Nick Balmer email us with this account of this Grandfather.

"My Grandfather was a Veterinary Officer in the British Army throughout the First World War, and used to tell me all about the terrible struggles that he went through trying to maintain the horses health in the appalling conditions behind the front. As a small boy I found these absolutely fascinating. I have a diary of his, and also a copy of his memoirs which describes in quite some detail the terrible outbreaks of Equine Flu. He was one of the first trained vets from the famous veterinary school at Camden Town, where just before the war he trained under a brilliant teacher called M'Fadyean.

He became a Major in an Artillery Brigade so his horses had to be kept just behind the guns.  Regulations said that if possible fit horses should be kept in stables.  Sick horses were to be tethered out side. The disease was highly contagious and spread by horses sneezing. The disease spread before it was obvious in the stables where all the horses rapidly became infected in the stale still air.  Sick horses were then taken out into the cold and wet, which rapidly killed them off.

My Grandfather argued for a long time that this should be changed so that horses fit were kept outdoors.  This meant that the infection was less able to spread in the wind and sunlight.  They were better able to survive the cold.  Sick horses only went under cover where they were they were isolated from the fit horses thus slowing infection.  When his senior officer found out what he had done he was threatened with Court Marshall, until it was seen that his unit had more serviceable horses than any of the others.

Because of the terrible horse losses in the previous Boer war the Army had desperately tried to increase the number of vets in 1900.  These Boer War Vets were generally not trained in modern methods, and many were of doubtful quality.  They still remained in post at the beginning of the first world war.  Until they were replaced towards the end of the war by younger men the attrition in horses was as bad, if not worse than for men. For artillery horses a particular problem was the shards shrapnel from artillery shells left from counter battery fire and previous barrages which sliced into the soft part of the horses foot between the curve of the horse shoe. These cuts rapidly became septic or worse.  My Grandfather developed a malleable sheet iron disk which could be nailed between the shoe and the hoof which successfully protected the feet of his units horses.  He tried to get his design widely adopted. The Army decided it could do better by cutting up jam tins.  These were not strong enough, so the experiment failed. I have a picture frame made into a display case with 28 miniature horse shoes made by a Farrier Sergeant in the Army Veterinary Corps and used in the treatment of damaged and deformed hooves.  They are about 1 1/2 inches across and each varies in shape in some way or other from the others.

He volunteered to serve in the W.W.II and was told that his services were no longer needed because of the petrol engine.  The main reason that lead to this change by the Army was not the fact that trucks were thought to be better, but that over 75% of the shipping space for supplies sent to France in the W.W.I had to be taken up with hay for the horses.  It was realised that a far smaller volume of petrol could replace this huge amount of hay which had been a logistical nightmare".