The Soldier's Words

 The fictional pieces below, one an essay and the other a poem, reflect the efforts of soldiers to put into words what they imagined their horses and mules might be thinking, as well as their own patriotic hopes and dreams - words that kept the men from despairing at the futility of life in the trenches and warfare in general.

A Day In the Life of A Horse comes from a piece written shortly after the war and published in the Cavalry Journal, the official publication of the Cavalry Association. It purportedly is written by the horse himself, and is of course romanticized, but in its way, provides a glimpse of the places and tasks in which the war horses found themselves.

A Day In the Life of A Mule is a similar effort, written by an anonymous British muleteer sometime during the war and printed by Captain Sidney Galtrey in his book The Horse And The War, published in 1918.

It is not always in reading highly documented facts that we come to understand history. The daily experiences of ordinary people (and in this case, animals) have much to tell us, and often are much closer to what we ourselves might have experienced than facts about politics and famous men and women.

Click on the links below to open each piece.

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A Day In the Life of a Horse

While clearly fanciful, being written by a horse itself, this piece, published by The Cavalry Journal shortly after WW1, has aspects of fact and does give an idea of what the life of a horse might have been like during the war. Enjoy it for what it is, and look to other parts of this website for more factual information.

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A Day In the Life of a Mule

This short poem, if it can be dignified by that term, hints at what mules were perhaps experiencing during the war, or at least what their handlers assumed they were experiencing. As with the piece "written by the horse," there are aspects of fact and perhaps the ring of truth in places. Again, enjoy it for what it is, and look to other parts of this website for more factual information.

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