transport actually made it more favorable to buy animals east of the Mississippi, because the train trip to east coast seaports could be completed in the allowed time period. Kentucky and Tennessee, in particular, benefitted. And the dollars involved were not insignificant. For example, in August 1915 a Guyton and Harrington buyer shipped a consignment of 600 mules from Columbia, Tennessee by fast freight to Newport News.6 The 600 animals were worth $100,000 in 1915, which would be about $2.4 million in 2015. Surely, this could not have been an everyday occurrence in middle Tennessee prior to the war! Animals could be shipped from Nashville, Lexington or Louisville and reach Newport News within the 28 hour maximum.7
Rail routes in the U.S. The ports of Boston and Portland served shipments from Canada. Map re-drawn from Theirs Not To Reason Why, pp.360-361.
With the war being fought in Europe, it was natural to ship all animals from the east coast. Early in the war, the British purchasers did ship from Canada for a few months, but as the winter of 1914-1915 closed in, the Canadian ports iced over and all shipping from that time onward was done from the U.S.
Mules ready for ocean transport at Newport News.While the numbers of animals being purchased for overseas use was not a serious impact to the immense horse and mule market in the U.S., the shipping facilities needed to move the animals both within the U.S. and particularly at the ports, were completely out of scale of anything required for civilian needs. Thus, while huge holding pens were stationed along major rail routes, these could not compare to the scale of the depots at the shipping centers. There were several large centers, including Portland, Maine and Boston, and when shipping pressures were very heavy, the British even modified small grain ships to take a few horses and mules on their upper decks, sailing from New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore and using a livestock depot at Jersey City.
Several shipping depots were used intermittently during the war, but Newport News stands out as the largest and busiest of all of them. Two major shipping depots were built there, one by the British very early in the war, and one about thirty blocks away for the U.S. after the it entered the war. They were similar in plan and in fact, the British served as advisors to the U.S. Army, both services acknowledging that the latter might as well take advantage of the experience and mistakes of the former.
U.S. Remount Depot at Newport News. The British shipping depot was very similar. The British depot at Newport News held 5000 animals housed in pens of 400 each. It was located between 30th and 43th Streets and by the end of 1914, only four months into the war, animals had overtaken both coal and grain exports in total value. In the first two months, the British Remount Station shipped more than 10,500 horses worth nearly $2.6 million,8 the beginning of a flood of nearly a half million animals worth over $3 billion in today’s dollars. This was about two thirds of all the animals the British exported from the U.S. during the war, the rest being moved from other ports up and down the eastern seaboard. Newport News had the ideal location, being midway between New York and Florida, and was already a busy deep-water port with extensive rail connections to all parts of the country through the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway.
“Still, it took a city businessman named Phillip W. Hiden to provide the strategically located land, the local contacts and the organizational expertise to get the British remount complex built, then up and running just weeks after he was approached by the C&O.”9 Mr. Hiden had just finished helping the C&O railroad rebuild dozens of storm-damaged bridges in Ohio. Clearly, he was a man who knew how to get things done in a hurry, and the railroad approached him again when the British wanted a port facility for their horse export business.
Although other nations (France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy) were buying horses and mules in the United States, only Britain had a big enough operation to manage the entire overseas shipment process themselves and was willing to invest to build a port facility large enough to serve their needs. A team of cavalrymen and veterinarians designed the facility, recognizing that animals would arrive in various degrees of health and might need to be isolated and treated. Even a surgical suite was provided.
The construction and maintenance of the huge facility provided hundreds of jobs and injected huge amounts of cash into the economy of tidewater Virginia. Waterfront Lumber was one of the companies involved in the depot construction, as well as the business of converting British cargo ships to horse transport vessels by building stalls (later pens) in the ships.10
The British employed veterinarians from both their own service and from the U.S. to accompany the animals on the ships. The hundreds of onboard feeders, cleaners and handlers were drawn largely from the local black population. The depot employed a permanent workforce of farriers, wranglers, loaders, and stable help. The more skilled of these, notably farriers and wranglers, would have been from a larger geographical area, as Newport News simply could not have supplied the need itself.
With the British depot easily the largest animal export facility in the entire country, no one would have expected that within two years, the U.S. would build its own depot, and it would be twice as large as the British one! The economy of the Hampton Roads area, and Newport News in particular, were permanently enhanced by these two facilities.
U.S. Animal Embarkation Depot No. 301 at Newport News, 1918. U.S. Army photo.
