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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| The mighty Warrior, who led one of the last, great cavalry charges |
| 2008-03-23 |
| Excerpt. Long, excellent article. Warrior was ready. It was 9.30 on the morning of March 30, Holy Saturday, 1918. He had somehow survived four years of shell and bullet and privation, and Passchendaele, but now, in the little hamlet of Castel, not 10 miles south-west of Amiens, the horse faced his most dangerous mission of all. He would lead one of the last great cavalry charges in history - at Moreuil Wood, on the banks of the Avre river in France. Victory would not only secure the river bank, it would help stem the German Spring Offensive of 1918. Behind Warrior were the 1,000 horses of the Canadian Cavalry. In the 10 days since the German breakthrough against the Fifth Army at St Quentin, they had trekked a 120 mile, anti-clockwise loop south from Peronne to cross the Oise east of Noyon and then worked back north to get round the spearhead of the enemy advance. In Warrior's saddle - as so often in the 10 years since he had bred the little bay thoroughbred back home on the Isle of Wight - was my grandfather. General Jack Seely, 51, was no shrinking violet, and legend has it that he later recommended Warrior for the Victoria Cross with the simple, if not very modest, citation: "He went everywhere I went." Jack and Warrior had first arrived in France on August 11, 1914. Before that he had been an MP for the Isle of Wight, elected while serving in the Boer War. But although he became a senior member of the Asquith Cabinet, his political career foundered when, on March 30, 1914, he had to resign as Secretary of State for War over the mishandling of the drama known as the Curragh Crisis - when Kildare-based officers refused to march against the Ulster Unionists. Since February 1915, Seely had commanded the assorted bunch of ranchers, clerks, expats, Mounties and Native Americans who made up the three regiments of the Canadian Cavalry. Jack Seely was a popular general. But not as popular as his horse. If ever an animal was a symbol of indomitability for weary soldiers to follow, it was this short-legged, wide-eyed, star-foreheaded, independent-spirited but kindly gelding who, in January 1918 had been immortalised in the first of the portraits painted by Alfred Munnings as war artist to the Canadian Cavalry. Warrior was brave but not stupid, fast but not fragile, tough but not thick. His father, Straybit, had won the lightweight race at the Isle of Wight point-to-point in 1909. Warrior was a survivor. In September 1914, his groom Jack Thompson had to gallop him 10 miles across country to escape encirclement by the advancing enemy. In 1915, a shell cut the horse beside Warrior clean in half, and a few days later another destroyed his stable, seconds after he had left it. On July 1, 1916, that fateful first day of the Somme, he and the Canadians were readied to gallop through a gap in the enemy line that never came. In 1917, only frantic digging extricated him from mud in Passchendaele, and only three days before March 30, 1918, a direct hit on the ruined villa in which he was housed left him trapped beneath a shattered beam. Yes, a survivor: but could he survive Moreuil Wood? |
| Posted by:mrp |
| #1 Is there anything as noble as a Warior Horse? |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2008-03-23 16:10 |