by Lorraine Taylor
During the First World War the Canadian Corps used an average of 23,500 horses and mules. When demand dictated, the number rose to 50,000 per week with the addition of imperial divisions and artillery brigades.
Horses were purchased by the Canadian government from ranchers, farmers and at public auctions. They were transported by trains to Halifax, Montreal and trailed from Val Cartier to Levis, Quebec, where they were loaded onto ships. In October 1914, the first contingent of horses and men sailed for the United Kingdom.
Because of the army’s dependence on animal power, the animals’ health and work capabilities had to be maintained as effectively as possible.
The Canadian Army Veterinary Corps (CAVC), under the jurisdiction of the British Veterinary Corps, provided care to the animals of which ten per cent could be on the sick list. About 1,000 men of all ranks served in the CAVC
Veterinary Officer Dr. W.A. Robertson related: “Horses were assembled in Toronto and shipped to Montreal. We loaded them a trainload at a time, suitable for a shipload. The horses were packed into what were called Palace cars – horse cars with stalls.
“We loaded a whole train of about 900 to 1,000 horses. The spring of 1915 I was in charge of the whole thing and went overseas with a shipload.”
Upon landing on the south shore of the U.K., the horses were moved by train or trailed to Salisbury Plain where they endured the miserable cold winter of 1914-1915. Without adequate shelter and tied to outside lines, many horses succumbed to pneumonia. When the CAVC arrived from Canada and installed a veterinary hospital, living conditions improved somewhat.
Later, horses were shipped to France where they were used by the cavalry to move field guns, water carts, travelling camp kitchens, general service wagons and ambulances, constructing miles of narrow gauge railways behind the lines, for logging operations and packing ammunition.
Following the major battles of Vimy Ridge, Passacendaele and the Somme, CAVC personnel were taxed to the limit. Injured animals were transported in ambulances from the advanced veterinary post to the mobile veterinary section and onward to the veterinary evacuating stations.
Those needing extended treatment were sent by canal barges and trains to the CAVC’s number one veterinary hospital in Le Havre, France.
Some afflictions the CAVC dealt with were glanders, mange, specific or periodic opthalmia, epizootic lymphangitis and ulcerative lymphangitis.
Mange and glanders were significant problems. Animals infected with the mange parasite soon became useless and those thoroughly infected derived little to no benefit from their food. Parasites were spread by contaminated surroundings, saddlery and horse handlers.
Glanders caused considerable losses by attacking the lymphatic system. The bacillus was contracted by droplet, contaminated surroundings, water and food.
Moon blindness, a layman’s term for specific and periodic opthalmia, affected thousands of horses. Associated with unsanitary surroundings and believed to be caused by a virus, the treatment and course of the disease usually resulted in a cataract forming on the eye lens and/or fluid collecting between layers of the lens thus reflecting light outwards.
The initial treatment for mange was clipping winter hair and scrubbing the animals. However, in December 1916, Dr. Alfred Savage warned the top brass that horses tied to open lines, with or without blankets, would die. And they did die.
Later in the war, the horse dip or vat replaced clipping and scrubbing. Dug into the ground, the rectangular waterproof dip accommodated up to 400 horses per day that were driven through a solution of calcium sulphate and water.
By the summer of 1918, dips contained a solution of lime, sulphur and water. A steam boiler heated the solution. Despite routine dipping, mange and ringworm persisted. Parasiticides were applied by men who sported active lesions.
Enter chemical warfare. Mustard gas, a heavier-than-air oily agent lingered in low areas, mud and grass. It attacked the animals’ coronet bands, bulbs, lips and eyes causing burn-like blisters and oedema.
Horses affected were washed with sodium bicarbonate to neutralize the gas. Astringents were applied; however, gas contact was extremely painful and within three weeks the animals were pronounced blind.
Chlorine gas suffocated man and beast. When chlorine contacted moisture in the pulmonary system and eyes, hydrochloric acid formed. This caustic agent destroyed lungs and slow asphyxiation followed.
Dr. Sparrow related being in charge of taking ammunition from the dump to the guns at night: the Germans attacked with lewisite gas. Because of the devastation, Dr. Sparrow received orders to “destroy all the horses for their symptoms were like the last stages of pneumonia; a very, very pitiful sight.”
In Savage’s journal he stated: “Operated on a shell wound that perforated the scapula (of a horse). Abdominal shell wound, perforated thoracic wound and a bullet into the pleura. All in a day’s work! Unearthed metal after opening an old abdominal wound, found three pounds of scar tissue.”
Savage termed this as “hardware” surgery. He dug “a fair sized piece of shell from a horse, excavated a fibrosis from a stifle, removed shells from shoulder, back and forearm, one being a chunk of 5.9 inch high explosive shell. Quite a souvenir.”
In September 1918, Savage operated on a perforated abdomen with a peritoneal abscess, a sight the staff could not tolerate. At this late date in the war, a trainload of surgicals and debilitated horses arrived at the hospital from Abbeyville. Of these, Savage performed a neurectomy on a mule who died 15 minutes after chloroform had been removed. Defective chloroform, Savage noted, pouring the remainder down the sink.
During the summer of 1918 some horses were shipped to Archangel, Russia, where during the winter they pulled guns lashed to sledges inland on the frozen river.
The Royal North West Mounted Police shipped horses and men from Vancouver, across the Pacific Ocean, to Vladivostok, Russia… but that is another chapter in Canadian history.
