During the Second World War, New Brunswickers fighting in Italy rescued a horse, who became a beloved mascot for their regiment. After following the troops through Europe, she came to Hampton, where she was awarded Canadian Citizenship.
A large crowd had assembled around the old brick courthouse of the Town of Hampton, near Saint John in New Brunswick. On the steps of the courthouse, a microphone had been set up. Politicians and dignitaries stood on the balcony, awaiting the arrival of a very special guest.
The crowd hushed as Magistrate Arthur J. Kelly stepped to the microphone and read the following proclamation:
“[This Certificate of Naturalization is] given under our hand and seal this 27th day of March in the year 1946.”
“Know all men by these here presents that the royal lady, hereinafter known as Princess Louise, is hereby named and proclaimed a citizen of the Great Dominion of Canada and a free woman of the Village of Hampton.”
“Furthermore, as such [said Princess] is entitled to roam at will in the hills and vales … and to devour and partake in that what she pleaseth, whether it be carefully tended garden or from the bursting warehouses and in addition find and take lodging wheresoever she desireth, whether it be in a private home, public building, or [number] 1 & 2 fire sheds.”
A military band began to play as the crowd cheered as the princess approached, escorted to the stage by a military guard of honour composed of veterans who had just returned home from the Second World War. A reporter for the Evening Times Globe newspaper wrote that the princess had travelled 16,000 miles to get there.
Local children, who had been hanging around the military headquarters where the princess had been staying since she arrived to try and catch a glimpse of her, went wild as she finally came into view.
Up the courthouse steps walked the Princess, her chestnut hair blowing in the wind, peering over the railing and looking down her long nose at the jubilant crowd below.
The mayor brought over the unusually large Certificate of Naturalization document to the princess for her signature. Princess Louise examined it briefly, then stamped on it, leaving behind the imprint from her horseshoe.
By the Autumn of 1944, the Canadian invasion of Mussolini's Fascist Italy had liberated Rome and was continuing towards the north of Italy.
But their steady advance was finally halted by the formidable fortified defences known as the Gothic Line. This was not defended by the Fascist Italians but instead by their powerful allies, the Nazi Germans.
The fighting on the Gothic Line devolved into the kind of horrific and brutal slog that we usually associate with the First World War, complete with unmoving battle lines, constant artillery attacks, and brutal casualties.
New Brunswick’s only tank regiment, called the 8th Hussars, had been sent to Italy to try and break the Gothic Line.
A Hussar is an ancient Hungarian word, dating back to early medieval times, that means a horseman.
While the 8th Hussars didn’t go back quite that far, they did have a long and distinguished history dating all the way back to 1775. As their name implies, they had indeed once been a cavalry unit – which is to say they had once been horsemen.
By 1944, the 8th Hussars' horses had long since been replaced by tanks. However, the Canadian military is even today very proud of its long traditions, and they also do enjoy making their American friends jealous that our traditions date back further than theirs courtesy of the British connection.
This meant that despite driving tanks, the 8th Hussars still very much liked to think of themselves as modern horsemen, which meant these military men in tanks still had a deep-seated affection for horses.
The second-in-command of the 8th Hussars while they were in Italy was Lt.-Col. Bob Ross (no relation to the famous painter).
Lt.-Col. Ross later explained his tank regiment's deep and ancient love of horses, declaring in a 1979 speech called "The Last Horse" that:
“It is sad to contemplate the transposition in cold blood of a regiment which loved its horse, into a "mechanical outfit" dealing in nuts and bolts. … The horse hunger persisted, and many a surreptitious pat was administered to the gaunt flanks of Italian equines of doubtful lineage and craggy outline. ”
Perhaps realizing that “horse hunger” sounds bad, Bob Ross quickly added, to his speech, in parentheses: “Horse hunger [means men missing horses and] is not to be confused with a longing for horse meat, although the daily piece de resistance of tinned bully-beef [in our rations] was presumed to be composed … of ancient steeds.”
