Sir Arthur Currie and Brocklebank in the Great War

Описание: Currie on Brock

The horse, as you will remember, was a very tall animal, strong shouldered , good carriage, red bay in colour. He was really not an officer’s charger but a large hackney. I always called him “Brock” short for Brocklebank, but as a matter of fact, that was not his registered name.

I can only say that he stood the rigours of the campaign in the most splendid fashion. I do not know of his being ill at any time. No horse stood the trip across the Atlantic or from England to France (and you know how rough that trip was) any better and few as well. He was a horse with a mind of his own, but we usually got on very well together. The only peculiarity that I remember was that if we disagreed while I was riding him he undertook to rough ride me for the next five minutes or so, but he didn’t sulk long. I rode him at all the principal parades which I attended—the reviews by the King in England and France, the Field Marshal’s reviews and also when we crossed into Germany when I rode at the head of the 3rd Battalion and also when we crossed the Bonn Bridge.

I brought the horse back to Canada , where he now finds a home on my brother’s farm in western Ontario . I visit my old home about there times a year and am always glad to know the he recognizes me. He immediately comes up to me, smells around my pockets for apples or some other sweet and kisses me very frequently.

With all good wishes, I am yours faithfully

A W Currie

Extract taken from a Letter from Currie to Lieutenant Colonel D Tamblyn 8 March 1923 – Published in The Selected Papers of Sir Arthur Currie, Mark Osborne Humphries, LCMSDS Press of Sir Wilfred Laurier University, 2008