Cavalry Stretcher

[archangel1]

I just started reading ''Allenby's War - The Palestine-Arabian Campaigns 1916-1918'' by David L. Bullock, which has been sitting in my bookcase for the past 20 years. (Hey, when you've got as many books as I have, it can take a while to actually read them.  I've even got a copy of Kipling's ''The Jungle Book'', the 1899 edition, kicking around somewhere!)
Anyway, there's a picture on the title page spread of a patrol of Australian Light Horse in 1916.  Strapped to the rifle bucket and saddle behind the Sergeant's right leg is what is referred to as 'the special canvas and bamboo cavalry stretcher'.  Does anybody know anything about this particular item? Helen? It's not a big deal as far as things go but it just aroused my interest.  I don't imagine anyone has actually modelled it as a piece of horse equipment.

Cheers,
Mike

[Helen]

I just started reading ''Allenby's War - The Palestine-Arabian Campaigns 1916-1918'' by David L. Bullock, which has been sitting in my bookcase for the past 20 years. (Hey, when you've got as many books as I have, it can take a while to actually read them.  I've even got a copy of Kipling's ''The Jungle Book'', the 1899 edition, kicking around somewhere!)
Anyway, there's a picture on the title page spread of a patrol of Australian Light Horse in 1916.  Strapped to the rifle bucket and saddle behind the Sergeant's right leg is what is referred to as 'the special canvas and bamboo cavalry stretcher'.  Does anybody know anything about this particular item? Helen? It's not a big deal as far as things go but it just aroused my interest.  I don't imagine anyone has actually modelled it as a piece of horse equipment.

Cheers,
Mike

Hi Mike, sorry for the delay, however, I'll need to get back to you and others who have an interest.

[fastolfrus]

The only mounted stretchers I've seen pictures of are the camel litters with two patients, one laid at either side.

[Helen]

The AIF was fortunate in that the 32 stretcher-bearers of a light horse field ambulance, unlike those of the British cavalry, were fully mounted. Thanks to this foresight, the stretcher-bearers were able to keep up with the light horsemen. The unmounted tent subdivisions however had to stay behind. As on the Western Front, the field ambulance organisation proved unsuitable and had to be modified in the field and a number of different methods were used for transporting the wounded. Sand carts were two wheeled vehicles with wide metal treads.12 They proved very effective in the Sinai despite numerous defects in early models, resulting in broken wheels and axles. After the Battle of Beersheba in October 1917, 11 out of 27 sand carts in the Anzac Mounted Division had broken axles.13 Their main defect was that they had no driver's seat, so postilion driving (in which the driver rides the lead horse) was necessary. A second method of carrying the wounded was by camel, in devices known as cacolets. Unfortunately, as the camel moved, the cacolet would be bounced about, sometimes sufficiently to cause the passenger to vomit. For a man with broken bones, a trip in a cacolet was more like a form of torture. A better solution was the sand sledge. Drawn by two horses, these provided a comfortable means of transport for the seriously wounded.

Furthermore:

The question of transporting the wounded and sick in desert conditions was a major one, for sand carts and wheeled ambulances (consisting of hooded wire matresses) borne on broad-tyred wheels were out of the question in heavy sand, while the cacolets,  made up of a deck chair contrivance or a man length box swung either side of a camel proved to be appliances of hideous torture.
The Aussie included in their regimental estabs mounted stretcher-bearers who in the early Sinai days were the only efficient means of carrying the wounded. They soon contrived simple sled-sleighs made up of galvanised iron sheets turned up at the front and drawn by two horses. More sophisticated sleighs were later introducedby the NZs and adopted by the yeomanry -This solved the problem most highly. Early 1917 the yeomanry regimental saddlers devised a new type of cavalry stretcher which was made up of two light bamboo poles four feet long joined by a piece of canvas three feet by nineteen inches. This new stretcher could be attached to the sword and proved its worth when the normal stretcher was not available.

Take care.

[archangel1]

Thanks, Helen! I knew if anybody had an answer, it would be you!

Cheers!

[Paul Hicks]

Hi I hope this might help. This a scan from a picture of ' Travoys arriving with wounded at a dressing station as Smol in Macedonia, September 1916' by Stanley Spencer.