17-6-26 Garand Picture of the Day - Sainte-Mère-Eglise.

[Mark in Rochester]

Patrol of American soldiers in Sainte-Mère-Eglise.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[CINDERS]

Wonder if the commandeered the horses from the Germans seeing as they relied heavily on them.

[browningautorifle]

Since many of the guys would have grown up riding horses at home, this wouldn't be any more of a stretch that us coming across a park of trailbikes and seeing a half dozen mount up and roar off... There would have been horses around. The Germans were using them for everything by then.

[Paul S.]

Since many of the guys would have grown up riding horses at home, this wouldn't be any more of a stretch that us coming across a park of trailbikes and seeing a half dozen mount up and roar off... There would have been horses around. The Germans were using them for everything by then.

While the Germans were heavily mechanized, they still used draught horses right through the war. Also, French farmers were dependent upon horses. Those of us who grew up in the 1950s can remember seeing horse drawn carts in our early years.

[browningautorifle]

My elders were all horse drawn men, they still had them around. Most didn't use them for ploughing or much except doing the cross ditches. That was the end of the '50's and early '60's, southern Ontario.

[ArizonaBeagle]

My Uncle Pete used two plow horses, Prince & Joe for his truck farm. I grew up riding them until 1957 when I left the farm. That could be why I am still bow legged to this day as plow horses were very broad in the back and strong as well.

Because of that I rode every ornery horse that nobody else could ride and got pretty good at bronc busting.

Then I got smart and gave that up.

AZB

[browningautorifle]

I rode every ornery horse that nobody else could ride and got pretty good

Bent legs and a bent head...hard day's work.

[CINDERS]

Speaking of ornery nags I attended an Ag school and as a second year we were sent out to a farmers property for a weeks farming experience in the real worlds not on the schools property any way I ended up at Dennis Shines place about 3 days in he had to round up some cattle on one of his properties in the hills.
Off we go trailer and 2 horses as we rode at Ag school I saw no issues ridding rounding up cattle well I could not have been further from the truth, the area where the cattle were was very steep at the back and flattened out towards the Highway but big rocks all over the place.
Anyway things were going sorta alright the cattle were jumpy and the footing was precarious to say the least, so my hack decided he wanted to have his head we were on very rocky ground so I short reigned him, well b*gger me as soon as we hit the flats he off like a rocket full tilt as we were right next to a 3 stranded barbed wire & ring lock fence he was trying to scub me off.
So leant back in the saddle and I pulled until I thought the reigns would break and his head was turned to the right so much we were eye ball to eye ball he was not stopping the hard mouthed bas*ard so I decided to jump off the right side before I lost a good deal of my left calf on the fence so jump I did lost a bit of bark but was glad to be rid of that mongrel horse.

About and hour latter Dennis rocked up looking for me and wanted to know where his horse was to which I turned the air blue explaining what the mongel did to me and he could jam the horse where it fitted and further more if we were doing any more stunts like this I wanted his Ag bike where I could control the horespower with the throttle, it made quite the conversation piece at the dining table with his wife that night we all had a good laugh.
We also had an interesting trip to his Scott River property about a 160 Klm trip one way but that is another story for later.

[browningautorifle]

glad to be rid of that mongrel horse.

Like the line in an old western, "A cow's nothin' but trouble tied up in a leather bag...and a horse ain't much better"... I avoided them.