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Old 07-06-2006, 10:45 AM   #19
davem
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Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
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davem is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.davem is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
I'm not sure we can say that 'pack horses' wouldn't have made good mounts. By the time of the Somme the British army was taking any horses it could get, so its not too far fetched to imagine a trained hunter ending up as a pack horse.

Plus, Cavalry was very much present on the Somme (at least on the British side). Haig intended to use it.

Quote:
War Committee minutes record: 'the horses out in France were of no use now. They were only there for prospective use when we had broken through. We were maintaining in France an enormous number of horses which were temporarily useless.' Haig disputed this - he explained to the British General Staff 'the advance was to be pressed eastward far enough to enable our cavalry to push through into the open country beyond the enemy's prepared lines of defence.'...

Horses were an ever visible feature of the battlefield. The highest British fatalities on the Western Front were the horses, of whom 58,274 were killed during the course of the war, at least 5,000 on the Somme, mostly by artillery fire. (From Somme by Martin Gilbert)
So the presence of Cavalry horses at least makes it possible that Tolkien could have gotten himself a mount. The only questions then are, would he have taken one & ridden out alone? Possibly for reconaissance. And, was it likely he would have encountered mounted German troops? I don't know. Its possible that if the British were using riders then so were the Germans - whatever the condition of the terrain a horse could still negotiate it better than a man on foot or a rider on a motorcycle & a rider would be faster & less noisy than a motorcyclist. One assumes that the Germans would want to be able to access any area where an Allied soldier could reach.

Which proves nothing at all beyond the possibility that the event could have happened.
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