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In The Saddle: horse doctors at war
Hunterian Museum
Tuesday, 17th March 2015
DR ALBERTI: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Royal College of Surgeons. My
name is Sam. I work here. It’s a great pleasure to welcome you to our lunchtime
lecture series, in what is the final event in our World War 1 schedule.
It’s my great pleasure to introduce to you Paul Watkins today, who trained as a vet in
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and worked alongside Wellcome surgeons, human
surgeons as it were, for his whole career, latterly for the last 15 years at the Court of
Examiners. He has a longstanding interest in the history of veterinary surgery and is
currently working on a book manuscript looking at the Second World War and the
veterinary profession. Today he is casting his eyes back to tell us about horse doctors at
war. Thank you very much.
DR WATKINS: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming.
I’d like to spend the next few minutes hopefully speaking at the right rate on there,
which might be rather difficult, but also telling you a little bit about horse doctors or
veterinary surgeons during the First World War. Of course, when we consider the First
World War so often we have pictures like this. This is actually by an artist called John
Edwin Noble, who was commissioned as a war artist. But he was also serving amongst
the ranks of the Army Veterinary Corps. Of course, in recent years, we have had a view
of this area perhaps highlighted through the play and film War Horse. You can perhaps
summarise the war as one of wholesale slaughter of man and animals. I’ll try not to put
too much on about the slaughter of animals today, because it’s still early in the day! I’d
like to talk to you on four main areas: something about the origin of the Army
Veterinary Service, the response to war in ‘14 to ‘18, some animal diseases and about
some of the veterinary surgeons who served.
It’s perhaps only fitting that the origins of the Army Veterinary Service can trace back to
this man here, John Hunter, after whom this library and this museum is named. John
Hunter used to give a number of lectures in London about surgery during the 1770s and
1780s in and around about 1785. Amongst those who attended his lectures was a
young man called Edwin Coleman; he was training to be a surgeon. He had been born in
Gravesend in 1765. He had been apprenticed, as they were in those days, to an
established surgeon and he was apprenticed to a surgeon called Henry Cline, who
worked in what was called the Borough Hospitals, those of Guys and St Thomas’. He
was training to be a surgeon. We find that also working with him as an apprentice to
Henry Cline is this gentleman here, Astley Cooper. He would go on to be a quite famous
surgeon, Sir Astley Paston Cooper. Edward Coleman had to take some exams. In those
days, in 1789, when he sat his exams to be a surgeon, they took place here in the
Surgeons’ Theatre, a site very close to where the Old Bailey now sits. Only fitting
probably that examiners should reside close to the Old Bailey and I think it might be
applicable nowadays, meeting some of them as I do!
Anyway, we find that in 1789, an examination was held and amongst those who
satisfied the examiners was one Edward Coleman. Edward Coleman qualified then as a
surgeon, but in 1793 he was appointed as the co-principal of the newly established
London Veterinary College, along with William Moorcroft. The first principal Charles
Sambel, a Frenchman, had died and had only done two years in post. Coleman took
over and became the principal of the college. Interesting for a surgeon. Here he is at
the London Veterinary College in 1793. It’s interesting because when you look at the
diplomas that were handed out to those that were successful, like here in 1795, you will
notice it’s signed by the Professor Edward Coleman, but he has ensured he has a great
range of his mates helping him, none of whom are qualified vets. It’s signed by Henry
Cline and Astley Cooper; these were the examiners for that early veterinary college.
In 1795, Coleman was invited to talk to the medical officers by Dr John Rollo, who was
the Surgeon General to the artillery. At the same time, he was asked to look at some
horses, which had returned from France, following one part of the recent wars. The
horses that he was presented with had these sorts of signs. They had an enlargement of
the glands under the skin, with a discharge from the nose, often bloody, and this is the
condition of Glanders or Farcy. Coleman diagnosed this. He went on to show that it
was transmissible and, as a result, he was appointed the Principal Veterinary Officer to
the cavalry and was then charged by the Commander in Chief to effectively form the
Army Veterinary Service. He was able to do so because of his graduates coming from his
college at the London Veterinary College. We can trace the origins of the Army
Veterinary Service to this college or its precursor. When you look at the First World
War, the Army Veterinary Service was provided by what was then called the Army
Veterinary Corps. The prefix “royal” was given in late 1918. By.
This time they were quite used to supporting battles and conflicts by the Army, many of
them having served in the Boer War.
