The biggest thing Britain shipped to France was not shells. It was hay. Fodder for horses was the single largest commodity Britain exported to the Western Front across the whole war — more tonnage than ammunition, more than anything else at all. France could not supply it: the cropland was being shelled flat, and what was left the French farmers needed for their own animals. So Britain sent oats and hay over the Channel by the shipload, year after year, to keep alive the animals that hauled the guns that wrecked the fields. This man with a handful of feed is the far end of that chain.

Note what is on the saddle, and what is not. There is a rifle in a bucket by the horse's shoulder and a bandolier round its neck; there is no lance anywhere in the set. That is honest for 1916–18. A lance is a weapon for open country, and by then there was none — the cavalry waited behind the line for a breakthrough that never came, and fought dismounted with rifles when they fought at all. He wears a soft service cap rather than a helmet, because he is not where the shells are. The horse is in full marching order and going nowhere. In a diorama, put him behind a trench section — the thing that ended his trade — beside the officer with his walking stick, another man with time on his hands, while the Mark V gets on with the job he trained for.

W. Britain model 23063. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Two-piece set — horse and dismounted lancer on separate sculpted groundwork bases. Boxed.