Sergeant Reckless was a small Mongolian mare who held official rank in the United States military. She was estimated to be three or four years old when purchased by the United States Marine Corps for $250 in October 1952. She was trained to be a pack horse and used to carry ammunition and supplies for the Recoilless Rifle Platoon of the 5th Marine Regiment.

"You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - When Dorothy Brooke, the wife of a British army major general, arrived in Egypt in 1930, she became aware of the fate of thousands of former war horses that had faithfully served the British army during World War I. Born in the United Kingdom, these horses were shipped overseas to serve in the war and had not returned home. Those that survived were now living a life of crippling hardship as working horses on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt. She decided to do whatever was necessary to ease their suffering.

In the late 1800s, a German high school mathematics instructor and amateur horse trainer, Wilhelm von Osten, had a horse that he claimed was able to perform arithmetic and other intellectual tasks. Clever Hans, an Orlov Trotter, was said to have been taught to add, subtract, multiply, divide, work with fractions, tell time, spell, read, and understand German. Questions were asked orally and in writing, and the horse answered by tapping his foot.

The sacrifice of the ten million men who lost their lives during the conflict, which endured from 1914 to 1918, is well known. Less well known is the price paid by the estimated eight million horses that perished in the Great War, a fact lamented by Private James Robert Johnston, a horse transport driver who served with the 14th Canadian Machine Gun Company, in his memoir, Riding into War: “Very little has been said about the horses and mules that were used and what they suffered is beyond all description.”