by Mike Ritland
Some of the most fascinating stories of canines in military history come from World War I. The trenches where much of that war was fought protected men from enemy gunfire and served as places to store munitions and supplies, but they were also a haven for rats. So Jack Russell terriers were sent to roam the trenches, where they used the famous tenacity of terriers to attack and control the rat population.
More important, though, was the work that the so-called Mercy Dogs did during World War I as a part of the Red Cross’s efforts in many countries to help the wounded. Because many of the military working dogs we use today can trace their lineage back to Germany and the war dogs of that nation, I was particularly struck by stories of how the dogs in Germany were trained to find the wounded among the battlefield casualties littered across no-man’s-land. The Germans referred to these Red Cross canine workers as Sanitatshunde, or sanitary dogs. These dogs were trained to go out onto the battlefield with water or alcohol in canteens and packs strapped to their bodies, in order to offer the wounded some small comfort before the men either were rescued or died. The dogs were also trained to go out to the battlefield, often at night, to find the wounded and return with some identifying token such as a cap or helmet. They were trained to identify and remember the location of the wounded and lead a handler to them.
It is estimated that the Germans used nearly thirty thousand dogs during World War I. Most other European nations involved in the conflict also utilized dogs to varying degrees, but the records don’t show an exact number of dogs involved, nor the number of casualties among those canine helpers.
As for the United States, when we first entered World War I, which is often referred to as “the war to end all wars,” the country’s use of dogs in the military was essentially nonexistent. We eventually used dogs trained by the French and British, but a program to train American dogs and supply our troops with them was never implemented. We did, however, supply the French army with four hundred dogs who went on to serve in mountainous areas as draft animals. They helped to haul artillery shells with far greater efficiency than humans, mules, or horses.
During World War I many countries used dogs as messengers. Obviously, in any military campaign, communication between troops on the front lines and their leaders at the rear is crucial. Often, in World War I, more established lines of communication, such as telephones, broke down. Human soldiers often served as messengers, but they proved to be larger and slower targets than dogs, and they also got fatigued more easily. Also, a human soldier was understandably considered a more valuable military asset to capture. As a result, trained dogs went into service, traveling from position to position while wearing specially designed saddlebags or baskets that held both written messages and carrier pigeons.
One French messenger dog, a mixed breed named Satan, was well-known at the time for his heroism and bravery. Satan proved himself to be invaluable in helping to rescue a group of French soldiers trapped by the German army near the town of Verdun in France. In what would later be considered a famous battle of the war, the French soldiers found their encampment encircled by the Germans and their access to supplies and their phone lines cut off. The French were also without carrier pigeons, which they could have used to alert their command to their exact location. The Germans, however, did know where the French soldiers were, and they pounded the location with heavy artillery. They exacted an enormous toil on what came to be called the “Lost Battalion.”
It looked like the French soldiers had no hope of surviving, when suddenly Satan entered the battlefield. He approached the French position, wearing a gas mask, and with a carrier pigeon in a basket on each side flapping their wings. Satan was struck twice by German gunfire but, before dying, managed to complete his mission and deliver the two carrier pigeons.
One of those birds went on to successfully carry a message to the French command about the battalion’s location. The French quickly responded and silenced the German fusillade.
A German shepherd named Rin Tin Tin was another famous warrior dog of World War I, but one whose story had a decidedly happier ending than Satan’s. In fact, Rin Tin Tin went from the bullet-ridden battlefields of Europe to the star-studded world of Hollywood. He was found abandoned in a German trench by a group of American soldiers, one of whom, Lee Duncan, adopted and named him. Duncan brought the dog back to the States, trained him, and got him work in silent films. Rin Tin Tin became an immediate star and appeared in twenty-seven movies. Fictional stories for radio, television, and books were also created about this hero dog. Some of the roles were actually played by the son and grandson of the World War I canine. Rin Tin Tin and his offspring have been credited with the increase at the time in the popularity of the German Shepard as a house pet.
Sargeant Stubby, as he was unofficially called, was a pit bull who served with distinction in World War I after a somewhat less than honorable entry into battle. In late 1917, his owner, an American soldier, smuggled the dog aboard the ship carrying him and other soldiers to Europe and the conflict. Once the dog was discovered, the military commander on board demanded that Stubby be sent back home, but the dog allegedly saluted the officer with his paw and was allowed to stay. Stubby spent nineteen months overseas, where he helped alert soldiers to the presence of enemies and performed other lifesaving tasks. He returned home to a hero’s welcome, eventually earning honors from the American Red Cross, the YMCA, and the American Legion. Stubby was presented with a gold medal by General John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing, the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, on behalf of the American Humane Society. The pit bull also met three American presidents during his lifetime. People have always loved heroes, even, and perhaps especially, those who have four legs, bark, and wag their tails.
