Wild Horses

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has confirmed that it is investigating newspaper claims that members of the elite Household Cavalry have been ‘running wild’, participating in drink and drug fuelled orgies, and fostering a culture of fear and bullying within the regiment. “They’d be up all night drinking and partying, then turn up for parade the next morning red-eyed, reeking of booze and barely able to stand up. It was a bloody disgrace, a lot of the lads wanted to report them, but were bullied into silence,” claims Corporal ‘X’, a six year veteran of the regiment, who has broken ranks to speak out about the behaviour of his regiment’s horses. “One trooper who threatened to spill the beans to the brass had both legs broken when he was ‘accidentally’ thrown from his horse and trampled by it, whilst a junior NCO suffered serious internal injuries in a similar incident when his horse collapsed and fell on him as he was mounting it!” According to ‘X’ the horses would often get drunk before major ceremonial occasions such as Trooping the Colour and expect their riders to cover for them. “One of the senior horses – Sugar Stick – was in such a bad way during the Trooping of the Colour a couple of years ago, he let go both ends just as Her Majesty was riding past, live on TV. It was disgusting, the rank behind him were spattered with shit! To make it worse, he then collapsed and rolled around in his own steaming excrement,” the whistleblowing NCO told tabloid news rag The Shite. “Of course, under threat of a good kicking in the stables, his rider was forced to take the blame. He was given six months in the glass house and kicked out of the army after he told the CO he’d gotten Sugar Stick drunk on lager the night before!”

Worse was still to come at that particular Trooping of the Colour, when another horse, Hampton Rock, still rampant after a wild session at Stringfellow’s night club, dashed out of the ranks and attempted to mount the Queen’s horse from behind. “Jesus, her face as old Hampton tried to take her nag up the arse – she was mortified,” says ‘X’. “He was eventually dragged off and again, his rider took the rap, claiming he’d done it for a bet! The worst thing was, though, that the royal mount, Gobstopper, was itself aroused by this assault, and the Queen had to conduct the rest of the ceremony astride a horse with a huge hard on!” Gobstopper disgraced himself completely when, after the ceremony, he attempted to proposition Her Majesty, allegedly inviting her to fondle his fetlocks and nuzzling her breasts with his nose. “That time he went too far, and the authorities couldn’t turn a blind eye to it,” ‘X’ claimed in The Shite. “A few days after that incident Gobstopper broke a leg in a mysterious ‘fall’, and had to be shot! That scared the other nags enough that they stopped partying for a couple of days!”

Sadly, the fear engendered by Gobstopper’s demise was short-lived, and the horses soon returned to their usual routine. “The ringleader was a big old bastard called Padlock, he was an eight year veteran of the unit,” recalled ‘X’ in a newspaper article. “He insisted that all new recruits had to undergo initiation rites – they were horrendous and designed to completely humiliate these poor young lads coming into the regiment!” These initiation ceremonies apparently involved new recruits being stripped naked and forced to wear a harness whilst being ridden around the stables by their drunken colleagues. “After that, Padlock and his mates would take over the ceremony and it would get really ugly,” claimed ‘X’. “The new lads would be tied up in the stalls and the horses would take it in turns to crap on them. If they were really drunk and strung out – or even just in a bad mood – they ‘d give them a good ‘seeing to’ as well – they’d take bets on which recruit could ‘take the most inches’! Those poor lads wouldn’t be able to walk for days after that!”

It wasn’t just military personnel who found themselves harassed and intimidated by the out-of-control horses, members of the public were also on the receiving end, particularly when the regiment were performing ceremonial guard duties on Horseguards Parade. “They’d regularly touch up attractive young female tourists – ‘accidentally’ sticking their noses up their skirts, that sort of thing,” ‘X’ told the tabloid. “They also had no qualms about stealing from the public. Sometimes subtly, by picking their pockets as they posed for photographs with the horses. Other times, it was just open extortion – one little girl was severely bitten when she refused to hand over her sweets, whilst another kid nearly lost three fingers after being bitten for refusing to give up his ice cream!”

‘According to the tabloid revelations, the rampant Cavalry horses frequently indulged in wild orgies, shipping brood mares into the barracks by the horse box-load. Their sexual antics didn’t stop at home – even when abroad on official duties, the nags would allegedly ‘sow their oats’ with local mares regardless of the consequences. Indeed, ‘X’ told The Shite that the MoD had been forced to pay out a significant sum of ‘hush money’ to one of the King of Spain’s top trainers in order to avoid a scandal, after Padlock had got one of the King’s mares pregnant. The resulting foal was adopted out to a rural cart horse. However, it wasn’t just mares who were at risk of seduction by the out-of-control army horses. “One young subaltern came home one evening to find his wife in bed with a regimental horse popularly known as ‘Big Dave’, ” ‘X’ has claimed. “The brazen bastard was lying there smoking a cigarette – apparently he even winked at the officer before getting up and strolling out of the door! The wife taunted him that Big Dave had satisfied her as no man ever could – he’d tried to use her husband’s extra-large condoms, but they’d been too small and had split when he put them on! Of course, the shame was just too much – two days later the subaltern shot himself!”

It was this last incident which apparently provoked the corporal to go to the press: “They were just going to cover it up again and claim he’d committed suicide as a result of Gulf War Syndrome, or something!” However, despite launching an investigation, the MoD remains sceptical about the claims, pointing out that ‘X’ himself was currently facing court-martial on charges of bullying theft and being drunk in charge of a cavalry horse (“He tried to use it in a ram raid on a newsagent’s in the Strand before crashing it into a BMW”, a spokesperson told us). Moreover, they have also noted that it is physically impossible for a woman to have sex with a horse outside of poorly produced porn videos.