By June 1917, the U.S. Army had decided that it would use New York as the primary port for troop transport and general supplies, and Newport News for animals, forage, and heavy artillery. Norfolk, the other deep-water port only a few miles from Newport News and already the site of a major naval base, was rejected for the remount depot because it was considered too congested already.11
The Quartermaster Corps chose a 77-acre location 35 blocks north of the British depot and by October 1917 had their depot up and running. While huge, Animal Embarkation Depot No. 301 (as it was formally known) was not complex from a building standpoint, being simply a large number of pens, barns, sheds, and fencing, with a minimal amount of office and hospital space, and could be constructed quite quickly if the lumber was available. Official reports note, however, a series of “exasperating” delays – but the facility and multiple others nearby were finished in a matter of months. The depot was part of a larger complex known as Camp Hill, which contained barracks and warehouse facilities for the animal services as well as for much of the other functions of the port.
In 1917 the Army Veterinary Corps had just been designated as a command, but had little in the way of personnel or command structure. Construction and management of the animal facility and much else in Newport News was under the direction of the Army Medical Department. There are times when simply quoting the original source provides the best picture of what happened in times past, and the Medical Department’s post WW1 report provides a graphic picture of the activities in the summer of 1917:
“The choice of Newport News as a port of embarkation was obviously made on account of its geographical location, sheltered roadstead, extensive rail and water connections, and open climate. The facilities for docking and coaling ships, loading troops, animals, and supplies, and repairing and dry-docking vessels combined to make it a logical port from which to conduct military embarkation and debarkation. Its contiguity to the Norfolk Navy Yard and naval base made cooperation with the naval forces easier of accomplishment. Above all, the large areas of open country afforded building sites for the various camps and warehouses which were necessary for the men, animals, and supplies which were destined overseas.……
“In this large area [Norfolk, Newport News, and the area in between] it was necessary to construct roads, to lay railway tracks, to build vast warehouses, corrals, barracks, kitchens, hospitals, laundries, officers' quarters, and office buildings, to run telephone, telegraph, and electric light wires, and to provide water supplies, the instrumentalities for police and fire protection and the disposal of wastes.
“The many activities ultimately included in the port of embarkation and with which the port surgeon was concerned are listed here not only to facilitate orientation but also to show the territorial scope of the port surgeon's responsibilities.”12
It goes on to note exactly what the role of the port surgeon and his organization involved:
“From the viewpoint of the Medical Department, it embraced everything which had to do with the prevention, detection, diagnosis, cure, and amelioration of wounds and sickness; the sanitation of the environment, the safeguarding of food and water supplies, the maintenance of cleanliness, the destruction and prevention of dangerous insects, the isolation of the infected, the disinfection of clothing and buildings; the administration of hospitals and dispensaries; the elimination of the physically and mentally unfit; the sanitation of ships and trains; the transportation of the sick and wounded; and the physical examination of officers and men prior to discharge.”13
“There were 30 corrals, each 200 by 400 feet in dimensions, and having a capacity of 300 animals. Six were located on the east side of Virginia Avenue and were known as receiving or quarantine corrals. Arriving animals were placed in these corrals for a period of 21 days and were carefully observed twice daily for contagious infections or other diseases. They were mallein tested for glanders, and were moved to what were known as the duty corrals on the west side of Virginia Avenue when found to be free from any disease. Each corral had a shelter shed inclosed on both ends and on the north side. These sheds extended from east to west, the southern exposure being open. They were 23 by 300 feet in dimensions.”14
The scope of operations at the depot was staggering. The report continues,
“It was contemplated that animals would be held for a short time while awaiting overseas shipment, but the shortage of bottoms [that is, ships] interfered with shipments and the depot became filled and largely remained so. It was impossible to keep the crowded corrals free from mud and accumulated manure, and the sick rate was high, with infections and injuries of the foot predominating.
“The veterinary hospital first constructed could not be called a hospital in any sense of the word. It consisted of five sheds similar in type and construction to those in the other corrals. There were no operating rooms, no properly equipped dressing rooms; in fact, the lack of equipment was a serious handicap in rendering efficient veterinary service. Two thousand animals were receiving treatment at this hospital in February, 1918, and necessarily in the open air under more or less insanitary conditions. Authority was therefore requested and obtained for the construction of a modern veterinary hospital.
Rear view of the veterinary hospital at the U.S. Remount Depot at Newport News.
