Minnesota Then
In 1921, a ten-year-old chestnut gelding arrived at Fort Snelling from Fort Reno, Oklahoma, with a white star on his forehead and a reputation bad enough that some considered putting him down. Wild off the Montana plains, he reportedly didn't even wear shoes. The Army's Third Infantry labeled him a renegade. His disproportionately long hind legs gave him a slight stagger when he walked, and someone named him for it. Whiskey.
Lt. William Hazelrigg arrived at the fort the same year. An experienced rider, he saw something in the unwanted horse and chose him as his mount. He earned Whiskey's trust by spending time quietly talking to him. Nobody knew exactly what he said. It worked anyway. The two became inseparable, and within a year Whiskey was performing at polo matches and horse shows across the region, collecting blue ribbons and a reputation as the smartest horse in the U.S. Army. His jumping was exceptional, with what one newspaper described as an embarrassing habit of clearing obstacles higher and farther than horses of far better breeding.
In February 1926, Hazelrigg received orders to ship out to the Philippines for two years. He tried every channel to either purchase Whiskey or bring him along, including a formal request through his congressman to the War Department. All of it was denied. Infantry officers weren't permitted to take army mounts to a new post, and Whiskey was considered too valuable to sell. Hazelrigg left for Manila. Whiskey, noticeably depressed, remained at Fort Snelling.
Most believed the horse would perform for no one else. When Mrs. Walter O'Brien, wife of a fort captain, began working with him at the 1927 state fair, Whiskey refused to jump the first two nights. In their final class, one of the obstacles was a mannequin in a red coat laid across a picnic table. Whiskey cleared it and took first place. When Hazelrigg returned the following year and applied to purchase the horse, the fort commandant quietly recommended the request be turned down. The reunion still drew a crowd of tearful onlookers, and Whiskey ran through his old tricks as if no time had passed.
The O'Briens eventually transferred to Honolulu, and Whiskey carried on through the 1930s with a succession of riders, including the teenage daughters of army captains and Mrs. Orin Haugen, who arrived in 1931 and adored him. They jumped a dinner table full of diners at the Fort Snelling Society Circus. In 1933, at twenty-two, Whiskey won the open jumping class at the Fort Snelling Horse Show and Steeplechase. The St. Paul Pioneer Press noted he was in good form and had never jumped better.
By the early 1940s the Army had fully motorized. Whiskey was the last government-owned horse at Fort Snelling, and the Army had stopped paying for his feed. His handler, Sgt. Hurley Evans, and a few officers covered his oats and hay out of their own pockets. In March 1941, they organized a benefit so Whiskey could help secure his own meal ticket by performing between boxing matches. He was thirty years old, his eyesight going, grey whiskers coming in. He picked the correct colored handkerchief, found sugar in Sgt. Evans's pockets, and then, riderless, jumped a flaming hurdle. It put him on the front page of the Minneapolis Tribune the next morning. The soldiers presented him with a feedbag filled with coins.
In September 1943, Hazelrigg, now a colonel, came to see the old fellow one last time. When Whiskey spotted him he walked a few steps, then charged the remaining distance as fast as his ancient legs would carry him. He nuzzled Hazelrigg and stood quietly while the colonel talked to him in the same low, unhurried way that had earned a wild horse's trust twenty-two years before. It was their final visit.
Whiskey died on December 30, 1943, at thirty-two. His health had declined after the last horse at the fort, a mare named Chicken Little, was transferred to Texas. Fort officials said old age had simply crept up and taken him. For the first time since 1820, Fort Snelling had no government-owned horse.
On New Year's Day, at 11:30 in the morning, he was buried with full military honors beneath three large elm trees at the edge of his pasture, mourners standing in the snow while taps played and the commandant placed a wreath on the grave. Hazelrigg mailed a ten-dollar check requesting a memorial fund. The Officers' Club covered the rest.
Fort officials promised the gravesite would never be disturbed by roads. The roads came anyway, twice, and Whiskey was moved each time. He rests now on a bluff overlooking the Minnesota River. Small bouquets of flowers still appear on his grave, left by people nobody sees.
His gravestone reads: