Re: RC: was Dates - How the Arabs treated their horses

[Truman Prevatt <tprevatt@mindspring.com>]

The key is not the romanization of the way anyone treated their war
horses,
but the romanization of war - which is quite common many years after the
fact. War is hell. War happens when one group - for political, ethnic,
religious, economic or a host of other reasons uses lethal force to
subdue
another people.  The solders are a tool of the war and the horses were
military assets to be used in accomplishing the mission.

The average life espenency of a soldier in battle can be quite short. It
has
been claimed that the average life expency of a young Army second
lituent off
the boat in Viet Nam was about 7 minutes after he went on his first
patrol.

War is hell and hell for all involved - man and beast ( if horses are
used to
fight the war).  A good friend of mine teaches military history and he
passed
on some interesting fact about the horses used by the US during the
cavalry
days. Assuming that a horse was not killed or injured in battle, and it
was
common for horses to be injured in battle, the average useful life of a
cavalry horse was six months. Some could rest and come back, some could
clearly go longer since this is an average, but in general the Army
planned
on replacing the horses at six month intervals. Next time I talk to
Eric,
I'll ask him about the history of the use of horses in the Arabian
tribal
wars and the wars against colonization.

So war is hell for both the warriors and the war horses.

Truman

Irene M Burnett wrote:

> Shelley, You're right about the Bedouins not mistreating their horses.
> If you are looking for some authentic information about how the horses
> were treated and handled, here is where to look.  Just the facts, Ma'am,
> not a bit of Romance.
>