JAMES GRASBY : Easter Saturday, March the 30th, 1918. At Moreuil

Wood near Amiens, the Canadian Cavalry Brigade prepare for

action.

The Germans hold the ridge. If they break through, the allied

front could fall.

Leading the signal troop rides General Jack Seely on his horse,

Warrior. He turns to his men, raises his voice above the wind,

and commands, "Fire on both sides! We are going in!"

Chaos ensues, shells explode, bullets scream through the air.

General Jack Seely and his horse Warrior ride into the storm, red

pennant in hand, the squadron thundering close behind.

The battle that follows will be remembered as one of the

deadliest cavalry charges of the First World War.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Millions of animals served in the First

World War, but few became legends. Warrior, the horse who

carried General Jack Seely through some of the bloodiest

battles of the war, was one of them. Welcome to Wild Tales. I'm

Rosie Holdsworth, and in this episode we hand over to

historian James Grasby for Warrior the War Horse.

JAMES GRASBY : The First World War raged from 1914 to 1918,

drawing in nations across Europe and beyond, where more than 65

million soldiers faced the mud, the blood and the misery of

trench warfare.

Alongside them, millions of horses, mules and donkeys went

to the front, hauling supplies, carrying the wounded and

charging into battle. Few ever came home. Among them was

General Jack Seely and his legendary horse, Warrior.

Together, they would ride through some of the bloodiest

battles of the war.

And in today's episode, we head to the Isle Of Wight to follow

in their footsteps.

It is a glorious spring April day, and I'm standing in the

grounds of stunning Mottistone Manor on the Isle Of Wight. Now

this place is nestled in a very sheltered valley, not far from

the sea, but surrounded by rolling, lush, greenery.

Mottistone Manor was first recorded, I believe, in the

Doomsday Book in 1086.

And today I'm here to walk an unusual and surprising trail.

One that traces the steps of a forgotten hero from the First

World War. Someone who returned from the Western Front against

all odds and unscathed.

But before I set out, I'm going to step inside the manor to meet

somebody who one wouldn't naturally associate with this

story.

I'm just going to come in through the front door with a

two-centred arch, pass some gothic lettering, a wonderful

inscription, and through another low door into an ancient room

with magnificent timbered ceiling.

In front of me is the most striking picture. What a

beautiful horse! A beautiful horse with a gallant, what looks

like a general in uniform. And behind, chalky cliffs, which I

guess are the Isle Of Wight. I don't know. It says 1920s. But I

wonder who this chap is.

As I stand there pondering, I hear footsteps behind me.

I recognise your face, Brough Scott. What a pleasure to meet

you.

BROUGH SCOTT: It's lovely to be here because obviously I've

known this picture since I can remember pictures. And that's

Grandpa on his horse Warrior, which has become quite famous

really as a sort of symbol of the First World War.

JAMES GRASBY : Brough, it's an astonishing story. I mean, to so

many people, you are the face of British racing, TV presenter,

writer. I had no idea that you as well are the grandson of

General Jack Seely. And I've got this relationship with

Mottistone.

BROUGH SCOTT: In fact, Grandpa, who is an extraordinary

Victorian, Edwardian figure that you couldn't invent now, but he

went to the Boer War with a white horse of his called a

Maharaja when he got to the port. Sir you can't take that

white horse, it'd be bad for camouflage. So he took it round

the back and... dyed it brown. I mean, literally. And it went

right through the war with him.

JAMES GRASBY : Between 1899 and 1902, the Boer War raged in

South Africa. It was here that Jack Seely learnt the realities

of battle on horseback.

BROUGH SCOTT: And when he was looking for a replacement to

that horse when he got very old, he saw a thoroughbred mare and

he galloped down after it and bought it there and then off the

man. She was called Cinderella and she was incredibly sweet.

She used to walk round behind him like a dog. My mother can

remember sliding off her back, she was really sweet and her son

was Warrior.

