There were horses here -- a whole troop of draft horses which had been worn out in that relentless, heartbreaking labor into which war sooner or later resolves itself.

The drove had been shipped back this far to be rested and cured up, or to be shot in the event that they were past mending.
I had seen perhaps a hundred thousand head of horses, drawing cannon and wagons, and serving as mounts for officers in the first drive of the Germans toward Paris, and had marveled at the uniformly prime condition of the teams.

Presumably these sorry crow-baits, which drooped and limped about the barren railroad yards at the back of the siding where the shell loaders squatted, had been whole-skinned and sound of wind and joint in early August.
Two months of service had turned them into gaunt wrecks.

Their ribs stuck through their hollow sides.

Their hoofs were broken; their hocks were swelled enormously; and, worst of all, there were great raw wounds on their shoulders and backs, where the collars and saddles had worn through hide and flesh to the bones.