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TALE OF THOROUGHBRED ENDURANCE The London Sportsman of September 11 prints a most interesting tale of the thoroughbreds endur ¬ ance and courage It has to do with a heroic horse among wars horrors torpedoing at sea and racing in Egypt and Mesopotamia under short feed and between wounds and campaigns in the field It was contributed by Captain II F K Gooch of the English Remount Service a branch which has done noble duty on all tlie fronts of the great war Captain Gooch writes writesDear Dear Sir I have been reading a paragraph con ¬ cerning the recent shipment of thoroughbreds to Egypt Having quite recently returned from Egypt where I did a bit of racing during the intervals of campaigning I am writing you a line on the sub ¬ ject I saw Golden Grass run his first race out there which he won like a good liorse and Hell house who rode him told me that he had a high opinion of him A friend of mine out there had a liorse sent out named Landmark He did not know his pedigree and asked me to find it for him He is probably from his name and shape by Land league It may interest you to know as a lover of the thoroughbred that I took in the spring of 1815 a horse by Santoi Queenly Wise by Wisdom out to Egypt with my regiment We were torpedoed going out but the horse was saved and landed We started again and arrived safely I took him all through the desert campaign up to the fall of Jerusalem in December 1917 He had been wounded three times and won the only three steeplechases I rode him in vis the Sinai Grand National Pales ¬ tine Grand National and Palestine Grand Military When I tell you that he had never been under a roof but lived a life in the open and had been fed on the government ration only you will I think agree with me that his performance is a fine answer to the foolish people who maintain that the blood horse is of no use off the racecourse During the campaign the cavalry was called ui on to do a lot of serious work carrying heavy weights and often went short of water and the horse which stood the strain best was the small horse and the well bred one Clantoi my horse stands 153 My ex ¬ perience of a cavalry campaign has quite convinced me of the necessity of the maintenance of racing in England the only test for selection for breeding purposes if we wish to keep a supply of suitable halfbred horses for remounts
