Remembering 100,000 Veterans: Sandy the War Horse and All the Other "Walers"

Sandy

By James Patton

In 2011 Stephen Spielberg’s film War Horse was a box office smash hit, grossing $177.6 million. Spielberg’s subject character was fictional, but the move sparked an outpouring of stories written about the real "war horses." It has been estimated that at least eight million horses must have died in the First World War.

According to the Australian War Memorial, Australia sent about 136,000 horses overseas during that war. Most of these were Australian "Walers," a breed developed on the cattle stations in the outback of New South Wales that are roughly equivalent to American cow ponies. Walers were strong, quick, fast, nimble, possessed of great stamina and adapted to arid conditions. In 2015 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced a feature-length documentary The Waler: Australia’s Great War Horse, which has never been broadcast in the U.S.

Only one of these 136,000 horses was ever returned to Australia. He was a Waler, a bay named Sandy. At 16 hands he was slightly taller than an American Quarter Horse. Due to his gentle disposition, he was picked by Major General Sir William Bridges KCB CMG (1861–1915), the commander of the 1st Australian Division. He had three mounts, but Sandy was his favorite. (See Jim Patton's earlier article on General Bridges HERE.)

Sandy’s back story is brief. He was foaled in 1907 in the "old" village of Tallangatta, Victoria, near the border with New South Wales, which was submerged by Lake Hume in the 1950s. He was owned by the O'Donnell Brothers, brickmakers.

At the outbreak of war in 1914, the O'Donnells sent Sandy to the war effort, and he was on the first convoy of ships to sail for Egypt. Somewhere along the way, he caught the eye of Bridges, though with a longish, slightly hooked nose, Sandy wasn't classically handsome.

He never landed at Gallipoli; he was one of 6,100 horses sent there, but the ship was turned around before they could be landed, as it was obvious that there would be no place for them at ANZAC Cove. He was returned to Egypt and was shipped to France six months later, where he was attached to the Australian Veterinary Corps Hospital at Calais. Though he was not used in the fighting, he was ridden by the veterinary personnel. One of his riders died in a gas attack but Sandy survived.

Walers of the Australian Light Horse

In October 1917 the Australian Minister of Defence, Sir George Pearce KCVO (1870–1952), decided that Sandy should be shipped home and stabled at Duntroon. There is a symmetry here. Bridges, who was fatally wounded at Gallipoli, was one of just two of the 60,000 Australians who died overseas in the First World War to be returned home for burial. His grave is at Duntroon, the Canberra-area military  college that he founded in 1910.

Sandy was taken from France to England in May 1918 and embarked on the voyage from Liverpool to Australia in September. He arrived in Melbourne in November, but the war was over so he never got to Duntroon, spending the rest of his life at the central depot called Fisher’s Stables, on Remount Hill, at Maribyrnong, Victoria, which is now a part of metropolitan Melbourne. He had been there before, in 1914, when he and many other horses sent to the war had begun that journey.

He lived there until 1923, when blind and sick, he was put down. Most of Sandy’s remains are still buried there, in an unmarked site, but his head was mounted by a taxidermist and, along with one hoof, was displayed at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. These artifacts are still there but have been in storage for a long time now. Another hoof was silver plated and given to the Royal Military College at Duntroon. The photo at the top is the only known photograph of Sandy taken when he was alive.

Today funds are being raised to erect memorial statues of Sandy at sites in both the "new" village of Tallangatta and at the site of the depot in Maribyrnong. There is also a memorial to all of the Walers and the Light Horsemen who rode them at Tamworth, New South Wales, and talk of another Waler memorial to be erected at Albany, Western Australia.

And what became of all of Australia's other war horses? Around 30,000 died in field service. Several thousand who were over 12 years of age or in poor health were put down. Some were sold off in France, mostly for slaughter. The rest were transferred to the British and Indian armies. The Australian government had judged it to be too expensive to ship the horses back to Australia where they would be surplus to military needs, glut the market and sold for cheap, thereby bankrupting horse breeders.

It is said that around 250 light horsemen couldn't bear to leave their Walers to an uncertain future in Palestine or Egypt so they shot them instead. This poem was written about one of these men:

I don’t think I could stand the thought of my old fancy hack

Just crawling round old Cairo with [Egyptians] on his back

Perhaps some English tourist out in Palestine may find

My broken-hearted Waler with a wooden plough behind

No: I think I’d better shoot him and tell a little lie

“He floundered in a wombat hole and then lay down to die”.

Sources: the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian War Memorial