JAMES GRASBY : From the day he is born, Warrior is Jack Seely's

constant companion in both war and peace. They cross the

channel together in 1914, and for the following four years,

they endure the mud and hardships of the Western Front.

Two decades later, in 1935, Jack Seely publishes a book about him

called My Horse Warrior. By then, Warrior is 27 and a living

reminder of the bond they share.

BROUGH SCOTT: That book, My Horse Warrior, it's a love

letter to this horse. He would have remembered the last canter

he did alongside his son who got killed, Frank. He remembered him

with his first wife who died. He remembered him through that

picture there of the whole family. The horse was his

connection. It's a testament to a quite unique equine life and

therefore I'm really proud that he recorded it.

JAMES GRASBY : But Warrior's story isn't just published in

books and remembered in portraits. It's written into

this very landscape. And today we set out to trace his hoof

prints on a circular footpath around Mottistone, known as the

Warrior Trail.

Brough, we're just rising up out of the valley from that ancient

house, up a deep and sunken track. This is the beginning of

the trail, I guess.

BROUGH SCOTT: It's a footpath now, but of course... Warrior

and Grandpa would have ridden up here to the Downs. You can

uplift yourself and your mood by going up on the Downs and when I

come down here which I still do a lot I go up on the Downs and

then my spirit lifts.

JAMES GRASBY : And that moment on the Isle Of Wight famously

where the chalk Downs stop beside the sea where they've

been broken away into those incredible cliffs that appear in

the background of that picture we're just looking at

BROUGH SCOTT: That particular Chalk Cliff is called Tennyson

Down because that's where Tennyson used to walk up,

purportedly reciting somebody's great verse.

We're walking up towards the Downs, but actually down below,

a little bit south of here, is the Yafford Mill where Warrior

was born. We're talking about 1908, and Grandpa was a minister

then, and there was a very stuffy private secretary.

And the guy at the stables, sent a message to Grandpa, which was

handed over by this very stuffy civil servant. The message was,

Cinderella had a booming boy today, mother and son really

well. Lovely phrase that Grandpa said, well, Yafford is one of

the most delightful places one could possibly choose to be

born.

JAMES GRASBY : Lovely. And before us, a bridal way. We're

into the shade of a SBorycamore in flower. Which way are we

heading, Brough?

BROUGH SCOTT: We're going south-west, up onto Brook Down,

and out ahead of us we'll see the totemic chalk cliffs of

Freshwater Down.

JAMES GRASBY : And it's chalky underfoot, isn't it?

BROUGH SCOTT: you can see the chalk.

JAMES GRASBY : Brough, the view is beginning to open.

BROUGH SCOTT: Below us is Sidling Paul, which is where a

Warrior ran with his mother Cinderella as a yearling and a

two-year-old. And indeed, where Grandpa got on him the first

time and he immediately bucked him off. And then you go on down

past the church. Where actually in 1917 Grandpa came back from

the war and Cinderella - he was particularly close to the mother

of Warrior- and he went to see her, she'd gone got pretty old

by then.

When he whistled, she came running up to him and very

obviously recognised him. The next day was a Sunday. They'd

walk up there to the church, and when they walked up, Cinderella

was lying there dead, and she had kept herself alive to see

him again.

I know my mother was very struck by that image, and so was my

grandfather. Again, it's always a danger, this anthropological,

putting human sentiments into horses, but they still have

sentiments and that one was a very much I think stay alive for

something and then it's over and I like to think of that.

JAMES GRASBY : As we leave Sidling Paul we follow the lane

past Brook House where Jack And Warrior are based until 1925.

From here the path drops down towards Brook Bay, a stretch of

coastline long associated with shipwrecks and treacherous seas.

And it's here that Jack first realises Warrior has the makings

of a warhorse.

Brough, we're down on the beach and this beach has a special

place in Warrior's story, hasn't it?

BROUGH SCOTT: It wasn't called Warrior entirely by chance. The

likelihood of him being a cavalry horse was always there.

And If you're going to be a cavalry horse, you're going to

have to be brave.