“This hospital was erected on a bluff overlooking the James River and was completely separated from the corrals of the animal embarkation depot. The hospital proper consisted of a building 30 by 196 feet, with two wings extending from each end 30 by 65 feet in dimensions. It had sewer connections, hot and cold water throughout, steam heat, electric lights, and good lighting and ventilation. The operating room measured 30 by 64 feet, was well lighted and ventilated, and was equipped with modern operating table, casting mat, and modern instrument sterilizer. Immediately adjoining and communicating with it were two recovery rooms, 15 by 15 feet, for anesthetic patients. There was an office, a pharmacy, a surgical dressing room, a diet kitchen, an animal equipment room, a supply room, a disinfecting room, a bacteriological laboratory, a boiler room, a feed room, shower baths, and water-closets. The hospital building and court had concrete floors. In the court were 16 stalls having concrete floors. These were used for surgical cases. In addition to the hospital proper, there were four wards. These were 100 by 100 feet and were wooden shedlike stables with dirt floors. Each ward accommodated about 60 patients. On the west, at a distance of about 1,000 feet, were five more wards having a total capacity of 600 patients.”15
By the end of the war, the total number of animals handled at the depot was 57,944 – only about 10% of the number shipped by the British from their facility a few miles away. So the U.S. depot, built to handle twice the capacity of the British depot, simply filled and became a holding point, stymied by the lack of shipping available. The animals that the troops desperately needed were waiting in the U.S., but at least their lives were spared. The total number of deaths from disease at the depot was 1,140, which meant that the death rate per thousand was 19.68 – considered excellent in the conditions and the numbers of animals involved.
A second U.S. Army animal transport depot was built in Charleston, that city hoping to capture some of the dollars that were flowing into Newport News. It was the same size as the one in Virginia but was never used, because the war ended rather abruptly with fierce fighting in the later summer and early fall of 1918, with the Germans surrendering in November.
Across the OceanFrom the time of purchase until embarkation on a ship to Europe was a minimum of seven weeks.16 During this time the animals left the area where they had been foaled and grown up, left all of their companion horses, and left familiar feed and water. They were in constantly changing “herds,” with the need to develop new leadership and pecking orders with each new group. Their immune systems were under constant stress and it is no wonder that at least 70% of animals had already had a respiratory illness, or worse, during this phase of their journey.
In keeping with their wary sense of self preservation, mules were difficult to get aboard ships. If a bell mare was present, the mules might walk on willingly, following their bell mare leader. But if not, they might remain on edge for the entire journey. Mules required from one day to two weeks to recover from a crossing, and some soldiers felt that there were mules that never recovered.17 Never happy to board a ship, mules also showed a perversity when asked to unload – as Galtrey says, “they soon became reconciled and contented to the point of being outraged and annoyed”18 when the time came to disembark.
British shipments were made starting in 1914 and used ships that had been modified to transport horses and mules. Most of the ships had stalls consisting of wooden partitions with a breast bar and side bars, and that usually backed to the side of the ship. They might be on an open deck or in the interior of the ship. The latter, of course, made adequate ventilation a near impossibility, but placing the animals on an open deck exposed them to the weather. Initially, the stalls were open between animals, with only the side bars in between, which allowed animals to kick each other but did allow more space for bracing their feet in case the ship rolled due to heavy seas. Feed troughs were attached to the breast bars.
However, this arrangement was quite unsatisfactory for several reasons.
Mixing feed on the USS Marina.The voyage took two to four weeks and during this time, the stalls were not cleaned daily because, depending on the configuration of the stalls, it might take the assistance of the ship’s carpenter to even get an animal out of its stall. Manure and bedding could be raked from the front into the passageway, but this was clearly not a complete cleaning, and in any case there was a belief that bare boards were much more slippery than a build-up of waste underfoot. Of course, it was not possible to get between horses to clean their feet.
By 1915, the British were experimenting with group pens on the ships rather than individual stalls and eventually this became the British standard.19 Animals arrived in better condition than in the ships fitted with individual partitions. Ventilation below decks was managed by canvas baffles known as wind sails, which had to be adjusted frequently to shuttle fresh air through the hatches and into the animal areas. On some ships compressed air was available, and port holes might be opened when weather and sea state allowed it, but with several days at least of manure and urine accumulated in the animal areas, the ammonia vapors quickly became a major lung irritant.
Some veterinarians favored feeding no grain during the main part of the voyage, and only feeding hay. This served two purposes. First, the animals did not need concentrated feeds as they had no way to expend the energy that the feeds provided, and second, a feeding of hay could be stretched out for several hours, giving something for the animals to do to while away the hours of inactivity. Bored horses develop nervous habits, get irritable, and generally are difficult to manage. Because forage (mainly grass, which when dried is called hay) is the natural food of equines, it is a perfect food for a horse at rest.
During the last few days of the voyage, the horses would be given small grain meals, increasing as port drew nearer, so that they could be started into training and would have the energy to build muscle and endurance. Also, this accustomed their digestive system to grain, and prevented the dreaded digestive upset known as colic. While it is possible to stop grain rations suddenly and go to an all-hay diet without adverse effect, the opposite is not true, so starting the grain rations gradually during the last week aboard ship helped with this transition.
