In 1919, the peacetime British Army was authorized to retain three regiments of household guards cavalry and 28 regiments of line Dragoons, Hussars, and Lancers– all horse-mounted, including three full brigades based in the home islands and others stationed around the Empire. This didn’t even include 14 volunteer part-time mounted Yeomanry regiments in the Territorials, or units in the British Indian Army.
This would soon change dramatically.
Most British regular cavalry regiments were mechanized between 1928 and the outbreak of World War II, with younger men and officers moving on to the new type of service and older ones, well, not.
This sunsetting led to Brig. Gen H. Clifton-Brown, Tory MP for Newbury and the former commander of the 12th Lancers, lamenting in March 1935, “I am sorry that we cannot go on clinging to the horse, but I hope we shall cling to him as long as we can.”
The last British line cavalry to hand over their horses was the 2nd Dragoons (The Royal Scots Greys), who were seen as a sort of household Scottish cavalry regiment and treasured their nationally renowned grey mounts, famous for their role at Waterloo.
While the more or less “English” household cavalry was allowed to keep at least some of their horses, a lobbying campaign by Scottish Members of Parliament, bowing to public opinion against the War Office’s plans, kept the Greys mounted into May 1941, only then moving to American-made Grant medium tanks.
By this time, even the household regiments had moved over, keeping just a few horses for the Guards’ ceremonial duties.
Riders in the “Farewell Grey Horse Race” in Ramle, Palestine, 1941, where the Greys were based at the time.
Ironically, the last British mounted force to unsaddle was a territorial yeomanry unit, the Queen’s Own Yorkshire Dragoons, which were converted to an armored role on 1 March 1942.
While the BEF lost 28,314 War Department vehicles and another 20,588 impressed civilian vehicles at Dunkirk, they had no horseflesh to leave in France.
Well, enter the world of stranger things, where everything old is seemingly new again, from NATO Battle Group Poland, –a U.S.-led battle group, in partnership with Great Britain, Romania, and Croatia– comes these images of the British Army’s Royal Lancers on Op CABRIT, conducting a “low profile mounted recce” with elements of the Polish 2nd Lubelska Brigade.
