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

HISTORISCHE KRANTEN

The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1935 | | pagina 21