We can see the expansion of the size of the corps during the war. In 1914, 160 officers
and 208 other ranks, like the farriers and the stablers and so forth, and by the end,
notice, 1,356 officers, that is about one in two veterinary surgeons serving with the
veterinary corps and over 22,000 other ranks. There was a huge expansion, because
there had to be because of the requirement and the use of animals, especially the
horse. The veterinary corps and the veterinary surgeons were deployed in many places
around the world.
Although much of what I’ll talk to you about is in France, they were deployed to
Mesopotamia, Egypt, to Greece, to north Russia. Certainly from 1917, they were also
deployed to parts of Africa as well. Many were also sent abroad to America and South
America for the purchase of animals which could then serve at the front. Again, not
only was an expansion in people but also in facilities. In 1914, they had just six
veterinary hospitals in France to accommodate some 1500 horses. Yet, three years
later, 18 hospitals accommodating up to 40,000 horses. It was a large-scale operation
which was put in place.
One of the problems though was transport of horses, housing of horses and so forth.
This goes to show just an example of how horses might be moved around by cranes on
to ships and, of course, often by railway as well. In fact, mortality amongst horses when
they were being transported to the front line at times reached 30%, one in three.
Twelve per cent became accepted as the norm. This was then seen to be unattainable
and could not be supported. In fact, what would happen is that those who were
responsible for transporting horses would be given a bonus. The bonus was as simple as
this. They get one and six pence, or seven and a half pence, for every horse that was
transported live to where it was needed so long as mortality of the group stayed below
2%. A large number of animals were lost just on transport.
But we also have the problem when we bring horses together. So highly populace in
stocking density and this leads to disease. One of the ways in which we can get an
indication of what life was like for a veterinary surgeon was for some of those who left
memoirs and descriptions. Although we might think that veterinary surgeons spend a
lot of time doing this, keeping their arms warm up the back end of a cow; it’s not
necessarily the case!
Reginald Hancock was a young man. He qualified in 1914 from the now Royal
Veterinary College in London to become a veterinary surgeon and was soon posted to
France. He described quite nicely some of the conditions and problems that he was
faced with. Sarcoptic mange, bringing horses together, this is a parasitic condition of
the skin spread rapidly. It led to a severe loss of coat and skin. We find that amongst
one of the ways in which it was treated was interestingly this rein here. Nowadays, if
we had it, we would treat it with a spray. Not then. These are horses placed in gas
chambers. Only their heads are exposed and inside this sealed area we would expose
the horses to sulphurous acid. It probably killed a lot of the parasitic mange but did not
do the skin a lot of good either.
The problem of Glanders, which Coleman had seen in 1796, again was present in horses
and mules in the First World War. This is a bacterial condition, quite rapidly spread
between horse and horse. The other problem with Glanders is that it can spread from
horse to you and I. It is a zoonotic condition and this was also a big problem. Things
have moved on slightly since the days of Coleman but not a great deal. We can perhaps
see this from a text here, which describes... This is a 1911 text describing some of the
issues of Glanders, talking about the several sorts of disease, falsely called the Glanders.
Perhaps most worryingly is when you look carefully at the treatment. Recipe number
25, which would be giving these animals nitrate of quicksilver, sulphur of antinomy
made into a little ball with syrup and palm oil. Give them that one night and then on the
next night they have recipe 26, made up of bark, ginger, giving us two drenches. It says
here if the horse survives one treatment, i.e., it has enough strength, it might be worth
giving it a second go as well. Well before the days of antibiotics.
Many of the pictures you will see of life in France at this time shows pictures like this, of
horses and men basically wading their way through really quite thick, gooey mud and it
was everywhere. This was a real problem. In fact, you see we find another photograph
here showing that it’s only the horses that can actually make it through and take the
ammunition to the front and to the trenches. No normal vehicle could go through any
of that mud. Atrocious conditions, which, of course, have an impact on the horse itself.
Many of them, after they had been working, would then be stabled in the open air on a
thing called a picket line, where they are tied to a line here and rested. One of the
important things that was found fairly early on is that it’s very important how the horses
are tied to this line. This is exposed area and there is wind and rain. Very clearly, the
horse likes to be able to turn its backside towards the weather. There’s nothing worse
to it than having wind blowing to its nostrils. Of course, these areas became heavily
turned over. They became very muddy. Horses that had been working during the day in
the mud ended up standing in thick mud leading to further problems of hoof and skin.
