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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

We used horse cavalry in WW2 in the middle-east as well. At one point British horse cavalry was fighting Vichy French aircraft.

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Horses are great for rough terrain mobility, as are Camels and donkeys.

EDIT: People tend to see the Wehrmacht as this fully mechanized beast of an army. Truth is the vast majority of soldiers walked into battle, with animal drawn carriage for their stuff from food to field guns.

In WWI the horse was far more reliable than any mechanical vehicle. Armor was useful enough that WWI had a few tanks, but they broke down often. WWII was just enough later that mechanical vehicles were reliable enough to use - but only if you had new ones, if you were doing like Russia is in Ukraine now and running anything old you were in for problems.

Where exactly in the Middle East?

The British and French did in the Syria-Libanon campaign in '41. A superficial search didn't show an mounted cavalry in the North Africa campaign. All sides did use horse cavalry quite a lot at the Eastern Front, the Polish cavalry managed to stop German panzers for two days, the Poles and Germans even fought a cavalry-vs-cavalry battle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Krasnobr%C3%B3d_(193...). The Soviets did some raiding using cavalry, while the SS used horse mounted troops in their genocide operations.

Quite fascinating topic, horses in WW2. I'll have to some more research on this.

Last British cavalry charge carrying swords was 1941!

There’s a new book on cavalry in WW2 being published soon look out for it.

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