Three years after the Civil War ended, a group of Union veterans held the first national memorial service on May 5, 1868, where organizers visited Arlington National Cemetery  to decorate soldiers’ graves with flowers. Dubbed “Decoration Day” this practice grew by the end of the 19th Century into a national day of remembrance held annually on May 30.

It wasn’t until after World War I that this Spring ritual expanded to those soldiers who died in all American wars. By 1971, Congress set the holiday as the last Monday in May.

This past week, I noticed the American flags ‘decorating’ veterans’ graves at Newtown Village Cemetery and it made me think that not only were human lives sacrificed in wartime, but those of animals as well.

Soldiers in Fur and Feathers

Soldiers in Fur and Feathers by Susan Bulanda (Alpine Publications, 2014) details the heroic acts of animals who served during the First World War. The type of work carried out in Europe was quite different from the Civil War, mainly due to the trench warfare that proliferated across the continent in France, Germany and Belgium.

On all fronts, more than a million animals, like dogs and carrier pigeons, served. Many of the heavy draft horses and mules — an estimated 16 million — were shipped from the United States to aid the Allies well before we joined the war in 1917. It took six of these draft horses to haul just one 149-millimeter gun.

Horses often drowned in water-filled shell holes, unable to escape the slippery mud banks while harnessed to heavy cargo, large guns and artillery. Others were simply worked to death pulling with no rest in the treacherous terrain. Many others died from gas poisoning. If not killed instantly, the deadly mustard gas would remain in soil that the animals came in contact with.

Sometimes their food was contaminated as well, which caused internal damage. Horses suffered greatly in the Great War.

Carrier Pigeons

Communication between soldiers during battles on the ground was difficult. The two main methods were by telephone and messenger. Animals were employed to help send messages back and forth from the frontlines to base camp. Getting information to headquarters was necessary to move troops and share intelligence gathered in the field.

Telephone lines were important in the battlefield, but had to be laid down first, sometimes by dogs carrying a spool of wire on their back as they ran across the foreboding environment. If lines were destroyed, communications went silent. That’s when messenger dogs and pigeons became critical communication tools.

Carrier pigeons were used to fly between fixed positions, such as headquarters and a base or from the front lines to mobile pigeon lofts built on trucks deployed with troops.

Most pigeons were Belgium bred and employed by the British, but there was an American Pigeon Service which boasted nine officers, 324 soldiers, 6,000 pigeons, and 50 mobile pigeon lofts. These feathered soldiers outfitted with small leg cylinders, breast knapsacks, or sometimes just rubber bands holding a slip of paper around its leg, could fly up to 500 miles at a stretch. And amazingly their casualty rate, unlike the horses, was low.

Only two percent of the 5,000 pigeons employed by the French during the Battle of the Somme were lost.

One brave American pigeon, Cher Ami, a black checker cock, delivered at least a dozen messages on the Verdun front and suffered a lost leg in the Argonne. He also delivered a message despite being hit by a bullet that injured his remaining leg and then going right through his breast bone. Soldiers who saw him depart from the trenches after being shot declared “He’s done for!”

But amazingly, Cher Ami made it back to his loft with message intact, dangling from his leg held onto his body by a thin ligament.

Messenger Dogs

Many times dogs, like Airedale terriers, equipped with wicker baskets on their backs were used to carry pigeons to the frontlines for deployment. But pigeons could not be used at night, so messenger dogs stepped up to fill the dark gaps.

Dogs were also more easily trained to go from handler to handler, in any direction, regardless of location, which was a big advantage over the fixed routes of pigeons. Hundreds of messenger dogs made up by a variety of purebreds and mixed-breeds like Collies, Irish Terriers, Sheepdogs, Lurchers, Retrievers, and even a few Bedlington Terriers, Dalmatians and Deerhounds made heroic journeys to deliver crucial messages. 

Navigation was extremely treacherous from trenches to shell-holes all the while under enemy fire from machine guns, cannons and bombs. Dogs were agile and could be deployed where humans could not.

Similarly important tasks filled by furry soldiers included the French ambulance corps dogs which located wounded soldiers in the field for medics and brought back those that could follow the dogs of foot. Larger dogs excelled at cart pulling smaller artillery to the front and the funeral wagons.

Others were given sentry duty and those who served as mascots became de facto therapy dogs in the war zone, according to Bulanda’s book. The most famous of those, an abandoned Alsatian shepherd named Rin-Tin-Tin, came back to America with his handler Lee Duncan.

Newtown contributes to this long tradition of training dogs for war, as can be seen at the Connecticut Army National Guard Military Working Dog Training Facility at Fairfield Hills.

Lisa Peterson, lifelong horse lover, equestrian and owner/breeder/handler of Norwegian Elkhounds, has worn many hats as journalist, columnist, blogger and podcast host. She lives in Newtown with her husband and three dogs.

Contact Lisa via lisa@lisaunleashed.com or at her blog www.lisaunleashed.com.