The Warhorse by Michael Morpurgo is a book told by a horse’s point of view. The horse is born and sold to a small farm in Britain. Once it is old enough, it is trained to plow by Albert Narracott and works hard on the farm. But since the Albert’s father doesn’t need the second horse for his small farm, he sells it against his son’s will to the army for money to help him pay off the mortgage on his land. He sells it to Captain Nicholls for forty pounds. Captain Nicholls promises Albert that he will take good care of Joey, the horse. Joey is then trained by Corporal Samuel Perkins in the few weeks before the regiment will go into battle. Weeks pass and the regiment gets orders. They march and Captain Nicholls rides Joey right next to his best
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They go into their first battle in which Captain Nicholls falls. In the same battle Trooper Warren’s horse is shot from beneath him. He takes up the responsibility of Joey. He is good with taking care of him but, Joey has to help him ride because he was not as experienced as Albert or Captain Nicholls. A few weeks later, Captain Jamie Stewart leads the cavalry of his regiment into machine guns. There are high casualties but he and Warren are taken prisoners and Topthorn and Joey are lead to a nearby German camp. Here they are used as labor. They pull carts filled with the injured or dead people from the battlefield. Joey is okay with pulling but Topthorn initially has a hard time with pulling because it doesn’t have the experience Joey had at the Narracott farm. But since they are pulling the ambulance carts for the Germans, back at camp they are treated like …show more content…
I also knew that it was a total war. Even though this book is fictional, a small thing in the war like a small farm’s horse affected many lives. There could be many more bigger things than these that have made a bigger difference. Literally every single aspect was touched by World War I in Europe. After reading some of the book and researching the role of horses in the first world war, I realize how important the smallest things are to large scale wars. How is horse feed one of the biggest things the British Parliament has to worry about in the war? At one point due to the German naval pressure, Britain became worried it horses would be starved. Oats from North America couldn’t make it past Germany’s navy. World War I showed a huge change in history. Cavalry would no longer be used to fight. Before the war started, cavalry was at the top of Britain’s checklist. Later on as barbed wire and machine guns revealed their effectiveness at defense, cavalry became impossible to win with. But horses were the most reliable sources of transportation. Military vehicles were prone to problems and as a result most of the horses gathered for cavalry purposes were used for transportation. Even after this transformation, about 8 million horses would die due to World War I. This is a huge number widely ignored in history when World War I is taught. My research has
They go into their first battle in which Captain Nicholls falls. In the same battle Trooper Warren’s horse is shot from beneath him. He takes up the responsibility of Joey. He is good with taking care of him but, Joey has to help him ride because he was not as experienced as Albert or Captain Nicholls. A few weeks later, Captain Jamie Stewart leads the cavalry of his regiment into machine guns. There are high casualties but he and Warren are taken prisoners and Topthorn and Joey are lead to a nearby German camp. Here they are used as labor. They pull carts filled with the injured or dead people from the battlefield. Joey is okay with pulling but Topthorn initially has a hard time with pulling because it doesn’t have the experience Joey had at the Narracott farm. But since they are pulling the ambulance carts for the Germans, back at camp they are treated like …show more content…
I also knew that it was a total war. Even though this book is fictional, a small thing in the war like a small farm’s horse affected many lives. There could be many more bigger things than these that have made a bigger difference. Literally every single aspect was touched by World War I in Europe. After reading some of the book and researching the role of horses in the first world war, I realize how important the smallest things are to large scale wars. How is horse feed one of the biggest things the British Parliament has to worry about in the war? At one point due to the German naval pressure, Britain became worried it horses would be starved. Oats from North America couldn’t make it past Germany’s navy. World War I showed a huge change in history. Cavalry would no longer be used to fight. Before the war started, cavalry was at the top of Britain’s checklist. Later on as barbed wire and machine guns revealed their effectiveness at defense, cavalry became impossible to win with. But horses were the most reliable sources of transportation. Military vehicles were prone to problems and as a result most of the horses gathered for cavalry purposes were used for transportation. Even after this transformation, about 8 million horses would die due to World War I. This is a huge number widely ignored in history when World War I is taught. My research has