Bob Ross ordered the Hussars to use their iron steeds to launch a midnight surprise attack on Coriano Ridge on the Gothic Line, which was held by the Germans — or as the Canadians called them, "The Jerries."
That attack didn’t go well. The Germans spotted the Canadian tanks coming in a line and disabled the first tanks with artillery fire, which caused the rest of the tanks to get stuck. The Hussars who crewed those tanks scrambled out and ran back to the safety of the Canadian lines, leaving behind their iron steeds.
Bob Ross was furious when he learned that his troops had abandoned their tanks, telling them, “Well, you lost them, go out and get them.”
Under the cover of darkness that night, several Canadian tank drivers and mechanics were sent back to try and fix and get back their iron steeds that they had left behind.
According to Bob Ross: “Jerry, however, was no more stupid than we usually found him and seemed to have a general idea of what was going on, so bursts of machine-gun and shell fire punctuated the activities of the mechanics with sufficient frequency to cause them all to spend a considerable amount of time under the tanks.”
Between gunfire and artillery shell blasts, the Canadian soldiers heard what sounded like a scream.
Assuming the scream came from one of their members, a particularly brave soldier volunteered to go out from under the tanks where they were hiding and figure out who it was that had just been killed so that they could inform his loved ones back in Canada.
However, when that volunteer returned, he, according to Bob Ross, “cleared up the gruesome mystery by announcing in a voice usually reserved by mothers for their sick children, 'Boys, it’s a little horse hit by a hunk of shell.”
The little horse’s mother had been killed by a direct hit from an artillery shell several days earlier.
Ever since, the little horse had been helplessly walking around in circles around her mother’s body so much that the ground itself was worn down and trampled. She was so skinny that the bones were showing through her skin. Several pieces of shell had cut her skin, and she was badly in need of medical attention.
Coming under even more fierce attack by the Germans, and with dawn's light rapidly approaching, the Canadians scurried back to their lines.
They hadn’t managed to repair or recover any of their tanks, which was after all their mission, but, even worse, as far as the soldiers were concerned, was that they had not been able to get close enough to the little horse to rescue her.
According to Bob Ross: “This sorry sight, of course, tore the hardened hearts of ex-cavalry fitters virtually to shreds, and on their return at dawn they told the story with low moans of concentrated anguish and couldn’t possibly touch their breakfasts. They immediately applied en masse for permission to bring “the poor little thing” back to the lines and were told with some acerbity that the recovery job they were on did not include the recovery of horses or any other quadruped which happened to engage their fancy and that senior authority would take a dim view of hearing that half a dozen specialised mechanics had been knocked off by Jerry while they were engaged in removing a nondescript Italian nag from the danger area.”
After a dramatic pause, Ross continued:
“This, of course, was all window dressing, and they soon had the answer they wanted with the stipulation that no one was to get hurt in the process and that the horse recovery was not to interfere with the recovery of the tanks.”
The word that there was going to be a horse rescue operation that night spread like wildfire throughout the 8th Hussars' camp. Lt. Col. Bob Ross was overwhelmed with the requests he received to volunteer to save the little horse.
A special team set off after nightfall after darkness, while the rest of the Canadian soldiers anxiously waited for news of what happened to the little horse.
The next day at dawn, the expedition returned from their effort to recover their tanks and the horse.
Bob Ross later explained: “The recovery score that night was one horse and one tank. The statistics branch has never been able to reduce to figures how many tanks might have been recovered that night if no horse had been involved; it was about the only thing they didn’t reduce to a graph.”
Once back to safety and in daylight, the Canadians realized that they had rescued a, to be perfectly frank, a rather unusual-looking horse. No one seems to have ever quite figured out exactly what type of horse she actually was. Most guesses were that she was an obscure type of breed of horse found in Germany, which implies that she had once been a horse on the other side of the war.
She had a rather long nose, even for a horse, and these stubby little short legs, and a rather round torso. She had been grievously wounded with deep cuts from artillery shrapnel.