DOGS IN WORLD WAR II: PROGRAMS LAUNCHED AND LESSONS LEARNED
Despite all the stories of heroism on the part of canines in combat during World War I, after the war ended, no branch of the American military created a formal program to train dogs for use on the field of battle. What did exist at this time was an arrangement going back to the early 1900s between the U.S. military and private contractors to drive sled dogs in what was then called the Alaska Territory. The 10th Mountain Division, originally formed at Fort Lewis in Washington State and later relocated to Camp Hale in Colorado, also included dogsled drivers.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese changed a great deal. That surprise attack, coupled with rumors of German spies coming ashore, heightened the need for tremendous vigilance, and this led to dogs taking on expanded roles within the United States as sentries or guard dogs along our coastlines to help protect vital installations and industries. With everyone willing and wanting to contribute to the war effort, dog owners and dog lovers led a campaign to promote the use of dogs in wartime activities.
Several influential members of the canine community, including the director of the American Kennel Club, got together and established Dogs for Defense (DFD) in 1942. It brought together professional and amateur trainers and breeders as well as private individuals who supported the cause of utilizing dogs to a greater extent than ever before in the American military. At first the military was reluctant to let civilians take the lead in establishing any kind of policy. Eventually those barriers were overcome as the need to protect military depots around the country became an extremely high priority. In July of 1942, Secretary of War Henry Stimson issued an order calling for each branch of the military to train dogs to serve a variety of functions beyond sentry duty. These functions included search and rescue, hauling, detection and scouting patrols, and carrying messages. It was up to each branch to decide for itself how many dogs to recruit and how to use them.
Eventually, however, the quartermaster general announced that the United States would need 125,000 dogs for the army, navy, marines, and Coast Guard combined. American citizens had already joined breeders and trainers in “volunteering” their dogs as part of the DFD programs. DFD had been providing dogs for
the army’s K-9 Corps, while the navy and marines briefly relied on private individuals and other private sources. All four branches, including the navy, eventually turned to the DFD as a source for suitable recruits.
The DFD established regional centers that accepted “donated” dogs. Each dog brought in was considered a “gift” to the military, and there was no promise to return any of them, unless a dog was deemed not suitable for military purposes. In the first two years, the DFD received 40,000 dogs, of which about 18,000 passed initial inspection. Of those, about 10,000 went on to actual duty.
By August of 1942, dogs were patrolling the beaches and coastlines with their Coast Guard handlers. By the end of the first year of the combined efforts of the quartermaster general’s office and the DFD, 1,800 handler-dog teams were on the job doing that work, An additional 800 handlers would be fully trained by the end of the war.
The Coast Guard was responsible for spotting trouble and reporting it. The army was in charge of protecting the coastline and turning back any hostile troops. By May of 1944, it became clear that no hostile invasion was forthcoming and that any acts of sabotage were unlikely. The coastline protection program was drawn down, and the dogs in it were transferred to the army.
One of the places that the army used as a training ground for canines was ironically named Cat Island. Just off Gulfport, Mississippi, the island was an ideal environment for training dogs that might eventually be shipped overseas to combat zones. The island was also the site of a failed experiment to train a group of dogs to be offensive weapons—attack dogs. The program was once classified, but in recent years various stories about it have been released.
Apparently, William A. Prestre, a former Swiss army officer who had moved to the United States, sent a proposal to the War Department in 1942 claiming that he could train a group of dogs to attack Japanese soldiers. He believed that the dogs could either kill the enemy soldiers or cause enough of a distraction that American soldiers would easily be able to take control of the enemy’s positions. Army Lieutenant Colonel A. R. Nichols, who was in charge of the Cat Island training center, was swayed by Prestre’s proposal. He agreed to get the program off the ground but insisted that the training be done in just ninety days.
Prestre proved to be a very demanding and selective taskmaster. Of the four hundred dogs sent to him, he only approved of twelve for further training. That number was further trimmed to nine. In order to train the dogs, Prestre needed humans to act as “live bait.” Japanese American soldiers from the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team were also in training on a nearby island at Camp Selby. From among them, twenty-five volunteers were sent to Cat Island. The volunteers engaged in questionable training practices designed to get the dogs to attack them. They wore protective padding to avoid being injured.
After three months of training the dogs, Prestre put on a demonstration to show their capabilities. It was a miserable failure. The dogs either failed to track and find the soldiers without assistance or failed to attack the volunteers with any kind of ferocity when they did locate them. The program was terminated.
Another training program was begun in 1942, this one by the marines, to teach dogs how to serve in jungle patrols in places like Guadalcanal and other islands near the Japanese mainland. These were places where the marines suffered high casualties, as the dense vegetation made them particularly prone to ambush and sniper fire. Again, DFD served as the liaison between dog clubs, private citizens, and the military. The Doberman Pinscher Club of America was particularly involved in this effort, and the marine dogs became known as Devil Dogs. This nickname actually had its origins in World War I; it was a name the Germans gave the human marines they encountered in battle. The first Devil Dogs served in squads of four canines—three scouts and one messenger dog—along with six men. Platoons were comprised of three squads along with an officer, sixty-five men, and eighteen scout and messenger dogs. The first deployments were in the Solomon Islands.
