They Gave, Too

 They Gave, Too

Many residents of Ransom County have served the country while wearing a military uniform. I’m holding a book - Ransom County’s Loyal Defenders - written by former county residents Michael and Ann Knudson. A comprehensive book, it gathers in one place the names of those from the county who wore our country’s uniform in World War I. A daunting task it must have been to collect all the information, including over 600 names with brief biographies of each one.

I can find my Grandpa Andrew Sandvig included in its pages. A stoic Norwegian immigrant who wasn’t particularly well-versed in the English language, he never left much of a written record. However, knowing his division number, 91st, and his regiment number, 362nd, I’ve been able to trace his participation in the battle of the Meuse-Argonne through various historical texts. It all seems so real, but over a hundred years have passed since that time.

But this article won’t be about the men and women who fought in that war. Instead, consider something that is often overlooked - the horses and mules that worked and died alongside the army. One bit of experience Grandpa left us with was how it bothered him to hear the screams of the wounded horses trapped in no-man’s land where no one dared approach them.

About a dozen years ago the movie War Horse played in theaters and gave us Steven Spielberg’s Hollywood version of the use and abuse of horses in the European war setting. Newspaper articles from that time mostly agree and give us a picture of the difficult conditions where men and animals fought. History tells us how army casualties soared, and we learn the life expectancy of a horse taken to a battlefield was a mere four days. Mechanized vehicles hadn’t yet developed to the point of making a large impact.

Injuries, sickness, gassing, and wounds, even to the point where they were targeted by enemy guns, combined to take huge numbers of horses out of action, so many that European farmers could no longer supply adequate numbers. The solution: send buyers to the United States to find replacements.

Newspapers of the time preserve the history of countless occurrences of purchases and shipping. For instance, the Evening Times - Republican of Marshalltown, Iowa on May 22, 1915 reported this. “Only yesterday a train load of horses consisting of 620 head were unloaded by the Northwestern at their yards in Boone, rested and fed. These were on their way to the war zone. This occurs several times a week.”

Keeping in mind that World War I did not end until November, 1918, the rounding up and selling of horses stayed strong throughout the war. The headline on an Ogden (Utah) Standard article stated on June 15, 1918, “Things Moving at Stockyards.” Among the livestock being sold, the report stated “... there in the section of the Ogden Horse Sale & Commission company, a steady stream of horse flesh is pushing under the hand of the British purchasing commission, rejections

and selections made, and train loads assembled for shipment across the seas where they will haul some of the cannon that will blaze the way to Berlin.”

Anything of the sort happening in North Dakota? Yes. Again newspaper reports affirm it. The Mandan News reported in 1914, “Eighteen hundred head of horses passed through Mandan yesterday for the East. The herd was purchased at Miles City by the French government for use in the war where the loss of horses has been tremendous.”

How about Ransom County? The Sheldon Progress of August 24, 1916 wrote, “Bird & Ross, a firm of horse buyers from Mt. Pleasant, Ia., who are in the vicinity buying war horses, have already secured a car which they will ship from Enderlin some time this week...” Further on it stated Bird has been “...scouring the country around Sheldon the past week with his Ford car, looking for animals that will meet the government requirements.”

How did they decide if a horse met those requirements? This headline from The Tacoma Times says it all: “Buckaroos from Montana, With Wild and Woolly Names, Busy Training 5000 Horses for Duty in Sammies’ Army.” Tacoma was just one place where horses were evaluated. There were others.

Camp Crook in South Dakota collected and evaluated horses. If approved, it was close to the Miles City market from where they would be shipped. It was here at Camp Crook that one horse was rejected but went on to earn honors as a famous rodeo bucking horse. The first to attempt riding him was Ed Marty who landed face first onto the dusty main street of Camp Crook. For some reason when he got up started singing, “It’s a long way to Tipperary.” Therefore, the horse has became known as Tipperary.

When you drive through Buffalo, South Dakota, you come to a roadside park on the south side of town where a large bronze statue of Tipperary depicts the moment after throwing that would be rider. A plaque on the site states the horse bucked off 91 riders until finally being ridden by Yakima Canutt, a famous Hollywood stuntman for John Wayne.

Large numbers of both people and animals participated in the bloody war. Others have written of the men and women, but I think of the price paid by horses, too. Numbers vary widely, but approximately a million-and-a-half American horses were purchased for service by the European allies, and some of them came from Ransom County.