"Untrained horses may have to be used in war; but an untrained driver on an untrained horse is a poor combination for moving a heavy load. At present drivers are untrained, due to lack of horses with which driving can be learned. But before a man can drive well, which involves managing two horses, he must be a sufficiently good rider to be able to devote his undivided attention to his pair without the necessity of devoting attention to his riding. Hence, before he can learn to drive he must learn to ride. There is no known way of learning to ride except by mounting a horse, and, as states make practically no provision for horses, the drivers are as a rule poor riders.
Again, when pairs of horses are combined into a six-horse team, the difficulty of management is further increased. It is not generally appreciated in the service, much less in the United States at large, that a great deal of training is necessary to make a good artillery driver out of a good rider or other horseman. Moreover, in the marching and maneuvering of artillery, there enters not only the skill of the individual drivers, but in addition the noncommissioned officers and the officers must possess knowledge as to the management of the horses. This knowledge is not possessed at the present time, nor can it be acquired without the presence of horses."
This is from the volume 1 issue 1 of The Field Artillery Journal.
Other issues can be accessed from the Fort Sill Archive website
http://sill-www.army.mil/firesbulletin/ ... .html#1940
You have to pick through the issues but many horse articles are in these early issues and they are applicable today as 100 years ago.
Cheers,
Steve Haupt
An indictment of the Field Artillery...1911
This became even worse in WWI, where untrained men were driving untrained, and in some cases ‘unbroken,’ horses. Add to that the high mortality rate of horses and mules in WWI and you have men driving almost perpetually green teams.