Battlefield relics - horseshoes

[PhilB]

62 million horseshoes were sent to France during WW1. They should be one of the most enduring battlefield relics, but actually don`t seem to be. Can anyone advise me:-

1/ Are they commonly unearthed?

2/ Is it possible to identify a shoe as military?

3/ Would cavalry and draught (artillery) horse shoes differ significantly?

4/ Would shoes on a dead horse be re-used by the Army or French civilians?

5/ What exactly was the normal procedure for disposal of a dead horse? It must have been very difficult to bury.

[Simon R]

You might put studs in a shoe if it was pulling something - especially on metalled road surfaces. Don't know what you do in mud up to your ears.

[Max Poilu]

I have found a few shoes over the years but as you say it is virtually impossible to say they were Great War rather than any other period. I found a huge shoe on the ground overlooking High Wood and did keep that one - you never know, maybe it was lost by a charger in one of the famous 1916 cavalry assaults...

Most I left alone as one cannot know for sure the date.

[KONDOA]

Generalising!!

A draught horse shoe was about 2 X larger than one would expect from a cavalry shoe and thicker. The number of and size of nail holes would be larger or just larger.

A draught shoe may have a larger front lip whereas a cavalry shoe may have no lip or smaller.

One would expect a variety of sizes in fact because many army horses were not true draught horses but cross breeds additionally one should find mule shoes which are unmistakable for being so small.

Shoes generally should come up when ploughing if there is a plough pan, however in many areas of the Western Front the old plough pans were destroyed so as likely as not there is a substrata where all manner of heavy stuff is now lodged.

A horse carcass would simply be pushed/pulled aside and left or thrown in a shell hole. Some may have been butchered!!!

Roop

[Andrew Upton]

One would expect a variety of sizes in fact because many army horses were not true draught horses but cross breeds additionally one should find mule shoes which are unmistakable for being so small.

Thought I'd share this story, as this quote reminded me of this.

I'm currently a second year archaeology student at Exeter University. One of the modules I'm taking is Illustration, and we had a selection of iron objects to draw put out from the Teaching Collection. I spotted one unidentified item, found in a barn clearance about 20 years ago, and asked if anyone knew what it was. Most people thought it was a horse shoe for a very small horse (including the people running the course!).

It was, of course, a British military boots' heel iron! Probably worn by a farm labourer after WW1 or WW2. Mystery solved!