The story of my horse Warrior will show that not only did his vivid personality help me to gain the confidence of thousands of brave men, when without him I could never have achieved it, but that by his supreme courage at a critical moment, he led me forward to victory in perhaps the greatest crisis of the War.
I thought from the first that we were in for a long war, but I did not think that we should be in France together for more than four years, nor did I dare to hope that we should both return alive. I rode Warrior in shellfire — sometimes so heavy that he was almost the only survivor — but never once did he attempt to bolt or do any of the things which might be expected of an animal reputed to be so naturally timid as the horse.
No, my stout-hearted horse not only kept his own fear under control, but by his example helped beyond measure. At the First Battle of Ypres, when the British army found themselves confronted by four times their numbers of most courageous men, with an overwhelming superiority of artillery gathered from all parts of their long battle line in France, then every man, from general to private soldier, and every horse, had to play his part. I did not know before that men could be so self-sacrificing and so brave.
They all knew that if they failed, and the Channel ports were captured, it was all over with the Allied cause, and, perhaps, with England too.
So they fought for weeks on end in blood, and mud, and misery with a spirit never equalled in the history of the British army.
