Dogs on the Battle Front - From The Book of Dogs: An Intimate Study of Mankind's Best Friend By National Geographic Society 1919
The stories of the devotion of dogs to their masters under the most trying conditions of the battle front form one of the epics of the great struggle.
It is said that there were about ten thousand dogs employed at the battle front at the time of the signing of the armistice. They ranged from Alaskan malamute to St. Bernard and from Scotch collie to fox terrier. Many of them were placed on the regimental rosters like soldiers. In the trenches they shared all the perils and hardships of the soldiers themselves, and drew their turns in the rest camps in the same fashion. But they were always ready to go back, and it is not recorded that a single one of them ever failed when it came to "going over the top".
The Red Cross dogs rendered invaluable service in feeding and aiding the wounded. Each one carried a first-aid kit either strapped to its collar or in a small saddle pouch. When they found a soldier who was unconscious, they were taught to bring back his helmet, handkerchief, or some other small article as a token of the discovery. Many of them learned wholly to ignore the dead, but to bark loudly whenever they came upon a wounded man.
Not only did the dog figure gloriously as a messenger of mercy in the war, but did his bit nobly as a sentinel in the trenches. Mounting guard at a listening post for long hours at a stretch, ignoring danger with all the stolidness of a stoic, yet alert every moment, he played an heroic role.
Full many a time it was the keen ear of a collie that first caught the sound of the approaching raiding party. And did he bark? How natural it would have been for him to do so! But no, a bark or a growl might have told the raiders they were discovered, and thus have prevented the animal's own forces from giving the foe a counter-surprise. So he wagged his tail nervously—a canine adaptation of the wig-wag system which his master interpreted and acted upon, to the discomfiture of the enemy.
Often whole companies were saved because the dog could reach further into the distance with his senses than could the soldiers themselves.
It was found that many dogs would do patrol and scout duty with any detachment. But there was another type of dog worker needed in the trenches—the liaison dog, trained to seek his master whenever turned loose. Amid exploding shells, through veritable fields of hell, he would crawl and creep, with only one thought— to reach his master. Nor would he stop until the object of his search was attained. Many a message of prime importance he thus bore from one part of the field to another, and nought but death or overcoming wound could turn him aside.
But the work of the dogs of war was not limited to the front. Where the motor lorry was helpless, where the horse stood powerless to aid, where man himself found conditions which even the iron muscle and the indomitable will that is born of the fine frenzy of patriotism could not conquer, here came the sled dog to the rescue.
Alaska and Labrador contributed the motive power for the sleds that kept the men in their mountain-pinnacle trenches in the high Alps provisioned and munitioned in the dead of winter. In four days, after a very heavy snowfall, one kennel of 150 dogs moved more than fifty tons of food and other supplies from the valley below to the front line on the mountain above.
In the Vosges Mountains more than a thousand Alaskan sled dogs helped to hold the Hun during the last year of the war.
The stories of the devotion of dogs to their masters under the most trying conditions of the battle front form one of the epics of the great struggle.
It is said that there were about ten thousand dogs employed at the battle front at the time of the signing of the armistice. They ranged from Alaskan malamute to St. Bernard and from Scotch collie to fox terrier. Many of them were placed on the regimental rosters like soldiers. In the trenches they shared all the perils and hardships of the soldiers themselves, and drew their turns in the rest camps in the same fashion. But they were always ready to go back, and it is not recorded that a single one of them ever failed when it came to "going over the top".
The Red Cross dogs rendered invaluable service in feeding and aiding the wounded. Each one carried a first-aid kit either strapped to its collar or in a small saddle pouch. When they found a soldier who was unconscious, they were taught to bring back his helmet, handkerchief, or some other small article as a token of the discovery. Many of them learned wholly to ignore the dead, but to bark loudly whenever they came upon a wounded man.
Not only did the dog figure gloriously as a messenger of mercy in the war, but did his bit nobly as a sentinel in the trenches. Mounting guard at a listening post for long hours at a stretch, ignoring danger with all the stolidness of a stoic, yet alert every moment, he played an heroic role.
Full many a time it was the keen ear of a collie that first caught the sound of the approaching raiding party. And did he bark? How natural it would have been for him to do so! But no, a bark or a growl might have told the raiders they were discovered, and thus have prevented the animal's own forces from giving the foe a counter-surprise. So he wagged his tail nervously—a canine adaptation of the wig-wag system which his master interpreted and acted upon, to the discomfiture of the enemy.
Often whole companies were saved because the dog could reach further into the distance with his senses than could the soldiers themselves.
It was found that many dogs would do patrol and scout duty with any detachment. But there was another type of dog worker needed in the trenches—the liaison dog, trained to seek his master whenever turned loose. Amid exploding shells, through veritable fields of hell, he would crawl and creep, with only one thought— to reach his master. Nor would he stop until the object of his search was attained. Many a message of prime importance he thus bore from one part of the field to another, and nought but death or overcoming wound could turn him aside.
But the work of the dogs of war was not limited to the front. Where the motor lorry was helpless, where the horse stood powerless to aid, where man himself found conditions which even the iron muscle and the indomitable will that is born of the fine frenzy of patriotism could not conquer, here came the sled dog to the rescue.
Alaska and Labrador contributed the motive power for the sleds that kept the men in their mountain-pinnacle trenches in the high Alps provisioned and munitioned in the dead of winter. In four days, after a very heavy snowfall, one kennel of 150 dogs moved more than fifty tons of food and other supplies from the valley below to the front line on the mountain above.
In the Vosges Mountains more than a thousand Alaskan sled dogs helped to hold the Hun during the last year of the war.
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