Hancock describes how attempts were made to come around this. In fact, the area was
to place these picket lines close to the slag heaps of some of the coal mines in northern
France, so as to hopefully provide a much firmer, dryer and stable footing for the
horses. Unfortunately, this did not always work because the horses then started eating
coal.
Now, let me show you a little bit of comparative anatomy. This is the inside of you and
I, showing the lower part of our intestines, going through our colon and to the exit point
there. In you and I, this is about a metre long and the volume held in the colon is about
a litre. The horse is slightly different. They have an enlarged developed colon and it’s
really... this is taking up the whole of the abdomen of the horse effectively. We can see
here that we have the caecum and parts of colon. If you stretch the caecum and colon
in a horse, it’s eight metres long. If you measure its volume, it’s 80 times the volume of
yours and mine colon. It’s important because this is where much of the digestion of the
horse takes place where there is fermentation of the grass, but it also acts as a trap. So
those horses that were eating coal, it ended up being entrapped within their colon and
they developed colic and many of them had to be destroyed because of it.
An attempt to try to improve their conditions may well have led many of them to their
demise. Horses, like people, got injured as well. They were subjected to trauma from
bullets, shrapnel and whatever. It’s shown quite nicely here. We can see an example of
a shrapnel wound of a horse which is being irrigated with probably saline in an attempt
to try to eradicate the infection. Much of the medicine is rather similar, because this
idea of infusing and irrigating wounds was also occurring in the human hospitals and
had been developed by two men called Alexis Carrel and Henry Dakin, with this method
for infusing wounds (this is in a human patient) so we have influx and drainage. It
seemed to be quite successful. And although that picture I showed of the horse with
the shrapnel wound shows a man with a syringe trying to irrigate the wound, in some of
the veterinary hospitals we are told that systems like this were instructed to have a
constant infusion and flow of fluid within the wounds to try to eliminate infection.
General anaesthetics for people were fairly hazardous in 1915 and certainly so for
horses as well. But some horses were treated under general anaesthesia and here we
see a picture of one where the patient is under chloroform. It certainly would not have
been a place where, for example, abdominal surgery would be undertaken. We were
far off undertaking abdominal surgery in horses in 1915.
When we talk of the First World War, so often we think about chemical warfare, of
poison gas, and this could affect man and animals. As we see here, a lot of research had
been undertaken in an attempt to provide protection for horses with respirators, just as
we had them for men. One of the real problems with developing any form of respirator
for a horse is the amount of saliva that is producing normal and these tend to clog these
respirators up very rapidly. And if we then look at some of the data of injuries to horses
we can see during this 18-month period that the number of horses which were either
killed or wounded as a result of gas attack comes to a total of about 2,000. By contrast,
the number of horses which were killed or wounded as a result of gunshots, blast, and
shrapnel was 180,000. So the gas was not a great problem for the horse on the
numbers issue. In fact, people wrote, certainly by late 1917, saying the money and
resources we were spending on trying to develop a respirator for these horses really is
not value for money. That just puts it into perspective of the number of animals that
were injured.
We have talked about Reginald Hancock and that picture was taken in 1843. He went
back into practice and became president of the British Veterinary Association. This is
the memorial board which was unveiled on 7th April 1921. This is to the 67 veterinary
surgeons who died during the First World War. It now sits in the headquarters of the
Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, which is in Horseferry Road. For those of you with
a medical knowledge, it is just opposite the Westminster Hospital. For those of you with
a criminal record, it’s down from the Horseferry Magistrates’ Court!
Let us look at this board here naming these men who made the ultimate sacrifice. I’d
like to introduce you to this gentleman here. This is Lieutenant Vincent Fox, who is
commemorated here in the part of the board here of the men killed in action. Vincent
Fox is important because he is the first veterinary surgeon to be killed during the First
World War. He died in August 1914. Vincent Fox is or was an Irishman. He was born in
1889 just outside Dundalk. His father was a farmer and also a horse trainer, and was
killed, being struck in the chest by a kick from a horse. That was when Vincent was
about eight. He was from a large family, one of 10. He entered and gained access to
the Royal Veterinary College in Ireland in Dublin in 1907, where he read veterinary
surgery for four years and qualified in 1911. He then went to work in Calcutta for about
18 months and then returned to the home and what was then the United Kingdom in
the summer of 1914.