And so what he did from a very young age, he went and stood him

in the waves. Grandpa had a very vivid memory is that he was

trembling, but he would stand there, even though the waves

came in and hit him. One of them knocked him over.

But he realised then, he said, that this horse was brave

because he would stand and he would face something. And of

course later in life he stood and faced shells and rifle fire

with men behind him and was inspiration as you can imagine.

JAMES GRASBY : As the waves break over his horse's legs,

Jack Seely senses Warrior's destiny. At six, Warrior is sent

to military school in Rutland. Then in August 1914, as war

breaks out in Europe, Jack and Warrior set sail to Le Havre to

face t he battlefields of France.

The following year, when Jack Seely takes command of the

Canadian Cavalry Brigade, Warrior returns briefly to

England for further training, but by Christmas they are back

at the front, and from then until the war's end Warrior

never leaves it, through the battles at the Somme, the horror

at Ypres, and the endless mud of Passchendaele.

There is traumatic and famous early film footage of mules and

horses in the deep mud of Passchendaele, getting stuck

down to the tops of their legs in mud, struggling to get out. I

mean, the mud was a dreadful killer of pack horses and

cavalry horses. Was that something that Warrior

experienced at first hand?

BROUGH SCOTT: Not for the first time he was lucky to be a

general's horse, or he certainly wouldn't have survived. Because

there was usually a hard area where you could probably be

alright. But if you strayed off it for any reason, you'd go into

the mud, it'd be so difficult, you couldn't pull the horse out,

it would take too many people.

Quite early on they would decide, relieve the pain, shoot

the horse, take the saddle off. Warrior went in, but he had the

general, and he had people around him, and they really

heaved and pulled and they got him out. But if he'd been an

ordinary horse he probably wouldn't have got out.

JAMES GRASBY : For Warrior, it's a lucky escape.

BROUGH SCOTT: I did count it up once I think it's seven times

when at least 50 - 50 he would have got killed. I mean, very

early on, bullets coming through. The horse next to him

being shot, that happened twice. Him standing nose to nose with

another horse, and while he was standing there, the other horse

has a bullet through it.

JAMES GRASBY : Time and again, Warrior defies death. Bullets,

collapsing buildings, shells landing close by. By now, it's

becoming clear Warrior is no ordinary horse.

Brough, take me to France in 1918 and the charge at Moreuil.

BROUGH SCOTT: The Canadian Cavalry were basically circling

the German advance. Big scare was that the Germans got to

Amiens and fundamentally it could be over.

Grandpa was in charge of the Canadian Cavalry, about a

thousand men and horses. And he was told not to get too

involved, and he saw the Germans had broken through. So he

decided, regardless of any instructions, he needed to take

it back.

The important thing, you had a signal group, which were the

people to go up in front - a spearhead of 16 people - and you

planted a big pennant.

Because then the units coming galloping up behind would know

one lot had to go left of the panel, the other would go right

the pennant. Of course, being Grandpa and Warrior, Warrior led

it.

Anyway, they came up and six of the guys got shot. You are

literally galloping into bullets.

Imagine the scene you've got five hundred six hundred horses

galloping up behind you and all going round and then actually

entering this wood, leave your horses. You then march in with

bayonets fixed, you know, thrusting and disemboweling,

things like that. It was hand-to-hand fighting.

And one of the German reports, it was hell in Moreuil Wood, and

I bet it was. But, you know, the fact is, Warrior survived it.

JAMES GRASBY : The battle at Moreuil Wood becomes one of the

last great cavalry actions of the First World War. Later,

General Seely would write, "I knew that moment to be the

supreme moment of my life."

Warrior is one of the lucky ones. Over eight million horses,

donkeys and mules perish in the First World War. Many drown in

the mud, are hit by gunfire, or simply die of cold and

exhaustion.

A month later, General Jack Seely is gassed, and as he

recuperates, Warrior stays by his side.

