Cavalry
(59) N.820 - Patient ready for discharge to duty from a Vetinary [sic] hospital
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| First World War 'Official Photographs' > Cavalry > (59) N.820 - Patient ready for discharge to duty from a Vetinary [sic] hospital |
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| Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/74549194 |
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| Description | British military horse being discharged from a veterinary hospital in France, during World War I. At the start of World War I in August 1914, cavalry units were still considered the elite troops they had always been. However, the nature of the war on the Western Front, with the widespread use of trenches, wire and machine guns, made cavalry horses more vulnerable and less effective than ever before. The horse in this picture is luckier than many, as almost half-a-million British horses died during World War I. The Army Veterinary Corps or A.V.C. was formed in 1906. At the outbreak of World War I the A.V.C. numbered less than one thousand men caring for just over fifty thousand horses. By 1916 the number of A.V.C. troops had grown to over fifteen thousand and horses and mules on the Western Front numbered over four hundred thousand. There were twenty British horse hospitals and four convalescent depots on the front. [Original reads: 'OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE BRITISH WESTERN FRONT IN FRANCE. A convalescent horse depot (A.V.C.) A patient ready for discharge to duty from a Vetinary [sic] hospital.'] |
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| Description | Photographs depicting cavalry. |
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| Description | Black-and-white photographs mainly of the Western Front during the First World War. Official British war photographers took many of them for propaganda purposes. Unless otherwise stated, titles are the photographs' original captions. From the papers of Field Marshal (Earl) Haig (1861-1928). The Haig Papers also contain Douglas Haig’s diaries. |
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| Shelfmark | Acc.3155 |
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