Customer Reviews

Our Horses in Egypt

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I found this book from one of Amazon's lists....My Favorite Books or something like that...and I love horses, find Egypt fascinating and loved the photo on the cover. It is a remarkable work of literature. The story of the humans and the horses is told from a curiously detached point of view that serves to inexplicably create a deeper focus by the reader and thus render the story more real. The style of the writing is unusual in that you rarely are told what anyone thinks....you see what the characters do and hear what they say. I believe it takes an unusual and gifted mind to write in this way. There are no facile tricks used to suck us in; no sentimentality. When you finish the book, you feel that you have been there and its painful. I absolutely loved this book. The research that must have been needed to flesh out this novel deserves a PHD! This is one amazing author! If you know anything about The Brooke you will be enthralled.

If I were better informed about the war fronts of North Africa and the Near East of the First World War, I probably would have had an easier time reading this novel of those campaigns waged by British cavalry units against the Germans and Turks. I found myself equally ignorant of the naval battles like "the Mole at Zeebrugge," which kept coming up, since that was where the book's heroine (or perhaps 'anti-heroine') Griselda Romney, lost her naval officer husband. Alas, I found myself to be greviously lacking in knowledge about such things. There was also much British (and military) slang of the period which often left me scratching my head.

In spite of these, my own shortcomings, however, Our Horses in Egypt kept me turning the pages, mostly to find out what became of the real heroine here, an English hunter mare named Philomena. Because the war widow, Griselda Romney, was portrayed in such a way that made her a less sympathetic character than the horse. Not that Griz didn't have her endearing traits, not the least of which was her love of horses and compassion for poor, dumb, suffering animals that sent her on this fantastically impossible post-war trek to Egypt to look for her hunter and bring her home again. She took along her six year-old daughter Amabel and her steadfast and long-suffering Nanny (who was perhaps the most likeable of the human characters here). There is also a varied cast of other colorful human characters here, including a few of Griselda's hopeful suitors along the way and also the various cavalry troopers who rode and cared for Philomena during the war years.

The story-line is distinctly divided here - between the war years endured by Philomena and her succession of human handlers as they all did their 'bit' across Egypt and then into Palestine, and the post-war period as the widow Romney and her retinue depart England for North Africa to look for her horse. Belben has obviously done her historical homework here, as the various battles and campaigns waged by the Queen's Own Dorset Yeomen, are touched upon and described throughout the war years portion of the book. Perhaps because I am not a very good or patient reader of history, I found some of the "historically correct" details a bit tedious, feeling they often slowed the momentum of the narrative. But these same details often serve to frame some of the most heartbreaking scenes of the book, the ones which best illustrate the plight and suffering of the horses employed in this desert war. Here's an example, from the aftermath of the gallant cavalry charge at Agagiya (Egypt) -

"The lap of Philomena's skin with a gout of flesh was her only wound. But there was shock in the horses' eyes; a blank look. Their ears flickered. Their companions lay with broken bones, or stone dead, with bullets in the heart; or hobbled painfully with shattered tendons; or, like Corky, had machine-gun bullets lodged somewhere; or had cocked themselves on fore-legs, hamstrung; or were treading on their own guts and were still eviscerating themselves; or were bleeding to death. Philomena's nostrils filled with the scents of heated metal and of blood."

Belben gives her readers cause to wonder whether horses dream when she comments later, "For many months Philomena had had dreams of Agagiya. The sight wouldn't easily leave her, More rarely, she dreamt of whiffs of the 'smell' ..."

In another scene one ponders what horses might really think about the horrors of war witnessed as Philomena sees greviously injured horses carted away on horse-ambulances - "To an animal that was interested (incurably) in all about her, there was much to bewilder her."

In yet another grim post-battle scene near Beersheba - "On Philomena stepped, past awkward piles of Turkish horses, teams of horses that had died together, legs and jaws and matted skin ... Not every Turkish horse was dead. They had fallen five and six days before. Nobody had come to put them out of their misery. Alive, they had lost their eyes to vultures or crows. These blind heads were lifted ... to sink down into the dirt. A tail would swish, a foot stir. The stink was powerful ... This avenue of carcasses and corpses and wounded was reflected in the depths of Philomena's liquid pupils."

Equally grim were descriptions of the lot of the horses who were sold off after the war. There were, it was estimated, over 20,000 horses abandoned and sold off by the British army at the war's end. Many of these horses who had served gallantly as chargers or troop horses finished up their lives as cart horses under the most primitive of conditions, suffering terribly under their civilian owners. There are scenes of these old war-horses that equal those remembered from the most moving parts of Black Beauty. (Black Beauty is mentioned briefly in the book, by the way; probably no accident.)

This is not a happy book, but it is a noble one. As I was reading it, I kept remembering another novel I read a couple years ago, also set in the WWI era, but in the American west: Molly Gloss's beautifully told story, The Hearts of Horses. Gloss's book also referenced Black Beauty and included a conversation about the tragic lot of American horses shipped overseas for the war effort. There are parallels here that are hard to ignore.

Our Horses in Egypt is a book worth reading, whether you are a history buff or horse lover. It gets to the core of the bond that unites men and animals. It will make you think. It might also cause you to weep at the awful cruelties imposed on our equine 'friends' in the name of war - and peace. - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

This book is a historical novel about the British cavalry campaigns in northern Africa during World War 1. Horses were requisitioned from landowners, and these horses underwent considerable privation, distress, and suffering. So did the soldiers who rode and cared for them. The novel alternates viewpoints with some chapters describing Philomena's experiences. (Philomena is a filly). Other chapters describe the privations of Griselda Romney who travels to Egypt with her young daughter and her Nanny in order to rescue Philomena and return her to Britain after the War is over. Griselda's suffering is not so much physical, but emotional since her idealism is incomprehensible to her family and to the Egyptian horse owners who can't understand her motivations. British and Muslim prejudices are described in the same sparse unemotional prose.
The style of the writing is quite unusual. Sentences are spare and seemingly simple, yet often hard to understand. Here is an example describing Philomena's treatment after a camel bite: "Farrier-Sargeant "Burtie" Burt was cursory: he had exceeding worse to attend, and a mash in the flesh of his own sword arm." What's a "mash"? Who is Burtie? I found it hard to keep track of all the different riders assigned to the horse. The simplicity of the prose belies the rapid changes of viewpoint. I usually read late at night, and found myself rushing ahead only to realize that the short sentences are more like poetry than like declarative sentences.
This is an unusual book which some people are going to love and appreciate. Others may find it tough going but worth it. I'm glad I read it, but it required quite an effort from me. Not as great an effort as the novel's characters put forth, though.

For those interested in the topic of the new film, War Story, this book, Our Horses in Egypt, tells a story set in the same era. If you're looking for another story about WWI horses, this compelling novel, Our Horses in Egypt by Rosalind Belben (2007) tells the story of a British woman who discovered that her horse (requisitioned for the War) was alive in Egypt in 1921. So she sets off with child and nanny to find her horse, Philomena. It's a great story, well-told.