War Horse is a children's novel by Michael Morpurgo. It was first published in Great Britain by Kaye & Ward in 1982. The story recounts the experiences of Joey, a horse purchased by the Army for service in World War I France and the attempts of young Albert, his previous owner, to bring him safely home. It formed the basis of both an award winning play (2007) and an acclaimed film (2011). "War Horse" is based on a true story about a horse named Warrior.
After meeting a World War I veteran who drank in his local pub at Iddesleigh and who had been in the Devon Yeomanry working with horses, Morpurgo began to think of telling the story of the universal suffering of the Great War through a horse's viewpoint, but was unsure that he could do it. He also met another villager, Captain Budgett, who had been in the Cavalry in the Great War, and a third villager who remembered the army coming to the village to buy horses. Morpurgo thanks these three men in the dedication of the book, naming them as Albert Weeks, Wilfred Ellis and Captain Budgett.
With his wife, Morpurgo had founded Farms for City Children, a charity where inner city children live and work on rural farms for a week. Interviewed on Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4 by Fi Glover in December 2010, Morpurgo recounted the event that convinced him he could write the book:
One of the kids who came to the farm from Birmingham, a boy called Billy, years and years and years ago now, the teachers warned me that he had a stammer and told me not to ask him direct questions because it would terrify him if he had to be made to speak because he doesn’t speak. They said ‘He’s been two years in school and he hasn’t said a word, so please don’t confront him or he’ll run back to Birmingham’, which is a long way from Devon and they didn’t want that. So I did as I was told and I stood back and I watched him, and I could see that he related wonderfully to the animals, totally silently, never spoke to the other kids at all, and then I came in the last evening, which I always used to do, to read them a story. It was a dark November evening and I came into the yard behind this big Victorian house where they all live, and there he was, Billy, standing in his slippers by the stable door and the lantern above his head, talking. Talking, talking, talking, to the horse. And the horse, Hebe, had her head out of, just over the top of the stable, and she was listening, that’s what I noticed, that the ears were going, and she knew – I knew she knew – that she had to stay there whilst this went on, because this kid wanted to talk, and the horse wanted to listen, and I knew this was a two way thing, and I wasn’t being sentimental, and I stood there and I listened, then I went and got the teachers, and brought them up through the vegetable garden, and we stood there in the shadows, and we listened to Billy talking, and they were completely amazed how this child who couldn’t get a word out, the words were simply flowing. All the fear had gone, and there was something about the intimacy of this relationship, the trust was building up between boy and horse, that I found enormously moving, and I thought, Well yes, you could write a story about the First World War through the eyes of a horse, let the horse tell the story, and let the story of the war come through the soldiers: British soldiers first of all, then German soldiers, then a French family with whom the horse spends winters, and that maybe you’ll then get a universal idea of the suffering of the First World War. So in a way I just took a gamble and went for it, and then wrote like a horse for about six months.
In another article, Morpurgo stated that Billy was not the child's real name. Morpurgo later recalled, "As I listened to this boy telling the horse everything he'd done on the farm that day, I suddenly had the idea that of course the horse didn't understand every word, but that she knew it was important for her to stand there and be there for this child."
The third inspiration for the book, after meeting the veterans and seeing Billy with Hebe the horse, was an old oil painting that Morpurgo's wife Clare had been left: "It was a very frightening and alarming painting, not the sort you'd want to hang on a wall. It showed horses during the First World War charging into barbed wire fences. It haunted me." The painting was by F. W. Reed and was dated 1917, and showed a British cavalry charge on German lines, with horses entangled in barbed wire. Morpurgo wrote a fictionalised version of this painting in his "Author's Note" at the start of the book. In his version, the painting shows a red bay with a white cross on his forehead, and the painting bears the legend: "Joey. Painted by Captain James Nicholls, autumn 1914."
After meeting a World War I veteran who drank in his local pub at Iddesleigh and who had been in the Devon Yeomanry working with horses, Morpurgo began to think of telling the story of the universal suffering of the Great War through a horse's viewpoint, but was unsure that he could do it. He also met another villager, Captain Budgett, who had been in the Cavalry in the Great War, and a third villager who remembered the army coming to the village to buy horses. Morpurgo thanks these three men in the dedication of the book, naming them as Albert Weeks, Wilfred Ellis and Captain Budgett.
