Forums at Society of the Military Horse

The training was the easy part, because of the military system in Rhodesia. When the Regt was first raised, we could call on fully trained reservist's, and also those who could ride. Most of the first intake were farmers, who if asked could bring their own horses However the problem was horses and equipment, namely saddles. Horses we were already dealing with, and within a few weeks we had acquired them. The saddle problem remained with us for about two months, until we were given some.
Because of the embargo on us, we could not go out and buy them. But we did have a group of people, called the friends of Rhodesia based in South Africa who raised the money for us and they purchased the saddler for us. However their choice of saddles were not very good, they had bought the SU type but with swivel trees, the felt pads would roll off the trees and difficult to repair. That's what we had to begin with until a more suitable saddle came along. So in answer to your question, I guess it would have been about two to three months, after that initial start up we moved from strength to strength. Ending up with 700 horses and a 1000 personnel, off 3 combat Sqns, and one HQ Sqn.

roy elderkin wrote:The training was the easy part, because of the military system in Rhodesia. When the Regt was first raised, we could call on fully trained reservist's, and also those who could ride. Most of the first intake were farmers, who if asked could bring their own horses However the problem was horses and equipment, namely saddles. Horses we were already dealing with, and within a few weeks we had acquired them. The saddle problem remained with us for about two months, until we were given some.
Because of the embargo on us, we could not go out and buy them. But we did have a group of people, called the friends of Rhodesia based in South Africa who raised the money for us and they purchased the saddler for us. However their choice of saddles were not very good, they had bought the SU type but with swivel trees, the felt pads would roll off the trees and difficult to repair. That's what we had to begin with until a more suitable saddle came along. So in answer to your question, I guess it would have been about two to three months, after that initial start up we moved from strength to strength. Ending up with 700 horses and a 1000 personnel, off 3 combat Sqns, and one HQ Sqn.

Wow, that's fast. Much faster than I would have guessed.

roy elderkin wrote:Most of the first intake were farmers, who if asked could bring their own horses However the problem was horses and equipment, namely saddles.

How extensive was horse use by Rhodesian agriculture at that time?

Pat it may seem that way, but we made use of our natural manpower and technical ability. Remember that most of our original soldiers, were farmers or were used to horses in one form or another, so it was relatively easy to combine the two. Regarding your other question, horses were mostly used as social or domestic, but not for farming that became the province of oxen. Oxen were used for wagons, or ploughing they were extremely large animals, many coming to Rhodesia from SA with the treks, and then turned into farm animals.

Roy, were your remount horsemen civilians?

No most of them were National Servicemen, doing their 2 year call up. Had it still been Rhodesia, they would have gone into the Reserve. The photo of which you may have seen is misleading, it shows remount riders in civilian cloths this was taken after the Rhodesian Army stood down. And simply a get together, the photo even took me by surprise as I cant remember it, but nice anyway.

None that are horse related, but an interesting set of Rhodesian army photographs, many in color, that were uploaded on the World Armies Flickr site yesterday. You'll need to progress through the photos to see them all.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/world_armies/15414594262/

Bumped up given the new thread on horse handlers. I think this information may be in this thread.