62 THE HORSE AND THE WAR 



is well over the half -million. It is of those base depots that I would like to 

 write now, because, apart from their great importance, they obviously repre- 

 sent the starting-off point in the career of every gallant horse and worthy 

 mule on active service. 



It would seem an obvious thing in the well-ordered sequence of transit 

 from the Remount Depots of the United Kingdom to the advanced field 

 sections, where the guns never cease their dread din and clamour, to start with 

 the various Base Depots in the North of France. From them the horse which 

 was once, perhaps, helping to carve out the straight furrow amid surroundings 

 undefiled by war, or was not long ago running half-wild on the grass plains 

 of the Middle and Western States of America, really emerges into the stern 

 realities of battle. We will certainly in due time keep company with him 

 in his march nearer and nearer to the Line, and, when wearied and worn 

 or wounded and scarred, follow him to those splendid hospitals and rest 

 farms from which he eventually issues re-invigorated for more of the almost 

 unbearable strain. 



For the present, however, let us pass directly from the North to somewhere 

 else in France. There also is a Base Remount Depot, which in character is 

 wholly unlike any other existing from a line a few miles west of Suez. It 

 is the Base Indian Depot. Its beginnings were on a modest scale, the per- 

 sonnel landing on November 25, 1914. At the outset there was a long period 

 of marked activity and usefulness. Then it gradually lost its importance 

 until it was on the point of flickering out altogether when circumstances 

 arising out of events in the Near East and Northern Italy caused it to assume 

 bigger proportions than ever before. 



So, at the time of my visit, I found the establishment deeply interested 

 in its re-birth. It was brimming over with activity and the hurly-burly of 

 strenuous days. Makeshift had of necessity crept in to stem the torrent of 

 increasingly incessant demands on space and personnel. Polish and " eye- 

 wash " there was none. There was no time for either. Kraals for mules and 

 long lines for horses had come up in a night as it were, and when day came 

 there was much to do. Every day was an object lesson of " drive " and 

 untiring restless energy. 



One was bound to be impressed with the weird and odd contrasts after 

 being used to orthodox Remount Depots. I might, for instance, have looked 

 for neat and weU-ordered Squadrons, — lines of stabling, carefully-erected 

 buildings, up-to-date feeding and watering arrangements, and pleasant enough 

 surroundings such as are associated with all other Base Remount Depots of 

 my acquaintance. The contrasts, as I have said, were sharp, even vivid. 

 Spread over a considerable acreage were spacious kraals or paddocks. They 

 had that Indian bazaar-like suggestion of " makeshift," but, when a really 

 big emergency comes and you successfully counter and overcome it, " make- 

 shift " is a thing to be proud of. And so it is all to the credit of the officer- 

 sahibs, the really admirable Indian officers, and those wonderful workers, the 

 syces, that they have done such line things in promptly carrying out the 

 ideas and requirements of the Remount Directorate. 



It cannot be too clearly understood what was demanded of the old 



