To supply the military, Britain requisitioned civilian horses and imported horses from abroad. They also drew artillery six to twelve horses were needed to pull each field gun. Horses were used to pull ambulances, field kitchens, ordnance and supply wagons. Able to travel over rough ground and through deep mud, horses were more useful for draught work than motor vehicles were. During the battle of the Somme, so-called fire brigades of horses were used to transport troops rapidly to vulnerable parts of British front line. They were used for communication, carrying messengers, and for transport. Despite this, horses remained valuable to the military throughout the war. Soldiers in cavalry regiments fought largely on foot, or, later, in tanks. Germany stopped using cavalry as fighting units in 1917, but although Britain continued to use cavalry throughout the war, they had little success on the Western Front. The first significant use of chlorine gas by the Germans was at Ypres in April 1915 and it was first used by the British at Loos in September 1915. Poison gas was also a new weapon at this time. Cavalry was deployed alongside tanks at first, but tanks eventually took over the role of shock combat. In 1917, tanks, which could crush barbed wire and deflect machine gun fire, were introduced.

Trenches, shell-holes, barbed wire and machine guns proved deadly to both horses and riders and cavalry charges became ineffective. It was the changing nature of warfare that rendered traditional cavalry useless on the Western Front. The horse gas mask reflects some of the technological changes that occurred during the First World War. Both the Germans and the British used gas as a weapon during the First World War. The provenance of this gas mask is unknown, but it is thought to be a German model, collected by a British soldier perhaps as a souvenir. Gas masks issued to soldiers protected the eyes as well as the nose and mouth as some gases could cause blindness as well as pneumonia. Horses were less vulnerable than humans to the effects of gas. As with early gas masks used by the soldiers, it is likely that the fabric was soaked in a chemical such as phenol or sodium hyposulphite to neutralise the gas. The mask does not have a canister attached to filter out the gas. The open end has leather straps which were used to fit the mask on the horse’s head and metal fittings that were attached to the horse’s bridle. The gas mask is a fabric cylinder designed to be drawn up and over the horse’s nose and mouth, like a nose bag.

Gas mask ww1 b ag