He floundered and thrashed in sheer terror. The stinking mud of the trenches had become a treacherous trap of greasy ooze. Soldiers, those who weren't dead, screamed in the final pains of dying as guns exploded,
cannons boomed, and the air filled with the acrid stench of shellfire, blood, entrails, and death.

In agony, the horse writhed and bellowed as he fought furiously to get his legs under him. But he couldn’t. He had no legs. They had been blown away in a blitz of shells. The Lieutenant drew his revolver and leapt into the slime to try to control the wildly tossing head of the panic-stricken horse. Two other soldiers joined him, in further peril of their own lives. The horse dipped
forward in exhaustion, shock, momentarily frozen. In that second the Lieutenant squeezed the trigger and sent a merciful bullet into the horse’s brain. Then, in his own horror and shock and exhaustion, he slumped, fell to his knees, and sobbed uncontrollably...

The 11th hour. The 11th day. The 11th month. The 11th moment of an unspeakably horrible time.
Armistice. Remembrance. Once more we try to understand the horror of it all and honour the loss of more than 70 million lives in the two world wars. It is a time, too, to remember just as poignantly the countless
millions of horses, mules, and donkeys that served allies and enemies alike on the front lines and along the endless supply routes, dying from explosions, artillery fire, poison gases, engulfing mud, exhaustion, disease, parasites, and starvation. Sometimes, they were shot and eaten by starving soldiers or field engineers, their meat barely keeping the brutally injured men alive until a hospital ship took them home.

Despite the immense hardships, the soldiers of the Great War had endless compassion and love for their horses. In London’s Imperial War Museum, hundreds of thousands of documents, letters, diaries, photos, and memoirs of soldiers of 20th century conflict have recorded their every thought, hope, fear, and prayer. And they recorded stories of the horses.

In 1917, a gunner watched as a grief-stricken driver of an ammunition wagon reacted when a shell killed his horse. The gunner rushed to help and tried to unharness the horse. But the driver, now in shock, just knelt by his animal, watching him in disbelief. Screaming his anger at the enemy, he was at breaking point. The brigadier ordered him down the line for a day’s rest, commenting that if everyone was like the driver who loved animals, they’d be all right. Even when the world was falling apart, there was still compassion in the heart of a soldier for the animal serving and
dying at his side.

Across the world today, 80 million horses, donkeys and mules continue to serve in work, much of it in third world countries where people’s lives are endlessly shredded through political strife, tribal conflict, ethnic clashes, or wars visited upon them from other lands. After the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York, the U.S. military quickly turned its radar on Afghanistan and the network of al Qaida training camps headed by Osama bin Laden. But it wasn’t high-tech war machines that took Special Forces into the hinterland. It was sure footed horses provided by the Northern Alliance who knew too well the value of a dependable mount to move quietly through mountain trails and avoid ambush and suspicion.

Now, three years later as the shaky dawn of peace creeps across the land, horses and donkeys serve a new and critical role. In October, the first ever Afghan presidential election was held in which ballots had to be
transported to far-flung villages and, once marked, they had to be brought back to the centres for counting. With few roads, and thousands of kilometers of rocky, perilous, mountain trail the only link between distant outposts and hamlets, donkeys became the transportation of choice.

Hundreds of donkeys were hired from local farmers for the crucial shipment of ballots. According to a CanWest News Service report, the farmers were paid a flat fee of 250 Afghanis a day, about $5 US. Horses were also used, providing a means for transportation from remote villages to a point where cars and trucks could pick up the ballots and drive them to local towns.
Few creatures, except perhaps dogs, have had as distinguished a service in war and in the struggle for peace as equines. When you buy your poppy this
month, perhaps you could give a little more and buy a second poppy to honour the horses, donkeys, mules and ponies of our precious four-legged army.

Read Margaret Evans' column "In The Shadow Of Equus" each month in The Pacific & Prairie Horse Journal