Mud sucked at Jake’s boots. It was even more difficult to walk because the mask made it seem like he was looking through twin tunnels. He couldn’t see out of the corner of his eye, and Jake’s breathing was uncomfortable. The nose of the gas mask was treated with chemicals that neutralized the poisonous gas. He had to breathe through his nose to suck the outside air through those chemicals, and then exhale through a tube in his mouth. The tube was airtight to keep the poison gas from getting inside.
The helmet was good for about five hours before the protection of the chemicals in the nose wore out. That’s why every soldier carried two helmets. Jake reminded himself of the steps he’d practiced. To replace the helmet, you had to hold your breath while you took off the first helmet.
Jake pushed past soldiers who were standing on benches along the sandbagged walls.
“Tomato,” Jake said. “Seen him?”
A soldier had a stick with a helmet on top. He pushed the helmet above the trench. About a second later, a bullet spun the helmet in a circle. The soldier brought the helmet down and peered at it through the glass circles of his gas mask.
“Tomato,” Jake repeated. “Seen him?”
“Last I saw him was with Freddy.” The soldier pushed his finger through the bullet hole in the steel helmet. “Don’t know why we have to wear one. Don’t seem to do much good, does it?”
Without answering, Jake pushed on toward Freddy. He expected he would find Tomato, just not alive. Animals didn’t deserve what the gas did to them. Neither, Jake thought, did humans.
Jake saw Charlie first. It wasn’t easy to recognize other men when you were wearing gas masks. But the uniform on Charlie’s left shoulder had a rip on it so Jake knew who it was.
Jake felt his anger flare. Bad enough to be in the trenches under a gas attack with the enemy about to rush them. But when you couldn’t depend on a fellow soldier, that was the worst.
He grabbed Charlie’s shoulder and spun Charlie toward him.
“You,” Jake yelled. The sound hurt his own ears because much of his voice seemed trapped in the gas mask. “We needed you.”
“I know you did,” Charlie said. “That’s why I went running. Robert was down and couldn’t help Tomato.”
Charlie pointed a little farther down the trench. Tomato stood, tail wagging at the sound of his name.
He was alive. Wearing the special gas mask that had been designed for a dog’s head. The one that Charlie had pulled from Robert’s backpack before running down the trench to save Tomato.
That’s what Canadian soldiers did. Even when they didn’t like each other. When necessary, they reacted to the situation and made decisions without waiting for orders.
Charlie had saved Tomato. But it still didn’t mean the platoon would get help in time. The rest would depend on Tomato.
—
Because the trenches were so complex and the telephone technology was always breaking down or being sabotaged, commanders needed a reliable field communication system.
Human runners were a large target, weighed down by heavy, wet uniforms and mud-caked boots. During artillery fire, there was too great a chance of injury.
Roads were mud bogs, and even when logs were rolled onto the mud to support vehicles, they were easy targets to be shot, and broke down frequently.
That’s what made Tomato so valuable to the platoon.
Tomato was a happy-go-lucky border collie. He had come to the platoon with his name, given to him because as a puppy, he’d sneaked into a kitchen and eaten so many stewed tomatoes that he’d been sick for a day.
In a sense, he was just an ordinary dog. But that’s only because it’s too easy to think of dogs as ordinary.
In another sense, he was extraordinary because of how he had been trained. Pigeons were wonderful for delivering messages to a fixed base but too often would be shot down or attacked by hawks. The shifting balance of battles often demanded communication between officers separated by miles of trenches, officers who were constantly changing positions.
For that, the soldiers needed the most elite soldier dog of the front. A liaison dog like Tomato.
Many dogs were trained as messengers, and operated much like pigeons, with a homing instinct. The dog could deliver a message from anywhere in the trenches back to headquarters.
But it took double the training and much more intelligence for a dog to learn to go between two handlers who could be anywhere in the trenches at any time. Tomato had to use all of his smelling skills, guessing skills and running skills to track down his second handler in the maze of trenches when Robert Carter gave him the correct command.
Now, against odds that no human could overcome, Tomato needed to reach his second handler with the information about the gas attack.
—
“He’s ready,” Robert said. Robert sat with his back against the sandbags of the trench, his injured arm bandaged and in a sling against his side. Lieutenant Norman had already marched down the trench, a grim look on his face, leaving behind the messages that were in a canister on a collar around Tomato’s neck.
In the fog of greenish gas that surrounded them, Tomato looked like a creature from another world. The gas mask fitted for his canine skull gave him bulging eyes like a giant fly.
“Deliver!” Robert said, his voice muffled by the gas mask. This meant for Tomato to go directly back to rear quarters and look for the other handler.
Tomato stayed in place, whining.
“Deliver!” Robert said again.
Tomato pawed the ground.
“What’s the problem?” Charlie asked. “You heard Lieutenant Norman. Sooner than later the enemy is going to try to make it over the top. We need more men brought up the line.”
Jake said, “It sounds like the dog is worried about Robert.”
For all of them, it almost sounded like they were underwater, with their voices trapped by the gas masks that kept them alive.
“It’s just a dog,” Charlie said. “It’s not that smart.”
