The British Army during the 1930s put a certain amount of effort into demonstrating how modern and mechanised it was becoming. I thought perhaps we should have a thread where these pre-war propaganda snippets could find a home. This photograph was found by a contact searching in the State Library of Victoria's collections. One of the nicer images of old handing over to new. There is a black beret in the background so presumably a cavalry regiment in the process of change. British Pathé filmed the 15th/19th Hussars saying goodbye to their horses in 1939. http://www.britishpathe.com/video/soldiers-farewell/query/soldiers+farewell The 11th Hussars were apparently fully mechanised by 1929. They appear to be departing from the same cavalry barracks * different railings, so probably not !) :- http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-triumph-of-mechanised-warfare/query/soldiers+farewell An undisclosed unit on Salisbury Plain in 1934 :- http://www.britishpathe.com/video/mechanised-manoeuvres/query/mechanisation I'll keep looking...
Hope you don't mind Rich, some related stats from 1936 which I found and posted on this link http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/51832-ww2-remarkable-statistics/?p=629868 The text which got me searching From Major DM Kennedy MC, A Tribute, Jocelyn; page 43:
Diane The changeover met with GREAT resistence from the Cavalry as they would sooner have the smelly horses than even more smelly oily Tanks- urgh my old unit 16/5th Lancers left their horses in Egypt on their way home from India - in 1940 - they couldn't wait to get in the saddle again in Austria in 1945 - see my series on Strassburg in the BBC series below - on how we dealt with that… Cheers