Horses

Lang wrote: Love all those pyramid shots of the beautiful deserted desert and photo-shopped blue sky. Ever wonder why you never see photos taken from the other direction?

It must be one hell of a let down for some tourist's when they find that it isnt quite like the brouchurs

Paul

Here are some WW1 horses

Horse railway.


Horse and handler with gas masks




Good idea but bullets go both ways!


Horse veterinary ambulance

Here are a whole bunch of interesting Australian working horses.

Interesting article on the Australian Light Horse during WW1.

Australia since 1788 has always been a predominantly urban society with the majority living in cities and towns.

When WW1 came around the great majority of soldiers enlisted from the cities and towns. This included members of the Light Horse. There were more horses actually working daily in urban areas than rural areas (with their riders and drivers of course). There were no cars so, quite apart from the thousands of working horse handlers, there were very many town folk who could ride either as daily transport or socially

There was a higher per head of population percentage of town dwellers enlisted than country boys. Town dwellers had only their jobs to lose - and come back to. In many cases farms relied upon the fit sons and hands to run the operation and numerous young men (particularly the eldest brother and of course his underage siblings) stayed in the country while the city folk could often be replaced by older workers and women.

A very large proportion of the Light Horse were city folk with as much or more horse experience as the country lads. Of course armies need a vast supply organisation and the great majority of horsemen towing artillery pieces or the thousands of supply wagons were experienced civilian wagoneers/carters/coach etc drivers with lots of ability in handling working teams. The country teamsters stayed in Australia as they were irreplaceable getting the wool, wheat etc to the rail or city depots to keep the war effort going.

In the end the make up of the Light Horse was pretty much indicative of the general population of Australia with people from all walks of life and did not come from some exclusive group of bushmen. The thing they had in common was their horsemanship from whatever background it came. Initially in Gallipoli it made no difference because they were all unmounted infantrymen.

They remained Mounted Infantry throughout the desert campaign with the horses just getting them to their positions and dismounting to fight. They were never Cavalry which fights from their horses. There were some spectacular charges but once they were amongst the enemy they reverted to infantry as they did not have the weapons to fight from horseback (and in the day of the machine gun, nobody had the weapons to fight from horseback)

Lang

Grandfather's enlistment papers show "Horse Driver" as occupation.
Enlisted from South Western Victoria.
Not in the Lighthorse, as served on the Western Front.
Hit with machine gun fire, very lucky to survive. Scars looked as if
he had been blown almost in half. Died just prior to 54 years of age.
Medical documents just note "GSW Chest". Hard times. Paul.

Paul

Your grandad could well have been using his horse skills on the western front. When looking at the above military horse photos I came across many shots of horses and their riders/handlers spread all over the road - a bit too depressing to put up on the forum.

A standard machine gun had a killing range of nearly two miles. Many busy roads behind the lines were well within that distance from opposing trenches. When an observer saw a likely target on the road he called on the machine guns using indirect fire (the angle calculated mathematically not just looking along the sights) already sighted in on such things as cross-roads.

The blokes walking could throw themselves into the ditch but any horsemen had no choice but to try to gallop through the storm. As a result piles of dead and wounded horses and drivers mounted at these intersections. Really juicy cross roads or traffic bottle-necks had artillery pre-targeted on them and a shower of shells was far worse than machine gun fire.

Possibly this was your grandad's fate.

Lang

Life would have been hell and they call it the "Great" war. Not my idea of great.

180218Su-Melbourne'HeraldSun'-SchonbrunnPalace-horse.vehicle (Wien, Austria; I suspect a landau)
180415Su-Melbourne'HeraldSun'-Canada-LakeLouise.Banff-Fairmont.horse.
181216Su-Melbourne'Age'-Ireland-horse.buggy.tour
190623Su-Melbourne'HeraldSun'-horse.coach
191022Tu-'BrisbaneTimes'-horse.ambulance

Roderick







Hotel Windsor , Spring St, Melbourne

Lang wrote: Here are some serious house removals. Includes some steam tractors and bullocks,

I love picture #3 Who said the caravans are only from the last 50 years or so .... just saying