THE YPRES TIMES
209
Both the horses and drivers of this team were, in my experience, incomparable,
that most lordly spectacle on earth a team that knew its job supremely well and
did its work faultlessly on every occasion.
No apology is due for including the animals among my memories of those who gave
our country devoted service in the War years. The services of our four-footed friends
were as distinguished as their sufferings, I have never seen any figures of the casualties
among the horses, mules, camels, and donkeys in the Great War they must have
been colossal.
Some men are lovers of horses to others these creatures are merely useful slaves.
To the horseman they are much more, friends as well as servants. Their war-life was a
lesson to all of us in endurance, fearless determination in the face of unutterable fatigue,
physical misery, and, at times, semi-starvation.
Sidney.
Just as we were on the point of embarking on the s.s. Manitou for Salonica there
was attached to us an A.S.C. driver with a Maltese cart (a sort of box on wheels with
neither seat nor springs) and a black mule in the shafts. The mule was in so dilapidated
a condition that it was barely able to draw the empty Maltese cart. To ensure the
safe arrival of this apparently useless equipage at the dockside we found it necessary
to harness a spare horse with marker's traces in front of the black mule, which
was so weak that it fairly reeled with the effort required to pull the empty cart.
In spite of the tropical heat and the scandalous lack of ventilation in the lower
hold of our transport, our solitary mule improved out of all recognition, and a little
while after we had landed, ridden by the A.S.C. driver, won the Brigade mule race in a
common canter.
As this was the first mule that we had "owned" he naturally became the battery
mascot, and for some unknown reason, got the pet name of Sidney.
I think that, although he was only a mule, he was the handsomest quadruped
that I ever saw. He was fully sixteen hands, coal black with a coat like satin, and a
natural carriage of the head which always reminded me of the chariot horses in the
Assyrian sculptures. He was young, intelligent, gentle and obedient. Excepting trained
pacers and Bishareen camels, nothing on four legs ever trotted at such a speed as Sidney.
One sunny frosty morning I set off to Salonica town in the Maltese cart with the
A.S.C. driver seated beside me on an empty biscuit-box. The branch of the Topsin-
Monastir road on which we travelled was about as smooth as a frozen ploughed field.
To make a pair we had harnessed Sidney and an even bigger black mule called Johnny
to the little cart, and we were literally bouncing up and down on the biscuit-box as our
speed reached about fifteen miles an hour.
As we approached the town we saw on the left a small camp of very clean bell-tents.
Leaning over the fence by the roadside was our C.R.A. with another General.
The C.R.A. signalled halt Driver Welsh and I hauled on the long reins with all
strength (no light hand is needed to stop a pair of 16-hand mules trotting at full
speed). I expected a severe reprimand for furious driving, but that was not it at all.
The C.R.A. bade me a smiling Good morning," and said he had stopped me because the
other General wanted to look at my mules, and fairly beamed with good nature and
amusement at my regimentally correct salute with the long whip.
The other General looked the mules over (they were glittering in the sun as brightly
as the burnished steel of the harness), and said to our C.R.A., I congratulate your
subaltern on his turnout. It's the smartest team I have ever seen in the whole of my
life."
Two Generals, an A.S.C. driver, and a 2nd Lieutenant became just four men who
knew and cared enough about mules and horses to appreciate and admire a magnificent
pair.