Her rescuers brought her to the medical tent, where the astonished medical officer, Captain Tom Dalrymple, protested by arguing that he was no horse doctor.
Captain Dalrymple was quite well known in the region for his much-celebrated desire to treat everyone who came to the camp. He was treating wounded Canadian soldiers, which was, of course, his job, but he had also taken to treating sick and wounded Italian civilians. As the reputation spread in war-torn Italy that this Canadian military doctor would not turn anybody away, more and more Italian civilians came from far and wide to see him. His assistant later recalled: “They came to us with sick babies, teeth to be pulled, everything.”
So, despite his initial surprise and protests, perhaps it didn't come as a shock to anyone when Captain Dalrymple agreed to take care of the little horse.
Even so, it wasn’t an easy thing to heal a horse. She was not only malnourished and ill but had several severe wounds, including a deep 8-inch laceration on her side.
Soldiers found her oatmeal and powdered milk. The doctor was short on drugs, causing an enormous headache about how to sedate the horse to operate on her. The peculiarly Maritimes solution they came up with was to get her super drunk on rum.
There was really no debate over what her name would be: Princess Louise, after the regimental title of the 8th Hussars.
That title, and the nickname the 8th Hussars still go by today, dates back to 1879 when the unit still rode horses. Then the 8th Hussars had been visited by Queen Victoria's fourth daughter. Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, who was perhaps better known by her nickname “the rebel princess” for her precocious disregard for Victorian gender norms. The 8th Hussars had been so charmed by her that they adopted the regimental title “The Princess Louise Regiment” in her honour.
And now they'd been so charmed by the little horse that they named her after the rebel princess.
As Princess Louise began to heal, the Canadians grew more possessive of her. The feeling was mutual; several Italian civilians claimed that she was their horse. For her part, Princess Louise would try and bite and kick at the Italians if they got too close. However, she was fond of anyone who was wearing the Canadian khaki. It seemed she'd decided that she would be going with the Canadians.
By this point, the Gothic Line was a stalemate, and the Hussars were needed elsewhere. They were told they were leaving Italy to help liberate Belgium and the Netherlands. Soldiers from Brazil replaced their positions as they prepared to depart.
But what were they supposed to do with Princess Louise?
Thad Stevens, who would later become her caretaker, recalled in an interview with the Kings County Record newspaper: “They couldn't move her from Italy to Holland because there were strict orders that no animals be taken out of Italy. Monty [General Bernard Montgomery] had seen the horse and knew how much it meant to the boys.”
“The boys made up their minds that they were going to take the colt to Holland, so they fixed up a truck and loaded it with machine guns. They put the machine gun boxes up the side and, in the middle, surrounded by machine gun boxes, some of which were empty, was the colt and the sergeant.”
The ship docked in Marseilles, France. The 8th Hussars, with Princess Louise in tow, travelled by train to Belgium, where they arrived in time for the victory parade.
Bob Ross recalled: “And on her first parade, there turned out spick and span and fell in on the right of the line with her customary poise and smartness.”
Then it came time to join the other Canadians in the fight to liberate the Netherlands from the German occupation.
There, the 8th Hussars were engaged in brutal fighting in an effort to liberate the Dutch people. Princess Louise helped out, working as a warhorse.
“The "Princess" went to work and drawing a two-wheeled gig,” bringing supplies to soldiers who were hard at work fighting in notoriously muddy conditions.
By late April of 1945, Nazi Germany was teetering on the brink of complete capitulation. Princess Louise and the 8th Hussars were at that time in the liberated Dutch village of Eelde [ill-dee]. The people of Eelde were deeply enamoured with Princess Louise: “She became as much the pride and joy of the Dutch as of her own unit. They referred to her as "our horse" and people from far and near came to her paddock to praise and admire.”
However, even as it was obvious to all that Germany would surrender in a matter of days, the 8th Hussars were called up to the front to fight in one final battle.
