Abstract
On the battlefields of the First World War, the soldiers lived, worked and fought in the closest proximity of horses. Many men bonded with the working animals.
They considered the horses their friends and cried bitterly over their deaths. Others disregarded the horses as a nuisance and beat them frequently.
The chapter reconstructs and analyses the scope and variability of the human-horse relationships in the war and the soldiers' varying emotions towards their horses. It traces the role that the horses played in the everyday lives of soldiers, and determines how they influenced the soldiers' war experiences.
It also addresses the question of how the men viewed the fates and engagement of horses in warfare. The specific nature of construction of relationships towards animals in biographical documents is highlighted.
The chapter builds primarily on the analysis of biographical documents of Czech, British, French and German soldiers, completed by army manuals and visual sources.