He was one of the first veterinary surgeons to sign up to join the Army just prior to the
outbreak of war. He obtained his uniform from London here towards the end of July.
He had a bill for £22. Interestingly it was not settled! It was probably back to the
mindset of “it will all be over by Christmas and I will pay it then”. He was one of the first
to leave from the United Kingdom to France. He left on 8th August. By about 21st
August, attached to the 8 Infantry Brigade as their veterinary officer, he was up here at
Mons. There was then a retreat from Mons down here. The first and second army
coming south being chased by the Germans. He was the veterinary officer attached to 8
Brigade as part of the second army. On 26th August 1914, he reached, along with his
men, an area just to the east of Audencourt called Le Cateau. An order was given saying
they will stand and fight. This is the Battle of Le Cateau on 16 August 1914. We find the
war diaries, over 100 years old, still beautifully preserved, and very clearly written, and
they describe some of the action. They describe here how brigade headquarters was
established at a place called Audencourt. The vehicles being parked in the yard. No
field ambulance and no medical officers being available, the wounded were taken into
the church, a very solid structure, and here Lieutenant V Fox AVC took charge and
dressed the wounded. The RAMC, for whatever reason, had been unable to keep up or
deploy with the 2nd Corps and it was down to a veterinary surgeon here to establish a
dressing station to treat the wounded. This he did certainly during most of the
afternoon until the church at Audencourt itself was shelled by the Germans. He was
killed. His body was found with not a mark on it, indicative probably of a primary blast
injury.
Amongst those who died on the same day on the same site was a chap called Ronald
Ross, who was the son of Ross, the Nobel Prize winner who discovered the transmission
of malaria. Vincent Fox is buried nearby in a Commonwealth war graves cemetery. “A
man could not well die a nobler death.”
I’d like to bring you back now to London, to the Royal Veterinary College. This is its old
front, the old facade, all long gone. I’d like to take you now to a little bit of detail. Here
we have a map. Here is Camden Town and the veterinary college is here. Here we have
St Pancras station, Euston Station and King’s Cross. Things have not changed a lot.
Head west, you have the high street here and Mornington Crescent. We come to a
shop; it’s still there, number 33, JA Lake and Co, watchmaker and jeweller. John Lake’s
son was born, Herbert Lake. Herbert Lake grew up here on 33 High Street, Camden. In
1901, he entered the Royal Veterinary College, just two streets from where he was
living. He qualified in 1905. He worked as a veterinary surgeon, certainly in London for
two or three years, and then read medicine at University College London. He obtained
membership of this college, of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1913. Then
in 1915, he obtained his bachelor of medicine.
He was then deployed by the Royal Army Medical Corps in France. He is now a medical
officer attached to the second cavalry field ambulance. He’s a veterinary surgeon and
he’s a doctor. We see from the war diaries that no sooner had he arrived in France that
he was being asked to give lectures on stable management and on looking after horses,
both to his own unit and to many others. He recognised some of the problems the
horses were coming up against, being maintained on these picket lines in really quite
atrocious conditions. The war diaries describe how he tried to bring some of the horses
down into the trenches, an experiment that was deemed not to be totally successful.
Herbert Lake was also an artist. This is one of his drawings. This is a sketch here of a
field ambulance and he did many of these during his time in France. But he also painted
in colour and this is his painting: April 1917, of the cavalry before Arras. This is a
depiction of the preparation of one of the last cavalry charges by British troops in
mainland Europe. You can see the intensity of the grey sky here, men exceptionally
cold, trying to warm themselves, with horses in a varying state of alertness, as they
prepare perhaps for the cavalry charge. So that is the cavalry before Arras.
I’ve talked quite a lot about horses and exactly how many horses served with British or
allied troops is not known. We do not know it. We do not actually know really even
how many people were killed in the First World War, but there would be closely on 1.5
million, I would suggest. But, of course, it wasn’t just horses; it was also mules, many of
which had come with muleteers from India up into France. This shows some of them
here with muleteers in Gallipoli. In the Middle East, we had a large number of camels,
very important in logistics.
One of the features of the First World War: It was at a time when entering into war was
the flying machine. The Royal Flying Corps had been established in 1912 and we see
that they make an increasing impact into the mechanism of war. This painting here is
how things have changed perhaps in the war, with the horse looking up and seeing
these planes coming in to attack.
