Yeomanry Horse Shortages on Mobilisation.

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While trawling through Hansard on another research line I stumbled on a surprising amount of questions raised in Parliament on the subject of Yeomanry mounts. Between 1904 and the outbreak of the Great War there were dozens of questions put to the Minister of War in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons regarding the Yeomanry's horses - or lack of them.

As late as April 1914 there was no permanent establishment of horses maintained for the Yeomanry. This surprised me as I had always believed that the Govt had made some provisions of Yeomanry mounts. The strength of the Yeomanry as of 1st April 1914 was 24,457 and the Govt had no horses for them. In the previous year 20,432 Officers and men attended a Yeomanry Camp with horses. Of these 7,899 were the property of Officers NCOs and men, 12,432 were hired (paid for by the Govt) just 11 horses were owned by the Govt and 88 were the property of the County Associations. To save you the maths that means 60.8% of the horses had to be hired and 38.7% were owned by the Officers and men. Incidentally, if one assumes that most of the Officers (roughly 5% of all ranks) provided their own horses, approximately one third of the ORs provided their own mounts. Put another way, two-thirds needed to have a horse provided by the Govt.

This is where the problems begin to compound. The hired horses were hired out a number of times to different Yeomanry regiments. Other Parliamentary questions tabled by the aptly named Mr Hunt MP and Mr Mount MP (among others) revealed that it was common practice for more than one Yeomanry regiment to hire the same horses for back-to-back training periods, particularly the two week annual camps. Three London Yeomanry regiments used the same horses in one year. This created the illusion that there were sufficient horses for the Yeomanry on mobilisation.

The problems were further exacerbated. Often Yeomanry regiments would borrow horses from line Cavalry regiments for parades and training etc. In Apr 1914 it was revealed that the Westminster Dragoons and the Roughriders borrowed 164 horses from the 4th Dragoon Guards and 138 horses from the 18th Hussars respectively. That represented 35.2% and 29.6% of the War Establishment strength of 446 horses required per regiment on mobilisation (24 Officers and 442 ORs per regiment).

Earlier in 1909 when the Norfolk Yeomanry paraded, 96 of the 400 horses on parade came from the 16th Lancers. In their 1909 annual Camp of the 352 horses 150 were owned by the Officers and men, 173 were hired and 29 were borrowed. The situation on the eve of the Great War was clearly nothing new.

The Govt's response to this was to claim that horses were available in the surrounding counties. Sadly for the Govt the process of earmarking the horses was poor and many horses were earmarked by more than one unit. In 1912 the Adjutants of the Yeomanry had to spend 4 days a week for 2 months registering horses in the counties. It wasn't successful as questions continued right up to the outbreak of War.

The diaries and histories allude to major problems requisitioning horses on mobilisation. I thought that the info above would help quantify the magnitude of the problem. If anyone has anecdotal evidence of these difficulties during mobilisation and after they would be gratefully received. Similarly any evidence from Cavalry sources would be helpful. In Apr 1914 the Regular Cavalry at Home was established at 11,634 but there were only 10,270 horses. The shortages presumably were made up from the same earmarked horses or taken from the Yeomanry. A number of the histories complain about casting parades and losing significant numbers of mounts to the regular cavalry.

Any expansion on the above would be gratefully received. Thanks in advance.

MG

PS All data sourced from Hansard HC debates 1904 - 1914.