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IMPORTANT WORK FOR OUR BREEDERS Will Bo Called Upon to Replace the Animals Needed to Maintain Remount Service. An account of the immense growtli of the United States army remount service, incidental to the war, lias lately boen issued, which will be of especial interest to horse owners and breeders throughout the .country. The service at the outbreak of hostilities consisted of a small headquarters force in Washington and five remount depots. Tliree of these, at Fort Royal, Fort Reno and Fort Keogli, had been in use for several years, but in 1910 new depots had been established at Fort Sam Houston and Fort Bliss. The first task of the enlarged remount service was to equip with horses and mules the new regular army regiments which were formed by splitting old organizations into three parts. Then sub-remount stations were organized at thirty-two camps; and to attend to the increasing number of purchases fifty of the leading horsemen of the country were commissioned as captains without examination and sent out to buy stock. By March, 1918, Gen. Pershing was calling for expert horsemen for the A. E. F., since the United States army was soon to begin making purchases in France, and officers and enlisted personnel were immediately dispatched. In all forty-six remount squadrons were sent overseas. The first shipment of horses from the United States arrived in St. Nazaire in July, 1917. But shipments were not made in earnest until September, 1918, and for the next four months more than 40,000 horses were sent across the Atlantic. The death rate was remarkably low. as only .8G9 per ceht were lost, and nearly half of this loss occurred on one vessel. Early in 1917 the Frencli government had promised to supply 7,000 animals each month to the American army, and for that reason shipments from here were not pushed at first. But Frencli estimates ran behind until at one time there was a shortage of nearly 150,000 animals in the A. E. F. Additional remount depots were established at central points in France. The importance of remount work to the army may be gathered from the fact that the oversea detail of one officer and one clerk grew eventually to 500 officers and 15,000 men. Officers were sent to Spain in 1917, but it was not until June, 1918, that animals were received from that country. The principal purchases wore of small mules. England also furnished 21,000 horses to the American arniy, including about twenty-five special nibunts for Jen. Pershing. The English authorities praised the American half-breed draft horse as the best war horse in the world. After the armistice practically all the American animals were auctioned off in France, many eventually going to depopulated and devastated regions of Belgium, Poland and Czecho-Slovakia. Last spring several thousand horses were sold in the farming communities of the German Rhineland. The breeders of America will be called upon to replace the animals needed to maintain the remount service.
