Developing from a single operation in Cairo into one of the world's largest equines welfare organisations, at work in many countries, with headquarters in London, it is known today as Brooke.
He competed as a member of the British equestrian team in the 1924 Summer Olympics, although he had broken his collarbone a few days earlier.
[citation needed] In 1930, Geoffrey Brooke was appointed to the command of the British Cavalry Brigade in Egypt.
It was at this time that Dorothy Brooke realised she would have to search for the old war horses, whom “she hated to remember yet could not forget”.
In 1919, the cavalry, artillery and draught horses that had served in the British Army in the Egypt and Palestine campaigns of World War I had been sold in their many thousands to a life of continuous hard labour and a painful old age.
During World War I, horses cast from the veterinary hospitals had initially been sold to Egyptian dealers.
[6] After the Armistice, however, with 22,000 horses, mostly in Palestine and Sinai, requiring transport or disposal, the Remounts Directorate of the War Office ordered the local sale of all animals of 12 years and under that were deemed up to some work.
[8] By 1930, twelve years later, the war horses, many now of an advanced age, had been lost to view, toiling for the very poorest owners, or at night to avoid the police and Egyptian S.P.C.A., or in the stone quarries.
Brooke had heard rumours from British residents who spoke of pitiful, emaciated creatures that they suspected were war horses.
[9] She raised money from her friends and from her own pocket, got together a Committee, and set in motion the Old War Horse Campaign of Rescue.
[13] At first, she used the premises of the Egyptian S.P.C.A., but this was to prove unrealistic in the long term, and it was difficult to find light, airy stables in Cairo – and to gain the necessary permission.
[citation needed] "As their ill-shod misshapen hooves felt the deep tibbin [broken barley straw] bed beneath them, there would be another doubting disbelieving halt.
Memories, long forgotten, would then return when some stepped eagerly forwards towards the mangers piled high with berseem, while others, with creaking joints, lowered themselves slowly on to the bed and lay, necks and legs outstretched.
[14] Brooke never sought to blame the men and boys who through poverty and lack of knowledge, had failed their animals.
The 'tragic sight' of the locally bred animals that appeared before the Buying Committee made her realise that a free hospital was needed – to which every poor owner could bring what might be his family's sole earner, and obtain expert help and advice at the first signs of trouble instead of waiting hopelessly.
There Dorothy, besides giving her time and energy to the affairs of the Hospital, "threw herself into working to alleviate the suffering she saw all about her".
She is reported as having remarked to her husband, some weeks beforehand, "If I die – not that I am going to for ever so long – promise me you won't go to my funeral service.
[2] "Looking back on all she had accomplished," remarks Glenda Spooner, "one can feel certain that she thought little of her own share and a great deal of other people's, for that was ever her way.