THE YPRES TIMES
The Roans.
Daisy.
It is not wise to stand chatting with your back to a camelhis neck is extremely
elastic, and his bite is often poisonous. No other animal can work without drinking for
a week because no other animal can hold thirty gallons inside him.
When I joined the Battery with which I was to serve so long, the left section team-
horses were a wretched lot with the exception of the leaders of "C" sub Gun-team, and the
wheelers of the Gun-team of "D sub-section (high class enough to win later first prize for
the best pair of wheelers in the 268th Brigade in Palestine).
The latter were the only well-known horses in the Battery which had no pet names
they were simply called The Roans.
The mare was considerably older than the gelding, and I believe, was his mother.
They were like two peas in a pod. In spite of the fact that the mare was noticeably
chicken-hocked, they were, probably, the most powerful pair of wheelers that ever
pulled a gun.
This is no exaggeration as the following incident will demonstrate.
On our march up the line in Salonica we went across country in pitch darkness
from Karasouli to Gugunci. The Battery in column-of-route was being led by a sub
altern so lacking in column-of-route intelligence that, after fording a stream which crossed
the dirt-track we were following, he marched on quite unaware that only the two leading
teams were following him, and that the rest of the column was halted on the other side
■of the river.
I trotted up from the tail of the column to find out why the Battery had halted, and
discovered that the third vehicle was stuck in a hole in the river bottomand that the
two vehicles that had crossed over had disappeared in the dark.
Wading into the ice-cold river up to the waist, I found that a ten-horse team had
been unable to move the waggon and so, after half-an-hour of frantic man-handling,
I passed the word back for the roans from "D" sub.
By that time all hands engaged were soaked to the bone and half frozen.
In less than a minute up came the roans trotting through the scrub beside the
track the ten-horse team was unhitched and the two gun-wheelers were hooked in in
place of them. One colossal heave and out the waggon came like a cork out of a cham
pagne bottle. Oh, those Roans I could have hugged them both.
About thirteen years later I saw the mare standing in her old age in the shafts
of a coal cart in Oldhall Street in Liverpool. The carter, like most Liverpool carters,
a splendid horsemaster, had the old mare in wonderful condition and told me how, for
all her shaky old legs, she still brought the courage of a Hon to her comparatively easy
work. It was fine to see how well this ex-service veteran was being cared for.
By Major C. F. Miles, M.C.
In 1915 I was appointed to the battery with which I was to serve the whole of
my commissioned active service. Having reported for duty I was invited to walk round
the horse lines and choose a charger, but there was nothing that suggested itself to me
as a charger and the fact became apparent that the best I could do was to select
one of what in my innocence I had regarded as the light-draught horses. Thus I en
countered "Daisy," black and ugly when one looked at her head, but with beautiful legs,
a choice I never regretted. She was compact and possessed wonderful powers of
endurance, and a fair turn of speed, but perhaps the characteristic that most endeared
her to me was her air of nonchalance and imperturbability. No matter what excitement
or clamour was going on, Daisy still preserved the expression of the wise old owl and
carried on." One amusing experience will illustrate this characteristic. It was at
Marseilles in December, 1916, en route to Salonica, when a yapping little terrier rushde
along snapping at the horses' heels, until he chose Daisy for his victim. Some of the