CHAPTER XIV 



" Cast and Sold " 



I HAVE thought it well to include in this book some reference to the methods 

 of disposing of " casters "—those animals which are cast by the Army 

 authorities as being no longer serviceable for military purposes. For that 

 reason it is a pleasure to avail myself of illustrations which are, indeed, 

 extremely clever in their conception and faithful to the smallest detail. They 

 show Captain Lionel Edwards at his best, not only as a distinguished artist 

 but as a particularly observant Remount officer. He, like every Remount 

 officer, must have intimate knowledge of this phase of remounting, or, shall I 

 say, dismounting, since the Army is taking a considered farewell of old 

 servants that for physical reasons can no longer serve. They are being given 

 their discharge. Every drawing tells its own eloquent tale of pathos or it 

 may be of humour. I have never known a sale of Army " casters " at which 

 both pathos and humour were missing. 



These sketches deal with a sale in England. Such a sale is tolerabh" 

 well known in the vicinity of a Remount Depot or a Veterinary Hospital, and 

 it represents, of course, the last phase in the career of the war-horse. In a great 

 theatre of war hke France casting is carried out on a big scale because several 

 hundreds of thousands of horses and mules are in our possession, and the 

 proportion of worn-out, too-old-at- fifteen or twenty years of age, incurably lame 

 or sick, and hopelessly wounded must be very considerable. The very large 

 majority of them are not sold at public auction as in England. They are 

 beyond rendering any more service either to the State or the civilian individual 

 and mercifully destroyed either for human food or for the by-products resulting 

 from the rendering down of their carcases. I have touched on that in a pre- 

 vious chapter with special reference to the large sum of £50,000 or more 

 •which every month is paid to the State in respect of the disposal of cast British 

 Army horses in France. It represents wastage to our horse resources, but a 

 ■small gain as a set-off to the dead loss. 



In England the horse has not actually been to war. He has been training 

 for the ordeal or he has been employed here for a long time doing his 

 job faithfully and well until there comes a time when joints and sinews, 

 perhaps at all times predisposed to lameness, collapse under the strain. 

 The war, you must remember, is over four years old at the time of writing this, 

 and a horse can be fresh and well at ten years of age but hopelessly worn out at 



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