Grain requires much less storage space than hay, so the transports would have wanted to feed as much grain as possible, but the health of the horses would have been compromised by trying to substitute grain for hay during the majority of the trip. The most favored grain by far was oats, with some corn (maize) offered as well. Some of the animals had been accustomed to eating corn dried on the cob and were not willing to eat oats; they could be tempted to eat by offering corn.20 Bran was also used liberally. Bran has little food value but absorbs water and therefore helps with water balance in the gut.
For more on feeding click here.
The Belgians, French, and Italians also purchased horses and mules, some 600,000 U.S. animals by the end of the war.21 One account from a veterinarian in charge of a shipment to Italy on an Italian vessel recounts his efforts with both the animals and the men hired to take care of them on the ship. Attendants for the animals were difficult to hire and were often men wanting to return to Italy or perhaps another European country, but who had no knowledge of animals. A veterinarian or at least a foreman with horse care knowledge was in charge of animal care, and it was in his best interest, as well as the interest of the ship captain, to have the animals arrive in good health and with few or none lost during the trip. However, the description of how the animals were treated as soon as they were unloaded reveals the brutality of Italian railroad animal handlers.
“The animals, when unloaded in Italy, were taken in hand by soldiers at the land end of the gangway and loaded direct into boxcars and taken inland to the various concentration and remount camps.... These boxcars are about a third the length of our boxcars, which carry from 21-22 horses or 24-26 mules, according to size; but they packed 11 horses or 14-15 mules. To get them to enter, moral suasion plays no part. Anything that will administer a blow is used, be it a piece of 2x4, a halter shank with bale wire to reinforce it, or a 5-ft. length of Italian locust, which, when dried, I have never seen broken not matter how much one hammers with it.
“The horses are led singly up to the door; the shank thrown over his neck and everyone who can reach him safely starts to beat him into the car. If the car is empty or half full the first blow is enough, but when there are 9 or 10 horses in, of course they block the door-way, and it is the work of the animal to force his way in by shoving aside those already in. If he is not strong enough he is almost beaten into a pulp until he, in agony, will plunge into the car. If there are others already weakened by the voyage, they are apt to go down, and once down, in the crowded condition of the cars, I have never seen an animal get up and be worth anything after a 30 or 40 mile railroad ride.”22
To read the entire article, with its insights into both the challenges of the crossing and the animal management tactics and veterinary remedies available in 1915, click here.
It is worth remembering that working animals are still treated this way in many parts of the world – this is not something that has stopped just because 100 years have passed. It rarely happens in the U.S., and is surely much rarer in Italy than it was in 1915. But in the world’s poorest countries, animals still labor under whips and sticks. The work that BrookeUSA does around the world changes the way people treat their animals by working with owners and handlers, teaching them new ways and helping them to understand how their animals think, what motivates their behavior, what their needs are, and how they can be more productive when they are well treated. To learn more about what Brooke does, click here.
On the ships bound for Italy, these were not the only abuses. Animals that had become so ill during the voyage that they could not stand were given stimulants such as strychnine and had harsh chemicals applied to their genitals, such that they stood simply as a response to pain and drugs. If those animals could walk off the ship, the captain and animal superintendent received a larger payment.
Thankfully, while conditions on British and later U.S. ships were generally not optimal for the health of the animals on board, there is no doubt that their treatment as they were unloaded and then sent to remount facilities in either England or France was far better than that found in Italy.
U.S. horses unloading from a ship in France.
U.S. horses unloading from a ship at St. Nazaire.British shipments went to remount depots in England before further transport to France, but U.S. ships docked at either St. Nazaire or Bordeaux, France.
Surely they were stiff from standing on the ship for weeks, and their eyes unaccustomed to sunlight unless they were transported on the upper deck. Some appear reluctant to leave the ship, which at least was familiar by that time, something that is very important to a horse!
U.S. horses on the dock at Bordeaux.
After leaving the ship the animals were assembled on the dock, and then walked into town and then to the railhead.
U.S. horses assemble to walk to the rail head in Bordeaux. It is interesting to see how the gray horses stand out; grays were not welcome on the battlefield because they were considered too visible to the enemy.
At the railhead, they were loaded again and shipped to the remount depots in France.
The tragedy of WWI gave birth to a vision, and today the Brooke family of charities, including Brooke USA, form the world's largest equine welfare organization. There are approximately 100 million working horses, donkeys, and mules in the developing world, and 80% of them are suffering from preventable problems. Brooke USA-funded programs touch the lives of millions of these animals through culturally-sensitive and practical programs that provide long-lasting solutions. The animals are key to the livelihoods of their owners; by supporting the equines we also support the families who depend on them, as healthier animals help their human families earn a living. Learn more about what Brooke USA does.
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