Member’s Notes
Now that’s bomb proof!! by Derek French, ex MFH I have just added another framed photo to the wall in my home office. Displayed on the wall is a photographic history of my friends; the various mounts that have served me well over a lifetime of fox hunting. Searching through old albums which haven’t been looked at in ages I have found a photo of the
pretty palomino pony which introduced me to this great sport some 65 years ago. And here is a photo of my father on his big chestnut horse called Sandboy. This photo dates back to the 1930’s when he was hunting with the West kent Hunt in the uk. I can remember when Sandboy was pastured out in the field we called “the meadow” for the duration of the second world war. Sandboy enjoyed his full-time freedom and
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The author on Tommy (left) and his Dad on Sandboy (right).
grew comfortably plump in his idleness. He was considered bomb proof in the hunt field but now he had to prove this in reality as our home was on the flight path of the German bombers on their way to london. With that innate ability that all animals have, he soon got used to the bangs and flashes of the nightly air raids as the bombers passed overhead. They weren’t out to get him but the real risk was the amount of schratnel which would fall out of the sky from the anti-aircraft guns that were stationed in the vicinity. One morning we went to check how he was after a particularly noisy night only to find a long slashing wound diagonally across the knee of his hind leg. A jagged piece of an exploded shell had caught him in its descent to earth. Fortunately no bones were broken but it was a proud wound as the flesh had opened up around the bone. We managed to get him to hobble back to his stable and cleaned the wound as best we could but it needed stitching up. This posed a problem as in the wartime conditions of 1942 the local veterinarian had been called up for wartime duties elsewhere. What to do? In the village we still had a local doctor. Our Dr. Hasler was close to seventy but still was a dab hand at delivering babies and was quite capable of handling life’s misfortunes of an ordinary nature. The more serious injuries resulting from enemy action were whisked off by ambulance to the local hospital. We called to see if he could help and he duly arrived puffing a little due to his portly nature and carrying the iconic doctor’s gladstone bag. Sedating a heavy 17 hand horse was somewhat off the dosage charts for a doctor accustomed to sedating 180 lb. humans so he just kept injecting in the appropriate mixture until finally the big fellow slumped down on a thick bed of straw on the floor of his stable. Quickly the stitches were sewn and the bleeding stopped. “Well”‘ said the good doctor “that’s a start but we need to immobilize the leg otherwise he will pop out the stitches. We will have to use a splint and put the leg in a plaster cast”. A quick dash was made across the village green and the doctor returned with all the plaster of Paris he could find in