Horses, Horses, Horses

In 1917 the U. S. Army's Remount Service consisted of one officer, one clerk. All through War I (which employed 4.624,220 horses and mules), the A. E. F. suffered from a shortage of animals, had to wangle thousands from the U. S.'s Allies. Today the Remount Service consists of 131 officers and 342 men. Last week Remount was able to report that the biggest part of its first defense emergency job had been completed: it had bought 20,000 up-to-specification animals. It will have them all trained and ready for service by June, in the meantime must buy 7,000 more.

Already Remount is going at a clip 14 times faster than a year ago. In its three depots (Front Royal, Va.; Fort Reno, Okla.; Fort Robinson, Neb.), 56 reserve officers are in training. It has 700 thoroughbred and purebred stallions (average cost $7.50 at stud), and it is looking a long way ahead. But not ahead of more experienced armies. Germany used 200,000 horses in the Polish campaign, more in France, now has approximately 800,000 in military service. Japan used horses heavily in China, plans to have 4,500 stallions at stud by 1945. Franco had to raise his cavalry from five to 60 squadrons before he could win his war.

Remount's breeding plan* was designed not so much to increase U. S. horse population (fallen from 20,000,000 in 1920 to 10,000,000 in 1940) as to improve the breed. Army stallions are lent to farmers, ranchers, breeders who have proper equipment and agree not to allow the promiscuity of pasture breeding. These agents of Remount charge mare owners $10 a foal: $5 at the time of service, $5 when the mare delivers the colt. Some agents, such as C. C. Townsend near San Angelo (who has five Government stallions) accept payment in chickens, eggs, or a calf. Some of the studs are aristocrats, the get of such lords of the turf as Sun Beau and Man o' War. Some compete in such high horse company as the National Horse Show in New York's Madison Square Garden.

On farms in the Middle West, at dealers' stables, in the ranch country of Texas and the Northwest, it's usually a big day when the "guv'-ment buyers" come by. They are officers from the Remount depots and area stations. Remount's buyers travel some 50,000 miles a year over highways and byways, up the creek forks, in fields, pastures, cactus and brush. Sellers know these men want a sturdy, clean-footed, straight-legged horse that "travels right" (straight, no pacers), has good bone, short backs for Army saddles, that they prefer a horse that is 1/2 to 7/8 thoroughbred, that 75% of the horses they buy are from the Remount's own studs. The horses must stand 15.1 to 16.1 hands high, weigh 1,050 to 1,300 pounds, be 4 to 8 years old, gentle.

For this kind of horse Remount pays an average $165 a head. Within those specifications it must find light riding horses (for the Philippines), riding horses (cavalry), heftier but active and fast horses for field artillery. The buyers know that some day these horses may have to travel as much as 100 miles in 24 hours, gallop a mile in three minutes.

Nearest thing to an oldtime cavalry post is a Remount depot. There ex-cavalrymen who have a way with horses "gentle break" Army mounts in 120 days, without rodeo roughstuff. Veterinarians supervise horse conditioning and treat their patients for all manner of ailments, sometimes working on them as they stand, sometimes casting them (i.e., throwing them down) to make them take their medicine. When horses arrive at the depots they often fall sick of what oldsters call "shipping cold" (sometimes resulting in pneumonia). This cured, they go into training, come out gentled, trained to harness, pack or saddle, ready for assignment to a service outfit.

As it should be. Remount is bossed by an ex-cavalryman, tall, tweedy Colonel Edwin Noel Hardy of Tennessee. Devout horseman, he glories in the 14,000 foals a year that Remount stallions are siring--a value of $1.500,000 at a cost of $80,000. In his Washington office he points proudly to a wall map stuck full of red pins. It is no tactical map; it is full of horse interest. Says West Pointer Hardy, "Wherever you see a pin, suh, theah stands a stallion."

* Remount does not have to worry about the breed of the hybrid mule ("no pride of ancestry, no hope of posterity"). It finds the usual breeds good enough, buys the best in sight.

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