Meet the amazing Mercy Dogs who served in WWI.
Meet the amazing Mercy Dogs who served in WWI.
Hi, this is Kelly Chase and you are listening to History Detective, a podcast where I delve into the past to uncover the mysteries of history. Before I get started, I wanted to let you know that I have just released a book called History, Her Story, Our Story, Inspirational Women Who Shaped Our World. You can find a link to the Kindle or paperback in the show notes.
Here at History Detective, I love to share the stories marginalised voices in history, but in today’s case it is going to be marginalised barks and howls. If you are an animal person, you are going to love this episode, because today I am uncovering the story of the mercy dogs of World War I. This has a special place in my heart because my beautiful Malamute’s name is Mercy. I would like to pretend that my Mercy dog is well behaved and trained like the dogs in this story, but she is not. She is instead a gigantic melty cuddle bug who understands the sit command, but only when she really wants to sit. But enough about my dog, let’s hear about amazing mercy dogs of World War I and their paw-some stories.
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Dogs in World War One had many different roles. There were the rat catchers in the trenches, which were often Jack Russell terriers, or dogs would be tied up to carts hauling machine guns, or there were carrier dogs making their way through the trenches and perilous no man’s land with a metal cylinder in their collar that held messages. There were even dogs who laid telephone wire across the trenches, so that the soldiers could communicate with each other or there were simply the doggy mascots and canine companions. But the dogs that I want to talk about today, are the ones that saved lives, literally. They went into the battlefields searching amongst the rubble and corpses for soldiers who were still alive. They would alert the medics that there was a surviving soldier, who would then extract the wounded man from the field. These dogs were called mercy dogs.
In the context of war, the adjective mercy is used to describe a special journey to help someone in great need, such as people who are injured in war. And that is exactly what these mercy dogs did. Their job was to help soldiers in trouble.
Often these dogs were trained by the Red Cross Societies to do incredibly sophisticated acts. They were trained to ignore dead bodies, and they were also taught to freeze in place if they heard enemy fire, and of course, they were taught a huge number of hand signals- because you don’t want to be giving verbal commands in the middle of a battle field.
As early as October 1914, only a few months into the war, the newspapers were publishing stories about heroic dogs of war. Here is an extract from the Evening Telegraph, “A Frenchman who was lying on the battlefield of the Marne half covered by the dead bodies of his comrades, and with a piece of shrapnel in his arm, a bullet in his jaw, and a sword cut in the hand, was surprised by wet caresses on his face… The man patted the animal, and off it trotted, to return guiding an ambulance. This dog is particularly knowing. It goes into the firing line, and when the fighting becomes hot, digs a hole in the ground and buries itself.”
In May of 1915, it was printed in the South Eastern Times, in an article called “Russian War Dogs” that many people on the home front were patriotically training up their dogs to become mercy dogs. “The dogs are being trained not only to search for the wounded on the … battle field, but to deliver bandage material and first aid … and also to warm and retrieve them in the case of unconsciousness.” Could you imagine being a wounded soldier being nuzzled awake by a lovely dog giving you bandages and snuggling up to you to keep you warm?
The Lismore Northern Star, in 1916, published an article called “Dogs in War” about the employment and training of French sheep dogs and St Bernard’s. It explains that “They are sent out to scour the ground, and when they have found a wounded man, they bring back some article of his apparel. A doctor and two orderlies are then detailed to follow the dog, who brings them to the place where the wounded man is lying.” The article also mentions that the “German Shepherds” which were also being trained, “were the least intelligent.” I am not sure of the reliability of this statement, considering that the Germans were the enemy at the time, I doubt that an allied journalist is going to say nice things about a German dog breed.
By 1917, 3 years into the war, dogs were being used on mass. The Daily Mail espoused just how many dogs were taking part in the war. “On all war fronts in Europe, upward of 10,000 merciful dogs of war are working, every one of them a soldier, some of them mentioned in dispatches and decorated with the insignia of valor bestowed by their respective countries.”
The article goes on to inform the reader of one particular dog owner, “Mrs. P. L. Warner-- the owner of Filax, a dog who has saved over 100 lives— is engaged in training other dogs for this great work!”
One of my favourite articles I found in my research was a letter sent in by a 14-year-old Florence Gartside. It was an imaginative piece of writing pretending that a Red Cross dog from France was writing a letter to a dog in England. The dog writes that he found an Australian soldier who had been shot by a sniper in an abandoned farm house. “I gave him some food and wine to strengthen him, took his cap (you know we always take their hats or caps back to the bearers), and hurried back to the first station.”
Unfortunately, medics and their dogs were often killed in the line of duty. The casualty rate among dogs was so high that many units stopped using them. It is very hard to get concrete figures of the number of dogs that were killed in the war. One source said France alone used 15 000 dogs and 5000 died in the last two years of war. And the German Army employed 30 000 dogs. And that is just 2 countries involved in the conflict. Another source estimates the total canine casualties as more than 1 million. The difficulty in knowing the true figures, is that dogs were not officially enlisted and neither their deaths officially recorded. So, we will never know just how many dogs faithfully served their human masters and ended up losing their lives in the process.
One specific dog who served was Caesar the New Zealand bulldog, who was killed in action at the devastating Battle of Somme. That must have been a ‘ruff’ day. His collar is on display at the Auckland War Memorial and even has a book written about him called Caesar the Anzac Dog. Another bulldog called Digger was wounded and gassed at Pozieres in 1916, he shot through the jaw losing three teeth, blinded in the right eye and became deaf in the left ear due to his no man’s land heroism. Digger was the first Australian Dog to be awarded the Blue Cross Medal. The Blue Cross is awarded to animals who have demonstrated bravery or heroism.
Some food for thought. Humans can enlist in the war of their own accord, but is it OK to involve dogs in a conflict they do not understand?
Do yourself a favour and look up pictures for the mercy dogs on Google images. They always melt my heart with the little red cross outfits. And next time Remembrance Day rolls around, be sure to wear a purple poppy alongside your red poppy and give a round of a-paws to all the puppies who have served in wars.
This Kelly Chase, on the Case.
If you would like to hear more stories of WWI, I have several other episodes about women during World War One including, Moinsa Michael and Anna Guerin who popularised the poppy as the symbol of commemoration, Annie Wheeler, the Mother of Queenslanders who facilitated communication between the men in the trenches and their families on the other side of the world and of course Maria Bochkareva, who spearheaded the Russian Women’s Battalion of Death, as well as the Women of WWI episode from April. Make sure you scroll back in the feed to find their fascinating stories.
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I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is being recorded today. I pay my respects to the elders and knowledge holders past present and emerging.