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Comment by 082349872349872 | Hacker News Reader

Wow. We somehow failed to notice that horses don't fit in foxholes, but we did eventually get rid of ours when we noticed they weren't really cut out for NBC suits.

(Youtube is failing miserably for Parade Song of the Camp Animals. Kipling actually had tunes in mind for them, something none of the interpreters in my bubble seem to have noticed.

For instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av2-A-igOJk

    By the brand on my shoulder, the finest of tunes
    Is played by the Lancers, Hussars, and Dragoons,
    And it's sweeter than "Stables" or "Water" to me--
    The Cavalry Canter of "Bonnie Dundee"!

    Then feed us and break us and handle and groom,
    And give us good riders and plenty of room,
    And launch us in column of squadron and see
    The way of the war-horse to "Bonnie Dundee"! )

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The Army has had more horses than tanks for a while:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-229...

> The British Army has not used horses in a combat role since World War I

Note that this isn't true - several British Army combat units genuinely fought on horseback during WWII.

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1941/aug/06...

And I believe you can still do a combat horse riding course at one of the US special forces schools today.

One good explanation for having so many horses is simply that a tank carries four soldiers while a horse only carries one!

In reality we have one regiment minus (just two squadrons) of horse mounted cavalry, just one troop plus of horse-drawn field artillery, and a mounted band. Doesn't seem excessive.

mechanised by 1942: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Somerset_Yeomanry#Palest...

Right... that's 3 years into WWII, isn't it?

Yes. Expanding upon your comment, not disagreeing with it. Thanks for the Hansard!

According to the mongols, one can't maintain tempo with only one horse per trooper.

(so, does the Cheshire Yeomanry still drill "column of squadron"? I neglected the minor detail above that we still do field mounted recce, which in dual-use is how we train most of our civilian farriers.)

We try not to line up neatly these days to avoid getting bombed or shelled!

Indeed, it’s quite a nice thing for ceremonial and historical purposes

As part of my Young Officer training in the Royal Artillery I had to learn to ride (although ‘riding’ is not the best description, more bouncing around)

> more bouncing around

Thinking of "never trust a clergyman whose toes don't point out when he rides," that's probably a good sign.

So... what's 2+2? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24440882

Indeed, US Special Forces utilized horses in Afghanistan in October 2001:

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/10/18/...

"be prepared to use indigenous animals for transportation"!

Apparently one of first requests was an appeal for western style saddles as the afgan ones where painful to ride on.

There is also case of an actual cavalry charge being performed by the northern alliance

That's odd, afghan saddles strike me as far more closely related to western[1] than to english.

(I've heard buzkashi matches are usually won by men in their late 40s or early 50s. Given the physical nature of the sport, I believe that says something about spontaneous organisation afghan political culture.)

Edit: oh, the saddle thing was a size issue. I'd've told them to embrace the suck, because better the saddle fit the mount[2] than the trooper :-)

[1] lending credence to the persian->arabic->iberian->western hypothesis.

[2] taking that to the extreme, one gets the proposed saddle design by a european general, which was suitable for leaving on the mounts in camp, even being rollable, but undoubtedly would've required much-better-than-conscript troopers. (the wrong tradeoff for modern times: compare Napoleon vs Mamluks.)

or Corb Lund's Horse Soldier

along with its companion Horse Doctor Come Quick, suitable for the 2020 wave of self-prescriptions.

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