An elite German unit had fortified the port of Delfzijl [delph-zel] with concrete bunkers the size of houses with walls four feet wide. This came as a surprise to the Irish Regiment of Canada, who thought they could simply walk into the town on foot. The Irish Regiment –who, by the way, were in no way Irish, they were from Sudbury, Ontario – found themselves trapped and pinned down by artillery fire.
According to Canadian military historian Jeffery Williams in his book ‘The Long Left Flank,’“The New Brunswick Hussars broke through to seize the railway station on the northern outskirts of the town. Immediately, the enemy's resistance faltered, and boats filled with German soldiers were seen [fleeing]. In its final operations of the war, the[y] had captured 4,143 prisoners and liberated one of the last areas occupied by the Nazis. Next day, 2 May, the last of the enemy in north-east Holland were killed or captured.”
Five days later, Nazi Germany surrendered, and the war was over in Europe.
As the 8th Hussars turned their minds to their eventual trip home, they began to ask what would happen to Princess Louise. The rules were clear – the horse was strictly forbidden from coming back to Canada.
The soldiers began contacting everyone they could think of in England and Canada to try to get some sort of special exception for their horse, but nobody seemed to understand their special bond with the animal.
Eventually, they pleaded their case with J. C. Patterson, the Canadian Pacific Railway representative for Europe. He was familiar with Princess Louise; he had already had to deal with a lot of paperwork to get the horse on the train before.
According to Bob Ross, after he heard of the latest favour that was being asked on Princess Louise’s part, J. C. Patterson “took a deep breath, counted up to ten and in a steady voice assured the unit representatives that he would personally see that the horse was transported to Canada if he had to swim the whole distance towing the Princess on a raft.”
However, when the time came for the 8th Hussars to go home, the weather was particularly terrible, so the hard decision was made to leave Princess Louise behind in Europe.
Much to J. C. Patterson’s astonishment, that horse that had been causing him such annoyance had actually been left behind for him to take care of.
That was about the last that anyone heard of the horse named Princess Louise for about a year.
By March of 1946, the troops had long since returned home, and the story of the little colt who had travelled Europe with the soldiers and their tanks had already become a legendary tale in New Brunswick. Absolutely everyone knew the story of Princess Louise and wondered what had become of her.
All of a sudden, there was a mass exodus of New Brunswick’s recently demobilised soldiers toward New York City. Word had come that Princess Louise had just arrived there on a Dutch ship.
The former soldiers brought Princess Louise on the train from New York City to Saint John.
There she was met by a parade, including soldiers in uniforms and even tanks, to take her to a welcome ceremony in King’s Square. She trotted in the lead of the parade, Thad Stevens, who recalled: “She knew as much about parades as any soldier. At attention, she never moved.”
She even learned to count by stomping her hoof … although Stevens admitted: “I’d give her a nudge when it was time to stop.”
After that, she went to Hampton, where a ceremony was held to award her Canadian citizenship.
She was known as a good marcher and had a deep love of soldiers, or, for that matter, anyone wearing khaki. She, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have the same high opinion of Canadian politicians and caused some minor political scandals, she eating a bouquet of flowers that was being presented to the Governor-General, pooping on the floor of New Brunswick’s Legislature, and trying to bite one politician's bum.
She also became known for her strikingly bad diet. She would hang out at the officer's mess and drink beer and even whiskey. She would also eat candy, sugar, chewing tobacco, cookies, oranges, cigarettes – pretty much everything except cheese, which she hated.
Despite her diet, she lived a long life. In 1969, at the age of 25, she retired. A party was held for her in Sussex, in which she was presented with a cake, which she ate in a very unladylike way, getting covered in icing.
She would live until 1973, passing away from old age on a farm in Hampton. She was given a special army funeral with full military honours.
This story appears in the book Backyard History: Forgotten Stories From Atlantic Canada’s Past Volume Two. Order a signed copy from the author here!