Some of you may know that quite a famous veterinary surgeon, whose real name is A H
White, wrote his books under the pseudonym of James Herriot, back in the sixties and
seventies. You certainly, as a veterinary surgeon, were not allowed to advertise
anything, even your name. One book he wrote was Vets Might Fly. It describes his
period during the Second World War when he enlisted and served with the RAF. Alf
White had a hard time and courtesy of a number of surgeons who did not quite treat
some of his ailments correctly was invalided out never having got into an aircraft. You
may say that must have been an early flyer. In fact, no. This is probably the first
veterinary surgeon who certainly decided to fly for his country. This is Major Sidney
Smith, veterinary surgeon, who has the nickname of “Crasher”. This is a picture of him.
You can see he’s a fairly upright officer! Sidney Smith came from Lowestoft, where his
father was a veterinary surgeon. He studied at the Royal Veterinary College and he
graduated in 1907. He went back to work with his father and, at the same time, he
enlisted as a member of the Territorial Army for the Army Veterinary Corps. In 1912, he
transferred to the Royal Field Artillery. By the outbreak of war, he was actually in
command of a battalion based over in East Anglia. It appears that they were not
deployed to France. Later they were actually deployed to Greece.
Major Smith was obviously a man who liked a bit of action! He got a transfer to the
Royal Flying Corps and he trained as an observer with 8 Squadron. In February 1915, he
was deployed to France where he served with 8 Squadron for some seven months,
during which time he wrote one of the earliest papers on aerial reconnaissance.
Towards the end of 1915, he learned to fly. He became a pilot and we see that in April
1916 he is posted to what was become 27 Squadron. This is the sort of plane that he
flew, a Martinsdale Elephant. In the latter part or the middle part of 1916, of course,
the Royal Air Force was formed and this is 27 Squadron of the Royal Air Force. These
are called the Flying Elephants. He actually was the Commanding Officer of 27
Squadron between June 1916 and July 1917, during which time he was awarded the
DSO.
He was called Crasher because although he was a very good pilot and a good
reconnaissance officer, he was pretty hopeless at landing the things! The story goes
that early on with 27 squadron, a new Commanding Officer came in and Sidney Smith
took him around and the new CO asked to see what was in the hangar to which Sidney
Smith, “You probably don’t want to have a look.” Yes, I do. He found that in there,
there were three of their planes with their undercarriage broken and Sidney Smith
admitted it was him each time! This is why he was given the nickname of Crasher Smith.
The horse and other animals, certainly the horse, is well symbolised in commemoration
of war. If you go to Hyde Park Corner, you will see above the arch this statue there, the
Angel of Peace, which replaced the sculpt of the Duke of Wellington. This was put up in
1912. Move around Hyde Park Corner, you will come to this structure here. This is for
the Cavalry of the Empire of the First World War.
Where do veterinary surgeons fit in there? They fit in this with gentleman here, Adrian
Jones. He was a veterinary surgeon and a sculptor and a painter. He had qualified from
the Royal Veterinary College in about 1860, I believe. He had initially served with the
Army Veterinary Department, in India, serving with the 3rd Huzzars. He left the
profession and went into full-time art. He died in 1938 in Chelsea. He was responsible
for the quadriga on top of the arch and the sculpting of the Cavalry of the Empire,
another input from the veterinary profession into the remembrance of war.
Although we easily see those sorts of memorials, perhaps we lose sight of those men,
the 67 of them who made the ultimate sacrifice. But, of course, many others were
involved, as we have seen, giving much of their lives. We can remember people like
Vincent Fox at the Commonwealth war graves. “When you go home today, tell them of
us and say For your tomorrows, these gave our today.” It is a quote from John Maxwell
Evans, which is incorporated into the Prayer of Kohima ever since.
I will give you one more from this college. This is from Herbert Lake. It is taken and
painted we believe after the cavalry charge at Arras. One of many that he did, which I
think typifies the relationship between man and animal here in war.
Thank you for your attention. I will try and answer any questions, if there are any.
APPLAUSE
DR ALBERTI: Thank you very much indeed, especially for those parallels between the
different elements of the profession and the human stories. The biographical tales work
very well in this context against that mass slaughter. It humanises it very effectively.
In questions, because we have such a large and deep audience and Hayley will be
running with the microphone, if you would wait until she gets to you and then speak
into the microphone quite closely so that we can all here the question. We have some
moments.
