Horses & the War
Read our amazing selection of images and articles on horses during the First World War, from their role at the front to their welfare on active service. Plus, download a selection of extra wartime articles from our archive for free.

Millions of horses, mules and other beasts of burden were silent unsung casualties of the First World War.
ARCHIVE ARTICLES
HORSES IN THE WAR I: BASE REMOUNT DEPOTS IN FRANCE
HORSES IN THE WAR II: THEIR WELFARE ON ACTIVE SERVICE
HORSES IN THE WAR III: THEIR WORK AT THE FRONT
OUR HORSES IN FRANCE I: TRIUMPHS OF THE ARMY VETERINARY SERVICE
OUR HORSES IN FRANCE II: THEIR WELFARE IN SICKNESS
Sign up for the Country Life Newsletter
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.
OUR HORSES IN FRANCE III: TREATMENT IN THE VETERINARY HOSPITALS
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.
Agnes has worked for Country Life in various guises — across print, digital and specialist editorial projects — before finally finding her spiritual home on the Features Desk. A graduate of Central St. Martins College of Art & Design she has worked on luxury titles including GQ and Wallpaper* and has written for Condé Nast Contract Publishing, Horse & Hound, Esquire and The Independent on Sunday. She is currently writing a book about dogs, due to be published by Rizzoli New York in September 2025.
-
Uniquely unique? The Yorkshire grain silos transformed into a home that's a symphony in glass, steel and curves
Amid the beautiful countryside of North Yorkshire, on the edge of the Castle Howard Estate, The Silos is a property for which the word 'house' simply doesn't cut it. And that's not the only way in which it's made us throw out the dictionary.
-
Polluting water executives now face up to two years in prison, but will the new laws make much of a difference?
The Government has announced that water company executives caught covering up illegal sewage spills could now be imprisoned for two years, under new laws — but many still have their doubts.