“Let Tomato see your face,” Thomas told Robert. “Let him see your eyes as you tell him you are not seriously hurt.”
“That’s stupid,” Charlie said. “Take off the smoke helmet?”
Jake wanted to punch Charlie. He reminded himself that Charlie had done some remarkably quick thinking to save Tomato.
“You are a creature of the city, and you experience animals by the different spices you use on them as you eat,” Thomas said to Charlie. “I am not of the city and have lived in the woods my entire life and understand nature. I watch slugs to learn when poison gas approaches.”
Jake said to Robert, “Are you going to listen to Charlie or to Thomas?”
“I’ll hold my breath long enough for you to take off the mask,” Robert said. “Jake, help me put it back on again after Tomato sees that I’m all right.”
Jake hesitated. He knew if he wasn’t fast enough getting the mask in place, the poison would do fatal damage to Robert.
“Do it!” Robert said.
Jake lifted the cloth of Robert’s gas mask away from his neck where Robert, like each soldier, had tucked it into his collar. Jake lifted the mask and Robert exposed his face to Tomato and nodded and smiled.
The dog bolted down the trench, dodging soldiers with huge leaps of confidence.
Jake pulled the mask down in position, counting the seconds. He didn’t get higher than nineteen, and it was in place.
With his uninjured hand, Robert gave Jake a thumbs-up.
“Huh,” Thomas said in a muffled voice. “It actually worked. I didn’t know I was that smart.”
—
Not only was Tomato one of the smartest dogs among all the breeds, he was fast.
In a straight stretch, a greyhound could beat him for a short distance, going in short bursts of seventy kilometers (43 mi.) an hour. But ask the greyhound to twist and turn as if it were chasing sheep, and Tomato would dust it.
Tomato leaped over or ducked under obstac
les and made sharp turns at the corners of trenches with incredible agility. He was unencumbered by any weight, only the smoke mask that made him breathe hard.
Without smell to guide him, he relied on his memories of the maze. At each intersection he would choose the correct turn without hesitation.
Then adaptive instinct told him a shorter route was to go up and over a trench wall and dash through the mud. He jumped up the sandbags and out of the trench, exposed to the enemy. With great leaps, he barely touched down and bounced forward again, dodging from one side to another to avoid craters and unexploded shells. He leaped over curls of barbed wire in one place, then scraped beneath those curls when the depth was too great to jump.
He was an impossible target for snipers, a blur of black and white, boundless energy, focused on one thing.
Deliver the message.
—
With waves of enemy soldiers trying to dash across No Man’s Land in the wake of the poison gas, Jake helped man a machine gun turret. He fed clips of bullets into the weapon for the shooter, keeping his head down, focused on one thing.
Fight.
But something bounced off his gas mask, and there was a loud crack. Dryness hit his throat. It felt like a large snake had curled around his body to squeeze his lungs. He began to get dizzy, and it seemed like soldiers around him were floating in the air.
He toppled into the mud. It felt like scorpions were jabbing his skin. He clawed at his gas mask. Then everything went black.
But not for long. When he woke in the shadows at the bottom of the trench, Thomas was removing his gas mask.
“It’s a good thing you had your second one nearby,” Thomas said. Thomas wasn’t wearing his own gas mask. “Even so, we thought you were gone.”
Jake squinted. “What’s that I hear?”
Thomas squinted back, puzzled. “Nothing.”
Jake wanted to throw up, but the cool, fresh air revived him. “Exactly. Nothing. No machine guns. No artillery shells. I love the sound of silence. That attack didn’t last long.”
“Jake,” Thomas said, “you were out for two hours.”
“What?” Jake tried to sit.
Thomas offered him water from a canteen. Jake sipped. His throat hurt as he swallowed.
“Two hours,” Thomas repeated. “We managed to hold them off until a couple of platoons reached us. Tomato made it to the rear quarters in what everyone believes was record time.”
“What happened? How did I get my second mask on?” Jake said.
“Thank Charlie,” Thomas said. “He was the one who saw the hole in your mask when you fell. He ripped off your damaged mask, kept a hand over your mouth and nose so you couldn’t breathe, then yelled for me to get the other mask in place. Even then, we did not know if it worked.”
Thomas patted Jake’s shoulder. “I am glad it did. Of anyone, it is you I like beating the most in chess.”
“Glad I’m good for something,” Jake said. “Robert Carter okay?”
“Getting patched up now. He’ll be fine.”
“And Tomato?” Jake asked.
“Call for him,” Thomas said.
Jake gave a short yell. It was more like a croak, because Jake’s throat still hurt. But it was enough.
Seconds later, Tomato was there in the trench, licking Jake’s face.
“Hey,” Jake laughed. “Cut that out. I’ve seen you lick yourself, and I don’t like where your tongue has been.”
Jack’s battalion was under such heavy fire that only reinforcements and more ammunition would save the soldiers. The soldier who sent the plucky Airedale terrier out with a message under his collar gave him simple instructions: “Good-bye, Jack. Go back, boy.”