DR WATKINS: Yes.
DR ALBERTI: Who is first?
FLOOR: Was anything done to help them with the noise and so on? Did they have ear
mufflers?
DR WATKINS: Not that I’m aware of, no. My research in that area has not been that
deep. I can imagine that people may have done some attempts to do that, but not that
I’m aware of.
FLOOR: I’m just interested to know what proportion of horses were in the war, mares
versus geldings and so on.
DR WATKINS: I would have thought that the majority would have been geldings or
mares. Although early on, probably the selection process was probably pretty poor and
the stallions may have got in there. With time, they sort of learned from their mistakes.
Certainly, one of the things that they found early on is that horses, which they were
taking, which they were told were used to drawing carts had never been put in a
harness beforehand. It would change with time.
FLOOR: Is there a figure for the life expectancy of a horse?
DR WATKINS: That I don’t know. I don’t have that figure, I’m afraid. I don’t know what
it would have been. Of course, overall, unfortunately for so many of them, even when
war had finished, they were either just destroyed or, as we see in parts of in the Middle
East, just sort of let go and they almost became wild and that was the reason why the
Brooke Animal Hospital was founded in Cairo in 1927 or something, because of what we
had left behind.
FLOOR: Were any of the horses repatriated at all?
DR WATKINS: Some were but not many. I cannot give a figure. It was a very small
number which did come back. Yes, I think probably you will find that they may have
been officers’ charges or something like that, or ones that had quite an attachment to a
person. I expect rank probably helped in the pecking order of getting them back.
DR ALBERTI: I have a question, if I may. My question is about the Carrel-Dakin
technique you showed. It was very difficult to set up at first for the human casualties.
How on earth do you get it set up for horses?
DR WATKINS: Because you can put a horse in a sling so you can actually then almost
take some of its weight off the ground so it cannot really move. It would probably help
a little bit. It would only have been done in the hospital facility. I’m not sure how many
were done. But I think what certainly was the case is that the veterinary surgeons were
a little bit feeding off from the development in human medicine and surgery. For
example, they were using bismuth paste for treating the wounds because that was
successful in treating human wounds.
DR WATKINS: I’m fascinated that that made its way across.
FLOOR: In the play and film ‘War Horse’, was it actually true that these horses were
acquisitioned without the owner’s consent? Were they generally – was it assented to
and did the Army and battalions have their own horses?
DR WATKINS: They did have some of their own horses but the expansion of such that
they had to then requisition them. Often they used agents and they had special arm
bands with “R” on them and they were the requisition agent. Some of them were
somewhat dubious in their ethics and morals of how they went around getting these
horses and how they would promise money. It was a great... There would be a number
of ways. Some people were just offering up their horses as part of the war effort and
response to war.
FLOOR: What was the greatest cause of the loss of the horses during transport? How
much could that have been prevented?
DR WATKINS: Infectious disease was probably the most overall and bringing these
horses together, putting them into ships, especially down in the hold and so forth,
reduced air flow. You can get spread of these diseases, such as Glanders or Strangles,
which is another bacterial disease which spreads rapidly. Probably that is going to be
the major cause of mortality and morbidity amongst those animals at that time.
FLOOR: Given the number of vets that you say were involved and it obviously depleted
the stock of vets in the country, did that affect the veterinary services in England?
DR WATKINS: Yes. There was. If you read back, veterinary surgeons are quite good at
whingeing, especially amongst their own profession! There was an impact there. There
was a great thing of we should be contributing to this war effort and so forth. One of
the problems that did come about in the First World War was that many of the
veterinary students offered up and went to work and serve. They are not
commemorated on that board because that is just those who are members of the Royal
College of Veterinary Surgeons and there was a problem after the war in that the
numbers coming through were reduced because we had lost students and they had
gone off and perhaps been killed and injured and decided not to pursue the course.
Yes. The difference probably for the veterinary profession was that for the First World
War, coming as it did merely 15 years after the end of the South African wars, they were
more still attuned to serving in that way. When we come to look at the Second World
War, there was a greater time gap; there was almost a generation perhaps between
1918 and 1939 of them going off. I have not looked in full detail as to the full impact in
the First World War of them going away. Effectively, it’s one in two. There were about
2,700 men on the register at the time in 1918, which half went off to serve.
