The exchange about the decreased use of "horses and bayonets" in the last Presidential debate, and the mention of the 19-teens, inspired me to take a look at the last large-scale use of horses in warfare. There are plenty of articles and historical videos at present, due to the release this year of the film version of
War Horse.
About 8 million horses were used in World War I; not many survived after the war. Most that were not killed during the conflict were too traumatized to function as work or riding horses, and the majority were shot, abandoned (and mostly starved) or were sent to processing plants.
"World War I, in which 10 million soldiers died, also resulted in the deaths of 8 million military horses.
"By the outbreak of World War I, advances in military technology meant that conditions on the front were often more dangerous for horses than for humans. In just one day during the 1916 Battle of Verdun in France, for instance, some 7,000 horses were killed, including nearly 100 animals that died after being struck by a French naval gun blast. Horses were also more susceptible to the elements, and thousands succumbed to exhaustion, disease and poison gas attacks. Many more might have been lost without the efforts of units such as Britain’s Royal Army Veterinary Corps, which treated more than 2.5 million injured horses during World War I. Of these patients, 75 percent were successfully returned to service."
http://www.history.com/news/war-animals-from-horses-to-glowworms-7-incredible-facts"The war horses of the Western Front in fact offer a powerful metaphor for the war's mass human slaughter, as the old tactics of frontal cavalry and infantry assaults were crushed by the new technology of huge artillery, machine guns, tear gas, and barbed wire. . . . the customary battleground risks to horses of disease or exhaustion or inadequate food were compounded by the new conditions of the Great War: tear gas, shell shock, drowning in craters or direct hits from mammoth artillery shells, machine gun fire or, increasingly, air attack. Knowing how valuable horses were, the armies often targeted them.
"And the death toll was fearsome. During the war, the British had approximately one million horses and mules on the Western Front. Approximately half a million died and tens of thousands were injured. (Some estimates are higher.) Those horses that survived were sold on the continent after the war (often for food). Only a fraction of the horses under arms returned to Britain (the program notes at the Lincoln Center production of the play [
War Horse ] put the number at 62,000). "
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/12/the-real-story-of-war-horses-on-the-western-front/250183/#