Jack’s first obstacle was a deep swamp that kept him safe from bullets. But after he left the swamp, he was hit by shrapnel that broke his jaw, ripped his shoulder and splintered his leg. He dragged himself the last few miles until he reached his handler. Although Jack did not survive, he saved the battalion and earned a Victoria Cross for bravery.
One of the war’s most brutal battles took place when the Germans laid siege to the French city of Verdun, which lasted from February 21 to December 18, 1916, one of the longest and most costly battles in human history.
A French garrison was trapped. With no remaining food or ammunition, it appeared that there were only two choices: death or surrender. Then racing toward them came what looked like a monster with a massive head and horrible strange eyes and wings on its back. Then the soldiers realized it was a dog named Satan, returning with a message to his handler.
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The horrible strange eyes were the gas mask that Satan wore, and the two wings were wicker baskets on Satan’s back, each holding a homing pigeon. The French soldiers wrote two duplicate messages, each with information about the location of the German guns. One pigeon did not make it, but the second pigeon delivered the message, and within minutes, French artillery managed to destroy the German guns and the French soldiers were saved.
GAS WARFARE
A major reason behind the eventual success at Vimy Ridge was the willingness of Canadian officers to discard military traditions that didn’t make sense in the type of warfare that involved new weapons and tactics.
An early example of this happened at Ypres, Belgium, when Canadians were furious that British commanding officers dismissed warnings of almost certain gas attacks. By then, captured German soldiers had given specific details about gas cylinders ready and waiting to be used. Even after patrols confirmed these reports, the “feeling at the top was that the Germans would never be so ungentlemanly as to use gas against their enemies.”
Yet on April 22, 1915, this is exactly what happened. During what was later described as the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans first shelled the Allied soldiers. Then, instead of attacking as usual, the Germans released chlorine gas that decimated two divisions of Allied soldiers across a 6.5 kilometer (4 mi.) stretch of the front.
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This led to an arms race of chemical warfare. Gas masks were put into service as protection, and new, more deadly gases were developed. Phosgene came next, a devious gas that caused much less coughing, which meant soldiers inhaled more of it.
Introduced in 1917, mustard gas was considered the most deadly, causing not only skin blisters, but blisters inside the lungs. It was so deadly that it remained in the soil for weeks afterward, making capture of the infected trenches very dangerous.
All told, it is estimated that the Germans used 62,000 metric tonnes (68,000 tn.) of gas, while the French used barely half that and the British even less.
DIFFICULTY OF MOVEMENT IN THE TRENCHES
With their strategy of attacking first and gaining as much ground as possible, the Germans took over a great deal of territory in France and Belgium. But as the British and French troops rallied, it became obvious to the Germans that they needed to find a way to defend the land that they had taken.
The Germans then dug the first trenches, and soon the equally matched armies were in a race to the sea, trying to outflank the trenches of the other army. It ended with two opposing trench lines that ran from the North Sea down to the border of Switzerland.
The Germans had the advantage because they had been the first to dig in and they took the upper ground. The British, French and Canadian troops had no choice but to dig in soil that was often only a couple of feet above sea level.
This led to frequent flooding and trenches that were constantly full of water and mud, which made moving around difficult. To add to that difficulty, trenches were dug in a zigzag pattern. If trenches were straight, an invading enemy would be able to fire down the entire length.
MESSENGER DOGS IN WORLD WAR ONE
Homing pigeons were the fastest way to deliver messages from the trenches. But homing pigeons were only a one-way system—from the front lines to headquarters. Messenger dogs could travel between two handlers. When it was impossible to communicate via telephone, a dog co
uld run through and between trenches at much greater speeds than a human messenger, choosing the most efficient route to deliver important messages as quickly as possible. Despite the difficult conditions, messenger dogs could sometimes cover 5 kilometers (3 mi.) in only fifteen minutes.
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Most messenger dogs were taught to always return to a handler, known as a keeper. When working, the keeper and his dog would first go to headquarters. Then the dog would be taken by another soldier to the front. When told to return to its keeper, the dog would use its natural intelligence and homing instinct to deliver the message attached to its collar.
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Messenger dogs had two advantages over pigeons. The first was that homing pigeons were trained to return only to where they had been born. The messenger dog could return to a variety of locations, dependent only on where it had last been with its keeper.
This led to the second advantage: the one-way delivery could be reversed. A keeper and his dog would go the front, and then the dog would be taken to headquarters at the rear so that front-line officers could receive new instructions from headquarters.
Some messenger dogs were even trained to go back and forth between two keepers, so that during crucial times of battle, the same dog could take messages back and forth. This was much more dangerous for the dog, however, as it had to double its time in the danger zones.
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MID-OCTOBER, 1916
COURCELETTE, FRANCE
“If you want, I’ll break this candle in half so that you can use the other half,” Jake said to Thomas.
The platoon was on leave from the front lines. Duties were finished for the morning, and all the soldiers were gathered beneath trees at the edge of a French village. Most of them, like Jake, had pulled off their shirts. Most of them, like Jake, were running a lit candle below the seams of those shirts. It had been days in the filth of the trenches, and days since any had been able to wash with water, so this was the next best thing.
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