With his wife, Morpurgo had founded Farms for City Children, a charity where inner city children live and work on rural farms for a week. Interviewed on Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4 by Fi Glover in December 2010, Morpurgo recounted the event that convinced him he could write the book:
One of the kids who came to the farm from Birmingham, a boy called Billy, years and years and years ago now, the teachers warned me that he had a stammer and told me not to ask him direct questions because it would terrify him if he had to be made to speak because he doesn’t speak. They said ‘He’s been two years in school and he hasn’t said a word, so please don’t confront him or he’ll run back to Birmingham’, which is a long way from Devon and they didn’t want that. So I did as I was told and I stood back and I watched him, and I could see that he related wonderfully to the animals, totally silently, never spoke to the other kids at all, and then I came in the last evening, which I always used to do, to read them a story. It was a dark November evening and I came into the yard behind this big Victorian house where they all live, and there he was, Billy, standing in his slippers by the stable door and the lantern above his head, talking. Talking, talking, talking, to the horse. And the horse, Hebe, had her head out of, just over the top of the stable, and she was listening, that’s what I noticed, that the ears were going, and she knew – I knew she knew – that she had to stay there whilst this went on, because this kid wanted to talk, and the horse wanted to listen, and I knew this was a two way thing, and I wasn’t being sentimental, and I stood there and I listened, then I went and got the teachers, and brought them up through the vegetable garden, and we stood there in the shadows, and we listened to Billy talking, and they were completely amazed how this child who couldn’t get a word out, the words were simply flowing. All the fear had gone, and there was something about the intimacy of this relationship, the trust was building up between boy and horse, that I found enormously moving, and I thought, Well yes, you could write a story about the First World War through the eyes of a horse, let the horse tell the story, and let the story of the war come through the soldiers: British soldiers first of all, then German soldiers, then a French family with whom the horse spends winters, and that maybe you’ll then get a universal idea of the suffering of the First World War. So in a way I just took a gamble and went for it, and then wrote like a horse for about six months.
In another article, Morpurgo stated that Billy was not the child's real name. Morpurgo later recalled, "As I listened to this boy telling the horse everything he'd done on the farm that day, I suddenly had the idea that of course the horse didn't understand every word, but that she knew it was important for her to stand there and be there for this child."
The third inspiration for the book, after meeting the veterans and seeing Billy with Hebe the horse, was an old oil painting that Morpurgo's wife Clare had been left: "It was a very frightening and alarming painting, not the sort you'd want to hang on a wall. It showed horses during the First World War charging into barbed wire fences. It haunted me." The painting was by F. W. Reed and was dated 1917, and showed a British cavalry charge on German lines, with horses entangled in barbed wire. Morpurgo wrote a fictionalised version of this painting in his "Author's Note" at the start of the book. In his version, the painting shows a red bay with a white cross on his forehead, and the painting bears the legend: "Joey. Painted by Captain James Nicholls, autumn 1914."
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Warrior, the real "war Horse" that the germans couldn't kill
The tale of War Horse has gone from beloved children's book, to successful stage play to Hollywood movie directed by Steven Spielberg. But whereas this one equine hero's exploits are fictional those of Warrior who carried General Jack Seely of the Canadian cavalry throughout the horrors of World War I are all true. The bravery of the thoroughbred were documented in a book written by General Jack Seely, in 1934.
His grandson Brough Scott describes General Seely's unique relationship with an animal that a group of cavalrymen dubbed 'The horse the Germans couldn't kill'. Speaking to The Sunday Times, he described Warrior's life from his birth on the Isle of Wight to how a combination of both the horse’s extraordinary character and some unbelievable twists of fate, helped him survive a war which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of horses.
The first time General Seely rode the Warrior through shell fire, it was at the battle of Mons, on the French border and he was amazed to discover that Warrior did not try to run away and instead the thoroughbred 'was pretending to be brave and succeeding in his task.'
Over the countless battles the pair fought together, they gained a mascot status among the troops and General Seely recounted: 'Men would say not "Here comes the general" but "Here's old Warrior".' Mr Scott told the Sunday Times, that Warrior's loyalty to General Seely was so strong that he began to follow him round like a faithful dog.
But it is also clear that General Seely was just as attached to Warrior and when Warrior went lame and Seely rode another horse, a shell hit him and the animal was killed. He wrote: 'I had three ribs broken myself...but my first thought was "What luck it was not Warrior".' Warrior managed to survive several near death experiences such as when a sniper missed him by inches and hit a horse he was touching noses with and when the cottage he was stabled in was bombed, he miraculously emerged from the rubble. At Moreuil Wood in 1918, General Jack Seely believes it was riding Warrior at the enemy which made them retreat, believing there were 'thousands' of soldiers following, although in truth, half the group had been hit. On his return home, Warrior took part in the Hyde Park Canadian cavalry victory parade and even though he was in retirement, he managed to win a race on the Isle of Wight. Before the war General Seely was an MP and sat in the Cabinet from 1911-1914, alongside his life-long friend Winston Churchill, who also shared his understanding of equine support.
War Office documents found in the National Archives at Kew show that tens of thousands of the animals were at risk of disease, hunger and even death at the hands of French and Belgian butchers because bungling officials couldn’t get them home when hostilities drew to a close. Churchill, then aged 44 and Secretary of State for War, reacted with fury when he was informed of their treatment and took a personal interest in their plight after the 1914-1918 war. He secured their speedy return after firing off angry memos to officials within his own department and at the Ministry of Shipping, who had promised to return 12,000 horses a week but were struggling to get a quarter of that number back. Churchill’s intervention led to extra vessels being used for repatriation, and the number of horses being returned rose to 9,000 a week. Warrior lived until 1941, when Seely felt that the extra corn rations needed to keep the 33-year-old hero going could not be justified in wartime. On that Good Friday he wrote "I do not believe, to quote Byron on his dog Boatswain, 'that he is denied in Heaven, the soul he had on earth.'?
