The real war horse: How a farm boy and his mare found themselves amid the horrors of WWI

IN APRIL 16, 1917, the horses and men of the 271st Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery were accompanied by tanks for the first time.

Young boy sitting on his horse CupidPH

Cupid, pictured with her young owner Vernon Laurie, had been a birthday present for the boy

Cupid – a pretty five-year-old bay mare – was appalled by the sight and sound of these huge machines that rumbled through the dust of Gaza.

It was here that this brigade of 650 men and 700 horses had been posted after three exhausting weeks trekking across the Sinai desert from Egypt, just one part of a huge Allied army heading towards Palestine in an attempt to repel the invading Turkish army.

Vernon Laurie – the 18-year-old farm boy turned soldier who had been given Cupid on his birthday three years earlier – had to work hard to calm her. On the day that war was declared on August 4, 1914, the Territorial Battery to which Vernon and his father Lt Col Ranald Laurie belonged had been mobilised and later sent to Gaza.

The battle raged all day and the next night when, under cover of darkness, the Brigade advanced further towards the enemy trenches.

It opened fire again at first light and during the next two hours more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition were hurled at the enemy. The men coaxed their horses on.

Somehow between them they survived until darkness fell. The second attempt by the British to take Gaza had failed (the third attempt was to prove suc- cessful) and Cupid arrived back at the wagon lines in a sorry state.

Over the last few days of the bat- tle the faithful horses had had very little water and even less food. They had froze at night and sweltered under the relentless sun dur- ing the day.

They had been tormented by the clouds of flies that feasted on the rotting remains of the dead men and horses that lit- tered the battlefield. Luckily for Cupid she had escaped unhurt.

British artillery horses in PalestineALAMY

British artillery horses worked hard in Palestine

I don’t think the war could have been fought without them

Mr Laurie

The little mare from Essex whose life had once been so perfect as she gambolled around the fields with the then 15-year-old Vernon in her saddle, stood confused and bewildered in this strange and unforgiving world.

Next year will mark 100 years since Cupid left these shores to embark on her arduous journey into the arena of war.

THE delicate hunter, standing only 15 hands high, was just one of two million horses taken to the front line during the First World War but a collection of letters sent back from the front by her owner, as well as photograph albums and diaries, has revealed how she travelled from Romford to France, Suez, Beirut and Gaza.

It was an extrao dinary journey reminiscent of the novel War horse by Michael Morpurgo, an award-winning play and film in which a teenager from Devon and his horse Joey fight on the Western Front.

Now Vernon’s grandson Martin Laurie has unearthed Cupid’s remarkable real-life story and revealed how the horse helped his grandfather and great-grandfather wage war a century ago – together with millions of other animals.

“I don’t think the war could have been fought without them,” says Mr Laurie. “The troops certainly wouldn’t have been able to get across the Sinai desert – horses France and North Africa,” says Martin Laurie.

“Most of these horses would normally have travelled no further than a long day’s hunting or a slow journey around local villages delivering beer to the pubs, or pulling a plough, a harrow or a milk float.”

Scene from the stage show War HorseNIGEL NORRINGTON

Scene from the stage show War Horse

War Horse in the West End - Trailer

Vernon and the other men in his unit were local boys who prior to the war had travelled only as far as London or perhaps Southend-on- Sea on a balmy summer’s day.

“How could they ever have imagined the scene that they were now part of in the hot sandy wastes of the Sinai desert? They might just as well have been transported to a different and extremely unpleasant planet,” says Laurie.

Following mobilisation Vernon’s father had been given the task of buying 131 horses to take with them. Vernon, by then 18, finished school and two days later was on active service as a second lieuten- ant, fighting alongside his father in the same artillery brigade.

“The men had been farm labour- ers or ploughmen,” says Laurie. “Fortunately many of them had worked with horses and because horses were the mainstay of army life, man and beast had to know each other and work together.”

ERNON and his father wrote home frequently dur- ing the three years theywere away. They rarely missed mentioning the horses or their wellbeing and frequently told of the animals and birds they saw.

One such letter from Vernon says: “The country, although it makes awful dust and has gone very brown, still has green patches in it and quite a lot of small birds – a water wagtail has a nest in one of the trenches here. The insects and small reptiles are extremely numer- ous and various.”

Another, while he was in hospital with sandfly fever in 1917 says: “My horses were very well when I left. I still have 22 who marched away from Essex out of 60-odd, which is not bad.” But it was the connection Vernon felt with Cupid that defined him.

“It was a hugely close bond,” says Laurie. “They had travelled so far and had done everything together.

One couldn’t survive without the other. It was a part of home that was always with them.”

Sadly, Cupid was never able to return to Essex after she was attacked by a mule and had to be shot humanely by an army vet.

The government had already decided it could not afford the cost of equine repatriation but Vernon and his father had been determined to try to bring the little mare back to the green fields of southern England. In consolation Vernon was allowed to keep a single hoof belonging to his much-loved pony.

“This may sound slightly morbid to some but it was brought home as a permanent memory of the little horse,” recalls Laurie. “My grandfather showed me and told me all about Cupid. Even then, all those years later, he wished that he could have brought her home with him.” 

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