By Christmas that year, the war is finally over. Jack And

Warrior both return home to Brook on the Isle Of Wight. In

1925, they move to Mottistone, where Warrior spends the rest of

his days.

Brough, that was a wonderful walk. A wonderful walk, tracking

the story of Warrior and your grandfather. And we've now come

back to a really lovely, panelled room somewhere in the

north part of this great manor house. And we've got a pot of

tea.

BROUGH SCOTT: Much needed.

JAMES GRASBY : I've got the book that your grandfather wrote and

that you republished. And there's this lovely photograph

here of your grandfather on Warrior outside this house.

What's going on here?

BROUGH SCOTT: It's typical in many ways. It's 1934. Grandpa is

in his 60s, Warrior is 26 years old, and Queen Mary's there. And

she would have been at Cowes, and Grandpa is in his Cowes

yachting kit, which is a yachting cap, blue blazer and

white slacks.

And what the Queen clearly would have done is saying, "Oh, I'd

love to see Warrior." So they brought Warrior out of the

field, and he would have said, " Look, here he is," and he would

have jumped up on him. So he's riding Warrior bareback. And the

Queen is patting him.

JAMES GRASBY : So Warrior, a great celebrity. And by the

sound of it, Warrior lived to an extraordinary age. He went on

and on.

BROUGH SCOTT: It's one of the most extraordinary things of

all, really. And there's a terrific picture of Grandpa and

Warrior outside Mottistone Manor with Grandpa riding him when

Grandpa's 70 and Warrior's 30. I mean, 30 is very old for a

horse. And he's had the saddest of ends.

In 1941, things are very, very rough in England. And, you know,

it looks like we might well lose the war. And Warrior's getting

very ropey. And through the winter, Warrior was having to

have a lot of oats, things to keep him going. And Grandpa had

to decide, look, people are beginning to grumble. So we're

going to have to put him down.

JAMES GRASBY : During the Second World War, rationing means food

and fodder is desperately scarce. Non-essential animals,

retired horses, pets, even zoo animals were put down. As there

simply wasn't enough to keep them alive. It was in this

climate in 1941 that Warrior, by then 32 years old, is finally

laid to rest.

BROUGH SCOTT: This is the saddest bit really. He said he

couldn't bear to be there when the vet came to put him down.

But he wrote in his notebook, Warrior had been put down. He

said to quote poet Byron about his dog, Boatswain, "I do not

believe he'll be denied in heaven the soul he had on

earth," which is rather a lovely thing to have written in your

diary.

JAMES GRASBY : After more than three decades at Jack's side,

Warrior's Death makes national news with the Times publishing

an obituary and the Evening Standard running the headline,

The Horse... The Germans couldn't kill. But Warrior's

story doesn't end there.

In 1935, Jack Seeley writes a book about his beloved charger,

My Horse Warrior, a love letter to their bond. And in 2012,

Brough republishes the book, keeping his grandfather's words

alive for a new generation. In 2014, 100 years after the

outbreak of World War I, Warrior is posthumously awarded the PDSA

Dickin Medal. The Animals Victoria Cross.

BROUGH SCOTT: It was an extremely proud moment for me

and my family because Warrior was given this medal on behalf

of all the animals who suffered in the first war. And it was a

wonderful thing and the recognition that that horse born

at Yafford two miles from here at Mottistone who spent all of

his life, in the Isle Of Wight, with the minor exception of four

years when, according to Grandpa, he won the war

single-handed, that he should be honoured on behalf of all the

others, is something that we are all very, very proud.

JAMES GRASBY : From the cliffs of the Isle Of Wight to the

battlefields of France, Warrior's story is one of

loyalty, courage and survival against all odds. As we honour

the soldiers who never came home, let us also remember the

animals who stood beside them.

ROSIE HOLDSWORTH: Thank you for listening to this episode of

Wild Tales i hope you enjoyed it if Warrior's tale has inspired

you you'll find more history stories in our sister podcast

back when i'm Rosie Holdsworth, I'll see you next time.