War Horse
Irradiated by LabRat
A few days ago NFO posted about Sgt. Reckless, a hero of the Korean war. Watch the video at his place if you want a fuller version of the story, but the short version is that she was a locally purchased filly who ran ammunition and other supplies to and from the artillery line, often through heavy fire.
The video begins with the line “Can you imagine this little, sorrel filly in the middle of all this (warfare scens)”?
Knowing that she was a Mongolian horse, and that she was purchased at a Korean racetrack? Yes, I sure as hell can.
Americans and Europeans are used to thinking of war horses as particularly big and powerful examples of their kind; our idea of mounted warfare is usually of a big, heavy animal meant to carry a soldier with a lot of equally big and heavy gear. Thus, Reckless’s relatively small size is often mentioned in a slightly marveling tone.
In Asia, however, war horses were for light cavalry that could move quickly, didn’t carry much heavier than a javelin or a bow and arrow, and could survive and thrive at very high altitudes and relatively poor fodder. The big European draft horses and warmbloods* would either break their legs, starve, or have a heart attack under some of the conditions that Mongolians and Koreans put their war horses through. Reckless was exceptional, especially in the sheer degree of her nerve and her willingness to protect humans, but she wasn’t that special- Mongolian horses are meant to be tough, extremely strong for their size, fearless, and highly intelligent. Her ancestors were shuttling Genghis Khan and his raiders down the battlefield; the Korean war wasn’t that foreign a setting. In many ways it was what her lines were originally bred for, though by the time the Marines came along looking for a pack pony they were far more often found at the race track. The breed is old and little-changed, though, given that that gene pool is more left to fend for itself than not, and horses that humans did get their hands on that WEREN’T fast, tough, smart, and loyal were food.
The Marines got a war horse rather than a pack pony because by breed, that gene pool has maybe the best claim to the title of horses still living. It was luck and training that they got a great one, but still.
(Half credit for this post should go to Farmgirl, who gave me an education on the breed in an unrelated conversation a few weeks back. Sadly I did not remember the anatomical and conformation portion of that education well enough to justify expanding on it here.)
*note for non-horse people: “warmbloods” refers to a class of midsized horses used for work and war, with the term coming from “cold blood” to describe heavy draft horses and “hot blood” to describe light, fast saddle horses.
January 24th, 2012 at 8:05 am
The funny thing about that is if you start digging around in the actual source documents for the medieval/early modern era, one quickly comes to realize that the modern, western conception of the massive warhorse is historically innaccurate for the west as well. One of the major horse breeding regions in the fourteenth century was Scotland and produced animals that were probably similar to the modern Welsh Cob at 14-15 hands, but closing in on 1100 pounds, as opposed to the 14-15 hand Arab which is closer to 800 pounds. They were infamously terrible in the heat, but that had little to do with size and more to do with genetics. Their lack of agility was also less size related and more training related. The medieval/early modern warhorse remained in the 14.2-15.2 range. 16 hands was exceptionally tall right into the twentieth century.
The massive modern draft horse is a creation primarily of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, if you look at working drafts as opposed to hitch horses (a la Budweiser) you still generally encounter a preference for animals in the 15-16 hand range, not 17-18, for the simple reason that you don’t want something that takes two people to harness, eats more and can’t work more.
The modern warmblood is exactly that, modern, as well. Warmbloods are a cross between the light harness horses, the light cavalry, and the Thoroughbreds of the nineteenth century; the height probably came mostly from the harness horses at first, who had no counterparts in the medieval/early modern era. But it is mostly a creation of the last thirty years, to the dismay of many people in the horse business.
If you look at the European/English hunting hacks, old style Andalusians and the Irish draught (not a draft horse at all), all of whom historians tend to feel are closest to the historical war horse, you see animals who are 15-16 hands, with a number not hitting 15. When, I should emphasize, they are still being bred for their original purposes of either hunting or bullfighting. Over 16 hands is almost always too big for an uncontrolled environment. Even 16 hands can get exciting when galloping in the woods.
January 24th, 2012 at 10:17 am
Thanks for the link, and good post! Another point is the ‘size’ of the riders back in those days were considerably smaller… The average Samurai was about 5’2″ and might have gone 130lbs WITH all their bamboo and leather armor!
January 24th, 2012 at 3:40 pm
I think my gear weighed 130lbs, before the rifle.