Battle Supremacy
At the beginning of WWI, senior military officers still believed in the supremacy of horses in battle. The Cavalry attack had proved to be a deadly tactic in all past wars in history, and the horrors of trench warfare were still not prevalent.
FRANCE – CIRCA 1914: French Lancers Ready to Follow Up a German Retreat. Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images
Very quickly it became clear that barbed wire machine guns and vast minefields would make the traditional “charge” a relic of a bygone era. A perfect testament to the carnage was a famous charge launched by the British in 1918, where only four out of 150 horses would survive!