{"id":10648,"date":"2015-02-03T06:00:06","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.royalmontrealregiment.com\/?p=10648"},"modified":"2015-02-03T06:00:06","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T11:00:06","slug":"the-horse-in-the-canadian-army-in-wwi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/the-horse-in-the-canadian-army-in-wwi\/","title":{"rendered":"The Horse in the Canadian Army in WWI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Wednesday, February 3, 1915<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>In Hutments, Lark Hill, Salisbury Plains<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The Battalion War Diarist wrote for this day:<em> \u201cBalance of wagons and mules received.\u201d [1]<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.royalmontrealregiment.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/03-Feb-151.png\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-10649 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.royalmontrealregiment.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/03-Feb-151.png\" alt=\"03 Feb 15\" width=\"913\" height=\"340\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">THIS DAY IN RMR HISTORY:\u00a0\u201cOne Canadian Army Veterinary Corps officer in the First World War wrote that the life expectancy of a horse at the front was about six days.<\/p>\n<p>Army veterinarians were crucial, not only during combat, but also in the lead up to it.\u00a0 When Canada\u2019s 31 ship troop convoy sailed from Quebec to England in October 1914, 7,636 horses were packed on 14 of those ships.\u00a0 Of\u00a0 973 equines on the<em> SS Montezuma <\/em>alone, only 86 died in the 11 day crossing.<\/p>\n<p>That was thanks to supervision of the newly formed Canadian Army Veterinary Corps.\u00a0 Regiments had stopped depending on local vets starting in 1910.\u00a0 Nevertheless, only one of the new veterinary sections \u2013 two officers and 26 other ranks from Winnipeg \u2013 was ready to travel with that first Canadian flotilla in 1914, though another section mobilized the same month in Montreal.<\/p>\n<p>Two Canadian veterinary hospitals were eventually set up \u2013 one in Le Havre, France, the other in Shorncliffe, England \u2013 and another 221 veterinarians moved about the front and elsewhere in the field, providing first aid and working to improve the fitness of the Canadian Expeditionary Force\u2019s almost 23,500 transport and cavalry horses, as well as others of the Commonwealth forces.<\/p>\n<p>An estimated 256,000 horses and mules died serving in the Commonwealth armies on the Western Front, and Canada\u2019s army veterinarians worked tirelessly to reduce the losses.\u00a0 For that, in November 1918 they were named the \u201cRoyal\u201d Canadian Army Veterinary Corps.\u00a0 By 1940 they had been disbanded, as armies had mechanized their forces, trading horses for horsepower.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 <a href=\"#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\">[4]<\/a><\/p>\n<pre>[1]\u00a0\u00a0 <em>War Diary, 14<sup>th<\/sup> Canadian Battalion, The Royal Montreal Regiment<\/em>, Feb 3, 1915.\u00a0 Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/data2.collectionscanada.ca\/e\/e044\/e001089693.jpg\">http:\/\/data2.collectionscanada.ca\/e\/e044\/e001089693.jpg<\/a><\/pre>\n<pre>[2]\u00a0\u00a0 CWM ARCHIVES \/ ARCHIVES DU MCG : Photo Archives O.1687; Control no. 19920085-591<\/pre>\n<pre>[3]\u00a0 CWM ARCHIVES \/ ARCHIVES DU MCG : Photo Archives O.50; control No. 19920044-020<\/pre>\n<pre>[4]\u00a0\u00a0 Nick Walker, <em>Canadian Geographic,<\/em> Ottawa, Ontario, October 2014, pg. 26.<\/pre>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday, February 3, 1915 In Hutments, Lark Hill, Salisbury Plains The Battalion War Diarist wrote for this day: \u201cBalance of wagons and mules received.\u201d [1] THIS DAY IN RMR HISTORY:\u00a0\u201cOne<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-day-in-rmr-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}