Old War Horse Memorial - The Brooke Hospital for Animals
If you find it hard to read that the soldiers had to shoot their horses then please read the
following and you wil begin to understand why:
From the pages 2/3 93/94 in the book titled:
FOR THE LOVE OF HORSES -
Diaries of Mrs Geoffrey Brooke
Edited by Glenda Spooner
Dorothy Brooke, the wife of a distinguished Cavalry officer, relinquished a life of comparative ease and social pleasure to search for and rescue from undescribable conditions, what remained of the 1914/1918 Army horses and mules, which sixteen years previously had been sold into "bondage" in Egypt.
The some what lame excuse for this deplorable action was lack of transport. Mrs Brooke , who was the most tolerant women, writes in her diary - "one hesitates now to go back over that old ground. One can only imagine that those who were responsible 'knew not what they did.' Possibly they had never visited the East and therefore did not realise what happens to animals there. It was more probable that they did not stop to consider feelings of the horses at all. They decided to get what they could for them and left it at that."
General George Barrow a genuine horse lover - who turned a blind eye when officers of his Desert Mounted Corps took their favourite chargers out into the desert and shot them rather than let them be sold into slavery. But it was not possible to shoot 20,000 horses "sub rosa", and the great majority were duly sold to work in the streets of the cities, in remote market villages and worst of all in the stone quarries. Always hungry and therefore weak, overloaded to a degree, lame, crippled, harness-galled, ill-shod, frequently blind, suffering intensely form perpetual thirst in extreme summer heat, tormented by flies, these horses, though incredibly old, were still struggling along the streets, and in the markets, and straining under the whip to move the stone carts in the quarries, when Mrs Brooke arrived in Egypt with her husband.
Although 16 years had passed between the sale of the Army war horses and her husband's appointment as Brigadier commanding the Cavalry brigade in Egypt in 1930, the fate of these horses had always haunted her. She 'hated to remember but could not forget" and one of the first things she realised upon hearing of her husbands appointment.. was the dreadful certainty that she must use this opportunity to try and discover if any of these horses were still alive. All must by then be twenty-two years old ...thirty years is the normal expectation of life for a horse permitted to attain it, and in Egypt none were destroyed whatever their age or disability. ..No wonder Mrs Brooke feared that there might be survivors among the old war horses. She was right."
Dorothy was so very shocked by what she saw that she wrote the following letter to the British news papers to obtain funding for the proposed OLD WAR HORSE HOSPITAL and changed history:
Morning Post 8th September 1932:
OLD WAR HORSES
MRS GEOFFREY BROOKE'S APPEAL
Mrs Geoffrey Brooke, wife of Brigadier Geoffrey Brooke, the authority on horses, is making a further appeal on behalf of the "Old War Horse Fund" of which she is hon. secretary. She writes: "Not only Army horses, but those given up to their country by countless hundreds of patriotic people - favourite hunters, cherished friends of many families, born and bred in English fields - were at the close of he war sold to bondage in a foreign land. Fourteen long years of toil in the hands of strangers - in scorching sun, in sand, in a land where water is scarce, where flies are a torment, and where , owing to the poverty of their owners, the work has been far beyond their wasted strength! Many hundreds still survive, pleading for release - old , utterley weary, so deserving of a kindly redemption. 'Home' now can only be represented by a peaceful death, but what a release that is, what further suffering it saves.!
" To what remains of the thousands sold, the Old War Horse Fund has been organised, and a responsible committee formed in Cairo to purchase and humanely destroy these old war horses. The average price paid is about seven pounds, for all these animals are bread-winners. Once brought , they are housed in the Fund's stables under English supervision. Their last hours are full of comfort and their end is painless. Will anyone who ever loved a horse and who can spare something, however small , help us to save them from their cruel servitude?"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This letter changed history and the return letters poured in to her office in Egypt. Within 3 years she was able to purchase 5000 cavalry horses still working in Egypt - with the equivalent of more than 20 000 pounds of donations from the British public. The vast majority, being in the final stages of collapse, had to be destroyed. However, they ended their days to which they were all once so accustomed.
It is difficult for Westerners to appreciate the working conditions and hardships most draught animals in the Third World countries have to endure. Their owners are , for most part, very poor and so have the greatest difficulty in feeding and maintaining their usually large families. Their animals are their only means of livelihood and when these become lame, old, or involved in an accident, most owners simply cannot afford either to release them for treatment or to replace them while they have even the most limited capacity to work.
The result is that many draught animals literally die in harness. Their process benefits nobody. Impoverished owers have to manage with half a breadwiner whilst the suffering of the animals, working for years with crippling injuries or dieseases, cannot even be imagined.
Since the opening of the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital as founded, it is now known as the Brooke Hospital for Animals and has helped literally millions of animals and their owners. Gradually owners come to realise that it is in their own interest to care for their animals in the ways that the Brooke suggest and now seek help reguarly with feeding and harness issues.
Work is carried out in teams across Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and India where millions of animals are essential to the daily survival of its people, but are suffering badly. Along with veterinary assistance there is a well developed building programme providing water troughs and shade shelters in the areas where they are most needed.
FOR THE LOVE OF HORSES - Forward by Major G Brooke he writes:
"in spite of successive crises the doors of my Dodo's Hospital have never been closed. There, today as in the past, exists a haven of rest and skilled veterinary treatment for the thousands of patients whose owners are too poor to pay for such treatment either for themselves or their animals. .. her..wish is that this hospital should be a memorial to our valiant old war-horses and the gallant men who rode them: a loyal companionship that many of us will never forget. may her last wish be fulfilled." (she died in June 1955)
OLD WAR HORSES
by Will H. Ogilvie at the conclusion of Mrs Brooke's War Horse Campaign in 1934.
Honour, indeed, we owed to those lost, neglected ones
Sold to a heartless people over a broken trust,
Those who carried our husbands, brothers and sires and sons,
those who toiled in our waggons, those who galloped our guns
Left to stagger and strive in the desert's buring dust.
Out of the scorching sand, out of the quarry pits,
Out of the meaner streets adn the muddy flats of the Nile
Pityinghearts have gathered them home to where Mercy sits -
Shoulders galled by the collar, poor mouths torn by the bits -
Lapped them with loving kindness, bidden them rest awhile.
And when the blind and broken asked for no more on earth
Freeed them to God's own pastures through the merciful door of Death,
Never again to be thirsty or suffer from dule or dearth,
Done with the biting, whiplash, done with the galling girth,
Leaving their life of abour on one quick fluttering breath.
Honour to those who sought them, brought them to feed and rest.
Gave new life to their bodies or swift ending of pain:
For sad hearts they have lifted, for red wounds they have dressed
May these stand for ever in the ranks of the Heaven-blessed
As the glory of their work will remain.!
See our facebook page for the continuing story of THE BROOKE as it is commonly known today, or www.the brooke.org or info@thebrooke.org.
24/08/14
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the first horses to be shipped out to the front line of WW1.Despite the horrific condition in the trenches, the bond that developed between soldiers and their animals was often a deeply emotional one as this picture of 650 officers and men lining up in the shape of a horse head shows. www.thebrooke.org/horseheroes
Eloise Carpenter My friends Grandfather was in the cavalry in France and he never spoke of the war except once when she got her first pony and wanted him to see her. He refused saying "after what I saw done to them during that utter madness I can never again look one in the eye for they will surely see into my soul and know what I know"
As far as I know he avoided contact with horses for the rest of his life, so very sad and he had grown up with horses and loved them dearly