04/18/2026
I know I'm obsessed with hooves and I love old pics that show hooves. What do you see in these 4 feet? Yeessss for the Karen's I know the angle and posture skews the picture but you can see 4 different hairlines and 4 different dorsal or toe angles.
A great photograph of an Australian Light Horseman in full uniform and kit mounted on his horse, during WW1.
While most Australian Light Horse service occurred in the Middle East, the 4th and 13th Light Horse Regiments served on the Western Front in France and Belgium.
They endured the harshest European winters in 30 years, often using 'scrounged' tarpaulins as horse rugs to survive.
During WW1, many soldiers of the Australian Light Horse decorated their slouch hats with a plume of emu feathers. Mounted troops in Queensland began the tradition before the war started, and members of the Armoured Corps still wear them today.
As soon as the war ended, many Australian Light Horsemen learnt with dismay that their mounts would not be returned home with them.
Lack of shipping and the high cost of transportation, as well as fears about introducing exotic diseases which might threaten the nation’s livestock, meant that those walers serving with AIF units were either to be sold off, transferred to other armies, or – if age and condition did not warrant either of these courses – humanely destroyed.
The same policy had applied to the 224 horses sent with the New South Wales contingent to the Sudan in 1885, and the more than 37,000 walers used in the South African War of 1899—1902.
Just one Australian horse out of 136,000 sent away to the First World War was brought back. That was 'Sandy', the mount of Major-General W. T. Bridges, who died at Gallipoli in May 1915.
Lest We Forget.
Photograph came from the Australian War Memorial. Image file number AWM A03313.
