the field artillery journal - Fort Sill - U.S. Army

In the Field
BY GERALD E. GRIFFIN, VETERINARIAN, 3RD FIELD ARTILLERY
BEFORE a light battery takes the field, even for a short
march, it is necessary that it should be fully and properly
equipped with artillery horses; these horses should be in hard,
working condition and they should be trained to the work
expected of them.
The conformation of a light battery horse is, it is hoped,
familiar to the field artillery officer and for this reason it is not
deemed necessary to discus it here.
Those officers of militia field artillery who have attended
the camp of instruction at Tobyhanna, Pa., for the past three
years will probably remember the stress placed upon light draft
conformation. If they have given due consideration to this
subject, they undoubtedly realize that any marked deviation
from the type continually brought to their notice will have a
strong tendency to minimize the efficiency of an otherwise
good organization.
The familiar statement "You must reach the firing position
before you can do effective firing," should not be lost sight of
for a moment while in the field. At present the firing position
must be reached by means of horse power.
In some states when a militia battery is about to take the
field, arrangements for its horse supply are usually made by
some one whose knowledge of field artillery horses is, to say
the least, no better than it ought to be. Horses with which to
equip such a battery are procured by contract from some
individual who, as a rule, collects a number of nondescript jades,
whose worn frames barely fill the harness, at a given point and
there turns them over to a more or less disgusted organization
that must accept them for a stated period of time. During such a
period these animals are entitled to full rations of forage,
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