New Acquisition: 23rd Hussars Horse Photo Album
The Museum has recently received a new donation to the small but important archive of the 23rd Hussars; a photograph album of the regimental stables. This small album captures the life of the regimental stables during the months after VE Day when, after the bitter fighting of Northwest Europe, the officers and men had a chance to return to peacetime sports and recreation. In this month’s article we will explore the album which opens with the names of every horse at the disbandment of the Regiment in January 1946:
The 23rd Hussars were a wartime regiment formed in December 1940 by, then Colonel, Charles Barnet ‘Roscoe’ Harvey and a cadre of officers and NCOs from the 10th Royal Hussars and 15th/ 19th Hussars. Landing after D-Day in 1944 they fought through Normandy, the Netherlands and into Germany. After VE Day, they moved into the area of Schleswig Holstein, stationed at Husum, close to the Danish border. The majority of the Regiment occupied a German Marine barracks that was well-received, being described as:-
‘a brand new barracks and a model of what a barracks should be. Each Squadron was allotted a block which had room to spare. There was a large building with mess-rooms, canteens and Sergeants’ Messes and a hall, which was converted into a camp cinema. There was a large drill hall which at first was the arms dump and later became a stables and a first class riding school. There were large store rooms, workshops and tradesmen’s wings. There was a gymnasium, with every form of modern equipment, and a running track and sports field. There was an unfinished swimming pool, which we soon had completed, a building for a C.R.S., a building for an Education Wing, married quarters to be used as officers’ messes, flats for senior officers, ponds for ducks and geese, and allotments kept by the squadrons’.
The only thing missing was a swimming pool, which had been on the plans but never finished, however, with thanks to German labour, this was soon rectified.
For the 23rd Hussars their principal role became ‘disarmament, de-nazification and the enforcement of Allied authority’. By the end of May 1945, the Barrack’s dump contained 10,700 rifles, 440 machine guns, 3 six-inch guns and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition. Kept extremely busy, sports and recreation were increasingly important, and the stables and riding school was enhanced with horses from the local area. The Regimental history records:
‘We were not slow to make use of anything which, though enjoyed until now by the people of Husum, had been denied us during the years of war. And so there were horses for those who wished to ride, motor launches and sailing boats for those who liked the sea, Föhr holiday island for holiday makers and an abundance of shot-guns for the shootin’ members of the Regiment and so on.’
The album captures the stables staff which, from the names, appears to include several displaced persons or ex PoWs. The Regiment was part of the administration for around 8,000 or so Ex-Prisoners-Of-War and Displaced persons in the area around Husum. These were predominantly
Russians and Poles, but also some French and Italians. Staff from the Regiment included Sergeant George Williams, pictured, who is also shown riding in some of the races including the ‘Royal Husum Cup’. He had been wounded in August 1944 fighting through Belgium.
Another named rider, shown mid-jump, is Colonel (later General) Cecil ‘Monkey’ Blacker MC. Originally an officer in the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, he transferred to the 23rd Hussars in 1941. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1944 and in August 1945 was appointed Commanding Officer, by then his ‘popularity was a byword in the Regiment’. He ended his career as Adjutant General between 1973 and 1976. Blacker’s equestrian prowess continued after the war, riding in the 1948 Grand National and, in 1954 he won the Grand Military Gold Cup at Cheltenham. He represented Great Britain in Showjumping from 1959 to 1961 and in later life was President of both the British Showjumping Association and the British Equestrian Federation.
The 23rd Hussars were disbanded at the end of January 1946 – with the album capturing the cavalry spirit during the final months of its existence. When Blacker, a regular cavalry officer, had first joined he described the Regiment as ‘a cross-section of Great Britain at war – unmilitary, peace loving, not motivated by any burning zeal – indeed far from keen to expose themselves to danger but united in a resigned determination to do whatever they were asked to do as well as they could…they had seen army officers and, particularly sergeant-majors, portrayed on film often as figures of fun and now suddenly these people were real, and what was worse, in charge of their lives’.
By the end of the war, he reckoned them one of the best armoured regiments that fought in Northwest Europe and recounted that when the Corps Commander at Husum inspected the Regiment he remarked “I always like inspecting your Regiment because everyone looks cheerful and has a grin on his face”.
We hope to be able to digitise the album soon to be able to share the photographs in their entirety. This is an incredibly fascinating piece of history, and we are most grateful to be able to hold it in our ever-growing 23rd Hussars archive.