Animals in the Military: From Hannibal's Elephants to the Dolphins of the U.S. Navy [Hardcover]

After reading the first chapter about dogs in war, I announced at a family gathering our next trip would revolve around visiting the heroic dog battlefields and statues where brave dogs saved many lives in World Wars I and II. My husband rolled his eyes and said I'd be going on that trip alone. My sister chimed in on my behalf and said she'd go with me. My brother-in-law wisely chuckled and didn't take sides.

Dogs have very useful abilities--not only can they see better in the dark, they hear and smell better than us too.

Depending on which expert you read, we teamed up with dogs beween 15 and 100 thousand years ago. Not only were dogs used as sentries, they helped us hunt better. A recent study of a Bushman community revealed that of 7 hunters, the only one of them who had hunting dogs brought in 75% more meat.

The first record of dogs used in war is from 4,000 BC. An Egyptian hieroglyph shows soldiers with dogs on leashes attacking enemy warriors. After that, more evidence appears, for example, Celtic and Roman carvings show dogs in armor.

The first dog monument my sister and I will visit is one from 400 BC in Corinth, Greece, where 49 guard dogs died attacking invaders. One dog survived and fled to warn the soldiers who were supposed to be guarding the beach but instead were passed out from too much drinking.

Jumping forward in time to 1250 AD, pictures in Finland show dogs biting the noses of enemy horses, causing them to rear up in terror and throw off their riders.

The Spaniards used vicious war dogs to conquer Central and South America. Even Christopher Columbus used dogs to attack Jamaican and Haitian natives, as did explorers Ponce de Leon, Balboa, Velasquez, Cortes, De Soto, and Pizarro. The natives had never seen huge barking European dogs before, their own dogs were small and quiet, so they were as terrified of dogs as the Spanish horses. One Spanish tactic was to use dogs attack chiefs so the rest of the tribe would surrender.

World War I

Dogs were used more extensively in World War I than any previous war in history. Dogs could go where motorized vehicles couldn't, were smaller targets than horses, and could work without anyone telling them what to do. Dogs could haul small loads and were better at hauling loads up steep hills than horses.

Organizations like the Red Cross trained dogs who saved thousands of lives. Larger dogs over 80 pounds pulled ambulance carts with injured men off the battlefield.

Germany trained war dogs as early as the 1870s, and used over 30,000 dogs in WWI. German ambulance dogs had saddlebags full of water and medicine. When they found a wounded man, they stood still so he could get supplies out of the pouch. If he was too injured to do so, the dog ran to find help, which had to be done without barking lest this attract enemy fire. At first dogs were trained to bring back something from the victim, like their canteen or helmet, but later they learned to come back with a stick in their mouth.

Rescue dogs searched for men in trenches, foxholes, and even the holes men dug and hid in to protect themselves. Dogs were trained to tell the unconscious from the dead.

Both sides used dogs as messengers, since electronics didn't work well in damp trenches. Pigeons were used for long-distance communication, dogs for shorter distances. Dogs were also better than pigeons at night, in fog, or smoke. They're also much smaller target than human runners, and could run up to 5 times faster. A colored flag was tied to a dogs tail to indicate it was on a mission so soldiers didn't try to pet them - an offence that could result in a court-martial. Messenger dogs were prime targets, unlike ambulance dogs wearing the red cross symbol.

Many soldiers had small dogs in the trenches for companionship and to go after mice and rats. Many were trained to growl rather than bark if they sensed intruders approaching.

World War II

Nazi Germany had 200,000 dogs trained as sentries, scouts, and messengers at the start of WWII, and sent 25,000 of them to the Japanese.

During the war, dogs found people still alive in the bombed rubble, sniffed hidden mines, guarded bases from sabotage and theft, and could point at hidden enemies the way bird dogs do at game birds.

The Russians trained dogs to crawl under tanks by putting food there after starving the dogs for several days, and then strapped explosives on their back when German tanks arrived. But this backfired when the dogs retreated to the more familiar whine of Russian tanks and blew them up, ending the use of dogs as mobile mines.

Dogs could hear enemy aircraft approaching long before people and pointed in the direction the airplanes were coming from. There were even dogs that parachuted with the troops and were known as "parapups".

Dogs turned out to be so useful that the U.S. military asked Americans to donate their dogs to the Army. Arthur Roland wrote the "K-9 Corps Song" to encourage Americans to send their pets to the army. Some of the lyrics are "From the kennels of the country, from the homes and firesides too; we have joined the canine army, our nation's work to do...so bare our fangs in man's behalf and the cause he is fighting for; we are glad to serve as members of Uncle Sam's scrappy K-9 Corps".

The Marine Corps gave dogs ranks based on how long they'd served, so an animal could outrank their own handlers.

This book got me curious about the use if dogs in the Middle East wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I found a February, 2010 CBS news story that said there were only 47 bomb, narcotic, and patrol dogs. There are so few probably because Muslim's consider dogs to be unclean animals. But their fear of bombs plus the poor performance of mechanical bomb detecting devices has overcome Islamic religious taboos, and now the military has requested a thousand dog sniffing teams. That will take a while - not only are there very few dog trainers and handlers, it takes 7 weeks to train at a cost of about $8,000. Once trained, bomb detection dogs can work up to 12 years, but in the Middle East they usually don't' last that long because the rough terrain is hard on them, and they're targeted by insurgents.

Kistler's "Animals in the Military" has hundreds of stories and examples of dogs during war, fascinating and heartbreaking stories.

But this book isn't easy to read. Kistler gives credit to every animal he can find in the historic record it appears, and so each chapter reads like a long list of facts that often don't transition well. The elephant chapter was even more difficult to get through than the dog chapter, because there were so many unfamiliar names. Lost in the catalog of battles were the interesting ways elephants were frightened by the other side, causing these enormous animals to turn and flee, crushing their own army in the confusion. I would have liked more summaries of the too many examples. Though I can see why Kistler feels compelled to list them -- most heroic dogs and other animals haven't gotten the credit they deserved, and I'm sure more than 99% of them will never be known since historians usually prefer to give humans all the credit.

A quick look at amazon reveals about 4 other animals-in-the-military books, several books about specific animals, and at least as many slated for publication in the future. You may want to read other reviews to find the best written book on this topic if it interests you, and how could it not?

And if you expand a dog hero tour to include elephant, horse, camel, oxen, and llama heroes, you'll see quite a bit of the world. Tack on the military dolphins and conclude with a relaxing tour on tropical beaches.

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A few more dog facts

Within Spain even larger 250 pound mastiffs were used to fight the Moors, as well as greyhounds trained to disembowel enemy soldiers.

Native Americans in North America used dogs to pull up to 75 pounds of cargo up to 12 miles on primitive sleds.

Many dogs served in the Civil War. My favorite was Jack, who hunted for injured human friends and then led help to them. When the army was on the move, he also excelled at finding clean water. When Confederates captured him, the Union traded a prisoner to get him back.

The French had a dog named Prusco that dragged wounded men into protective trenches before getting help. He saved over 100 men in just one battle alone. Another dog, Tpsy, a Belgian shepherd, rescued nearly 2,000 men trapped in barbed wire.