Horses & the War

Millions of horses, mules and other beasts of burden were silent unsung casualties of the First World War.

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The Lesboeufs Road outside Flers, November 1916.
In such conditions, disease and sheer exhaustion accounted for a great number of war-related equine casualties.
England as an armed camp: Country Life charted the militarisation of the countryside in 1914. Here a troop of the Territorial Army return after a day of exercises.
Destination Unknown by Lionel Edwards, published in 1914.
Horses remained crucial to the war effort and were transported in huge numbers to the front. 
Fresh horses skirt a huge shell crater on the way to the front in 1918. Almost half a million horses and mules were then serving in the British forces in France. 
An operation in a veterinary hospital to extract shrapnel, published in 1918.
A 1915 advertisement for the Blue Cross Fund, first set up in 1912 during the Balkan War.