ia_2009_b_jacob

=B. Summary of Evidence (500-600 words) Tips]=

Horses were heavily used during World War One. They had polyvalent **("many" is better - don't be pretentious)** purposes; they were used as cavalry horses, pulling guns and ambulances; in the battlefields of the Western Front. Horses were the underlying engines of the armies on both sides. I felt heavily drawn towards this topic as the impact of the war upon species other than humans has not been stressed enough, this has almost been ignored in history textbooks.

In the novel "War Horse", prior to the outbreak of World War One, Joey, the protagonist, through which the audience experiences and is recounted the events which this horse encounters, is sold to a farmer (** I have a video documentary in which a similar account is remembered - ask me to copy it for you so you can add it as a footnote **). This farmer has a strong dislike for Joey, as Joey had kicked the farmer in his leg. The farmer is ready to shoot or sell him off, if he doesn’t plough the fields in a week. Albert, the farmer’s son, has a soothing impact on the stressed horse and directly the foundation of a strong relationship is formed. One evening when Albert is obliged to bring back some pigs back to theparents friends, the farmer mounts Zoey, (the other horse in the farm) and convinces Joey to come with him. The farmer meets Captain Nicholls to which he sells the horse to for 40 pounds. Albert arrives just in time to say goodbye to Joey, concurrently the author creates a very emotional moment. Albert insist upon joining the army but he is too young, he is determined to join the army as soon as he is sixteen to find his horse Joey. Subsequently the horse makes the transition form a farm horse to cavalry mount. Captain Jamie Stewart rides a horse Topthorn. Joey immediately takes a shine to him. They depart for war in France. The British eventually approach the place of combat. After a miserably failed attack, only Joey and Topthorn, considered as the best mounts in the whole cavalry had survived. They were captured by the Germans, which made them pull ambulance carts. Joey and Topthorn are given to Emilie (a young girl) and her grandfather. The grandfather manages the farm and used Joey and Topthorn for ploughing the fields. Other German soldier come return to the farm and take Joey and Topthorn to pull the canons, in which both horses are overworked. Eventually Topthorn dies and Joey refuses to leave him behind. The enemy was firing at them and over the hill tanks appeared. Joey runs in blind fear, running away from the shelling, evading any sound. Joey finds himself in No Man’s Land, between an Irish and German trench, they flip a coin to settle upon who gets to keep the horse. Joey is transported to a horse clinic where he miraculously meets Albert. As a result of Tetanus Joey experiences a near death. Albert returns with Joey to his hometown, where they get applauded as heroes.

When the war broke out in Western Europe in August 1914, Britain and Germany had a cavalry force that each numbered about 100,000 men. Such a number of men would have needed a significant number of horses but probably all senior military personnel at this time believed in the supremacy of the cavalry attack. August 1914, no-one could have contemplated the horrors of the trench warfare; hence why the cavalry reigned supreme. In Great Britain the cavalry regiments would have been seen as the senior regiments in the British Armies, along with Guard regiments, and very many senior army positions were held by cavalry officers. The cavalry charge in Mons, 1914, was practically the last seen in the war. Trench warfare made such charges not only impractical but impossible. A cavalry charge was essentially from a bygone military epoch and machine guns, trench complexes and barbed wire made such charges impossible. However, some cavalry charges did occur, in March 1918, the British launched a cavalry charge at the Germans. Out of 150 horses used in the charge only 4 survived. The rest were cut down by German Machine gun fire.

On the western front, over 8 million horses died on all sides fighting in the war. Two and a half million horses were treated in veterinary hospitals with about two million horses being sufficiently cured that they could return to duty. (www.historylearningsite.co.uk/horses_in_world_war_one.htm )

Michael Morpurgo explains the extraordinary stories that inspired him "I can remember clearly when I first found out that in the First World War, along with the dreadful toll of human lives, there were other casualties too some two million horses." (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/10/13/bthorse113.xm) “I discovered also that at the end of the war most of our surviving horses were sold off to French butchers. Here was a strong story, I felt, the story of how it was to be a horse in the First World War.” (Michael Morpurgo, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/10/13/bthorse113.xml) “And so I wrote War Horse, like most of my novels a book that is as much for adults as for children. Now, 25 years later, War Horse has been turned into a play at the National Theatre. It would be difficult to imagine a production of greater ambition and complexity.” (Michael Morpurgo) (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/10/13/bthorse113.xml)

(2 battles on the western front, La Somme and the Battle of Passchendaele)