Object April 2009

A war-time horse show

The popular conception of World War I is of trench warfare. In reality, of course, there was much more to the battlefield, and regiments were cycled through the front line, coming out to rest, recuperate, regenerate and train. And have fun.

April’s “Object of the Month” has been put on show by SOFO volunteer Mike Cross, and is an original programme of a horse show in September 1915. It included just the variety of competition and performance that you  would find today, combining skill in horsemanship with amusement.
 
Mike: “I found this programme and was really struck by some of the names, familiar Oxfordshire men, as well as by the determination to enjoy life in a difficult time.  I’m not clear, though, why the goat won the children’s race – and it beat a horse!”

The “Object of the Month” for April has produced a surprise.

This month’ object is an original programme of a horse show held at Buyscchevre in France in September 1915.
 
The surprise is the photograph of an Oxfordshire soldier, Frederick Arthur Harris, taking a jump at a horse show in France during the First World War, very possibly at the same show.  Private Harris, a shoe smith, went to France in 1915 with the Queens Own Oxfordshire Hussars returning in February 1919, service which earned him the 1915 Star, the Victory Medal and the British War Medal.

The photograph belongs to Mervyn Harris of Eynsham, Yeoman Harris’s son.  The original will shortly be on show with the programme at Woodstock for the last few days of April’s display.  In addition to its rarity as a personal photograph from World War I, it is unusual in being an early action photograph.

There is nothing obviously to show that the photograph was taken in France, unless someone can say for certain that the hurdles are French?