Tony Hellard emailed us his studies on the British Military horse during World War One.

Tony says "A lot of developments (in modern warfare) were in their infancy and mistrusted by the Military thinkers and planners of the early 1900's, so the cavalry was still seen as the mobile shock force that had a decisive role on the battlefield.

The horse was still seen as a weapons platform by some blinkered leaders but not all as some historians would have us believe.

Evidence is produced to state that Generals such as Haig and Plumer were just cavalrymen who would not relinquish old ideals of the Mounted Trooper charging to victory and glory.

I take a view that they were more realistic than that and realised that once the battlefield became fluid and the stalemate was broken the only mobile force available was mounted on the honest horse.

If you talk to cavalrymen who served in the First World War they were trained in dismounted action and were very good at it.

The cavalry excuse is used to cover up the fact that Haig had to train a volunteer later to become a conscripted novice army under the guns of the German field army which was based upon a national manhood that had military training from boyhood.

Facts like the action at Zandvoorde in 1914 by the Blues dismounted using classic infantry fire and manoeuvre and the conduct in covering of the retreating army in 1914 and 1918 was skilled use of cavalry in dismounted rearguards (their horses used as a means of escape  not a weapons platform).

When you look at the fact that a tank's speed was 2-3 miles per hour the same as a fully laden infantryman the horseman was still the only means of speed in the field".