Horses in the 2nd World War
There were millions of horses used in the Second World War, used by every army except the British, though even we had a Mounted Brigade in Palestine, mainly Yeomanry (TA), perhaps 2000 horses. There were some local levies mounted, and the Indian Army had a small number of cavalry, mainly for internal security. In addition mules were used in some areas, particularly as you mentioned in Burma. Our Expeditionary Force in France in 1940 had a mule company from the Indian Army, but they were the only equine unit. We used none in NW Europe after D Day, Neither the British or the Americans, used horses except a few were used in the Italian Campaign.
Not so other nations. The French and Belgian armies used horses until their defeat in 1940. But The Germans and the Russians used horses, not just as cavalry but to pull guns and supply wagons. There were whole Divisions of Cavalry in both the Russian and German Army, and were much used on theEastern Front.
It would be impossible to work out total equine casualties, A rough calculation is all that can be achieved. But to give you a flavour of numbers, in an Infantry Division of the German Army, that is a Division of perhaps 15,000 men that, when it got off the train, proceeded on foot, the establishment of horses was 5,000. Given that they had perhaps 100 such Divisions that means half a million horses for the infantry alone, most of them pulling supply carts. Add to that that the fact that most of the German field artillery was horse drawn. They produces about 365,000 artillery pieces in the war. It’s a fair assumption that at least 1/3rd of these were horse drawn. Each gun was pulled by six horses. It also required another four at least for the crew. It needed supply carts for ammunition, perhaps three, with two horses each. So every gun required 16 horses in immediate support. This gives figure of just under two million! Add to this the German cavalry say 70,000 horses (rough estimate) and all those required in the supply chain, and shall we say two and half million? Casualties? I suspect that at least 70% of these died, mostly from starvation and overwork.
The Russian figures are even harder to be precise about but they must have had something like three million. They had 13 Divisions of horsed cavalry alone. I suspect that as they were winning perhaps attrition was lower, shall we say 50%? So it would not be unreasonable to say that the Germans lost 1,750,000 horses and the Russians 1,500,000 horses on the Eastern Front. Add to these the probable losses in other theatre and perhaps something like 3,500,000 equines died in the Second World War. But I emphsize that this is an estimate only.
Brigadier John Smales.