Resumen de History: Postcards from the Front
HAVING written a book on the British Army's use of horses from 1875 to 1925 (Winton 2013), I read with great interest the feature article by C. Trenton Boyd and Bruce Vivash Jones, ‘Postcards from the Front’ (VR, February 21, 2015, vol 176, pp 192-194). The postcard collection was quite amazing. There are, however, a number of points made in the article on which I would make comment.
One might certainly argue that in military circles the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 was not surprising, a point which is equally true of the Veterinary and Remount Services. At the outbreak of the war, the British Army had a peacetime establishment of some 842 vehicles and required approximately 643 to reach the wartime establishment of 1485. The peacetime establishment of horses was about 25,000, with a wartime establishment, to horse the British Expeditionary Force, of about 135,00. Within 12 days in August 1914 some 165,00 animals were procured, increasing the military horse establishment by some 700 per cent....
