Veterans Day - Remembering the Often Forgotten Veteran, the Horse

If you are reading this then you are likely to have seen the movie "War Horse" and as hard as it was to sit through the scene where the horse ran through concertina (razor) wire you would have an appreciation of how key horses were to warfare before the advent of motorized and aerial transportation. By the way, I was squirming in my seat during the concertina wire scene in War Horse, telling my self, "it's a movie,...it's not real, it's a movie."

Horses have been used in warfare since several thousand years before Christ. From scouting the enemy and carrying messages back and forth, riding into battle charging enemy lines, to pulling chariots and later artillery pieces, and packing equipment and supplies, horses, mules and donkeys of all breeds and types have served man in man's attempts to kill each other. If you were like me, you grew up on stories about General Robert E. Lee's horse Traveler, or Captain Myles Keogh's horse Comanche - a survivor of Custer's defeat at the Little Bighorn.

Horses have been and will continue to be used, albeit in smaller numbers, for military purposes. Horses and mules played a vital role in transporting weapons, ammunition and material across the Hindu Kush from Pakistan to Afghanistan to help drive the Russian invaders out. Twelve years later, Green Berets from the 5th Special Forces Group rode horses into combat to drive the Taliban and their al-Qai'da brethren out of Afghanistan. In fact, a statute honoring this sits near the 9-11 memorial site in New York City. This story can be read in Doug Stanton's book - Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan.

And perhaps the greatest war horse story was Sergeant Reckless, a little mare who served in the Marine Corps in the Korean War. A new book is out about this amazing little horse with a giant heart - Sgt Reckless, America's War Horse, by Robin Hutton. Read more about Sgt Reckless here.

The photo at the top is from Poppy Appeal Australia. These people found a unique way to remember the contribution of horses.