Just to point out, I’m not being sort of unkind to the ladies. We did not have lady
veterinary surgeons until 1921, I believe. 1923 – thank you. That was the first time we
had a female veterinary surgeon.
DR ALBERTI: I have a question, if I may. Was it Vincent Fox who decided to treat human
casualties?
DR WATKINS: Absolutely.
DR ALBERTI: Was it common for veterinary surgeons who were not double trained to be
deployed - not deployed - but in emergency situations to have to treat human
casualties?
DR WATKINS: Yes, that is the case. His was the first case but needs must would have
had some impact, but probably not to that level where you have the brigadier saying the
veterinary surgeon is to treat the casualties. There are other examples and certainly we
have seen much more of that in the Second World War as well.
FLOOR: Can you tell me about the gas used?
DR WATKINS: The chlorine gas would cause a lot of froth and it would cause oedema of
the lungs and difficulty in breathing. The other gas was the mustard gas, which doesn’t
tend to affect the respiratory system but causes some nasty burns on the skin. The
chlorine one, of course, is this causing pulmonary oedema and you drown in your own
fluid on the lungs.
FLOOR: Was it treatable?
DR WATKINS: Not in the field. Later on, they attempted methods of treatment.
Certainly, with the mustard gas, they could try to treat that. It did mean taking the
horse or horses well away from the front and spending a lot of time and a lot of work
dressing the skin. Until that is completely back to healthy, you cannot put a saddle on it
and that horse is like a lorry without an engine until that has been done.
FLOOR: I know the German Army used the horses a lot in the Second World War. Were
they used in the British Army?
DR WATKINS: A very interesting point about the German horses, because in the Second
World War each German division probably had 5,000 horses involved in the logistics. It
could be argued that – I wish I could read German. I think to some extent of Dunkirk
was the result of the Germans, although the tanks had gone forward, the logistics and
the ammunition was slow in coming back up being horse drawn. In the Second World
War, yes, it was a mechanised force that went off. It was mechanised because when we
went to France in 1939, bakers’ vans, butchers’ vans had a dash of paint on it!
I can tell you in December 1939, we bought 2,500 mules from India up to Marseilles and
up to the fighting in northern France. At the same time, we sent 9,000 horses from
Britain through France on the train down to Marseilles and then on ships across to
Palestine where we reformed the 1st Cavalry Division. It stayed as horse mounted
certainly until the middle of 1941. It was in June 1941 that one of those units, the Earl
of Cheshire Yeomanry went into battle. That was the last time that the cavalry went
into battle on horseback. Of course, we then also used a lot of mules out in the Far East
as pack animals and also associated with things like the Chinga operations.
FLOOR: How well-nourished were the horses in the First World War? Did they get
enough food?
DR WATKINS: Probably not. One of the issues that faced the Army was getting enough
food out there. I do believe that my colleague will help me here. Transporting more
food for horses -- more for horses than for men in the First World War?
FLOOR: Certainly, more weight of food was moved it. It was far greater for the horses.
Huge.
DR WATKINS: There is the problem when they end up being picketed on a side mine.
You start taking in coal, which does not do you any good as a horse. Horses in the
Middle East would often try to eat grass growing on the edge of the desert and would
take in a lot of sand. Their lower parts and their colon would fill up with sand and they
would get a condition called sand colic and that would not help their condition. They
were probably not adequately nourished.
DR ALBERTI: A final question perhaps.
FLOOR: Was sand colic treatable?
DR WATKINS: It can be treated. They found that moving horses away from the area
where they were bringing in the sand and taking them certainly to some of the
convalescence hospitals where they were able to, certainly in the Middle East, these
were then close to the Nile, one was based at a place called Mardi, which is now the site
where the hospital is where President Mubarak lives, they had a lot of green fodder
there. That could allow sand to be shifted and they could evacuate it.
DR ALBERTI: Well, we have given you a rapid-fire question time! I can only hope that
our next lunchtime lecture will be as successful. Another esteemed speaker, Professor
Harold Ellis will tell us about royal surgeons and that is on 28 April.
For the meantime today, I would very much like to ask you to complete the evaluation
questionnaires under your chairs. Oh no, they’re not. I would like you to think happy
thoughts about what a wonderful time you’ve had here!
I’d like to thank our speech-to-text colleagues as ever. I would like to thank Jane and
Hayley for organising it. I would like to thank you for coming in fine numbers. Thank
you to our speaker. Thank you very much, indeed.
APPLAUSE