The Marine Corps assigned a rank to the dogs that served, based on their length of service. Each one began as a private first class and advanced to master gunnery sergeant after five years of duty. Dogs could also receive honorable or dishonorable discharges. All of this was put in place in the hope of developing a fighting spirit among the canine corps. At first, the dogs were trained for typical canine sentry duty, but the marines also wanted the dogs to be combat participants, given the nature of the work they did. In early 1943, a scout and messenger dog-training program began.
These early U.S. programs were instrumental in shaping later thinking. The leadership within both the army and marines realized very quickly that civilian trainers who’d worked with dogs in police or private training environments didn’t have the background needed to be effective in combat situations. As a result, handlers began to be drawn from the troops. Another lesson learned was that the fourteen weeks the marines spent in training scout and messenger dogs could be too intensive. Without proper rest and relaxation during training, a dog’s performance actually got worse instead of better.
The army’s Quartermaster Corps prepared 595 dogs for scouting duty to serve in the K-9 Corps. Each of their squads consisted of eight dogs (four scouts and four messengers) with eight handlers. Seven units were attached to a corps or division in Europe and eight in the Pacific. The 42nd War Dog Platoon played a critical role in the Battle of the Bulge and then worked sentry positions at supply depots in Belgium. Other dogs guarded communications lines and led infantry patrols. Similar to what I would experience several decades later, many men serving in World War II reported that once they saw dogs in action as scouts on patrol, they never wanted to go out without canines and handlers again.
Sometimes, though, Mother Nature intervened to keep dogs from showing their true effectiveness. Several officers within the army’s chain of command lobbied hard and long for the use of dogs as haulers during the Battle of the Bulge because the wintry conditions made it difficult for men and machines to do the work of moving materials and supplies. More than two hundred dogs were trained and dispatched to France and Belgium, but the needed training time delayed the dogs’ arrival. By the time they arrived, the weather had warmed and the snow had melted, which made the dogs less useful than if they had been able to be deployed immediately. This was just one example of how the time frame needed to get dogs effectively trained and deployed had its drawbacks. Another drawback was the relative lack of experience anyone had in training dogs for warfare.
Other shortfalls occurred because during training dogs were exposed only to small-arms fire, but once in theater they were surrounded by artillery fire. While most messenger dogs completed their missions, there are various accounts of dogs being so spooked by the intensity of the sounds of heavy artillery that they didn’t make their appointed rounds. In hindsight, it’s easy to assign blame for these oversights, but an important point to keep in mind is that the United States didn’t have extensive experience in using dogs in combat situations. This became just one potent example of the need to train dogs by creating situations as close to real armed conflict as possible. In addition, the need to expose dogs to every possible environmental stimulus (from noise to light to odors and more) became clear. Fortunately, those of us who came later benefited from these learning experiences.
DOGS IN THE KOREAN WAR AND THE VIETNAM WAR
At the conclusion of the fighting in World War II, the Quartermaster Corps continued to be responsible for the canine programs. Most of the dogs in the programs were reassigned to sentry duty.
When the Korean War began in 1950, some dogs began to be transferred from sentry duty back to combat duty. The 26th Infantry Scout Dog Platoon, which had been training in Kansas, was immediately deployed to Korea and eventually earned a citation for its outstanding work in hundreds of missions. The citation identified the particular strengths of the dogs working on point, noted that casualty figures would have been greater had they not been there, and gave partic
ular praise to the handlers and others working with them, who earned numerous awards including Silver and Bronze Stars. After the fighting stopped and the peace agreement was signed, many canines were transferred to patrol the newly established demilitarized zone between the two Koreas.
By the time the Vietnam War began, the military realized the various valuable roles dogs could play. MWDs were employed in four main activities during the Vietnam War: scouting, tracking, sentry work, and water detection. Water detection isn’t about detecting water. Instead, it’s about detecting the presence of human beings in and under the water, with the goal of defending the navy’s bases, ships, supplies, and personnel.
During the Vietnam conflict an air force MWD named Nemo served with honor and a degree of heroism that may not have made him a household name like Rin Tin Tin but were remarkable nonetheless. A German shepherd, Nemo was sent to Tan Son Nhut Air Base to work with his handler among the 377th Security Police Squadron. In December of 1966, the base came under enemy attack by the Vietcong. Two handlers released their dogs to pursue the enemy, and the dogs were killed in action. The dogs did not die in vain. They alerted the air force to the presence of the enemy, which enabled the security forces to kill thirteen guerrillas. Later that same night, Nemo and his handler, Bob Throneburg, were on patrol near a cemetery adjacent to the airbase. They took on enemy fire, and both were wounded. Even though Nemo was struck by a bullet that entered his right eye and exited his mouth, he continued to pursue the Vietcong, enabling Throneburg to call in the support of a Quick Reaction Team. Despite his wounds, Nemo crawled back to Throneburg and covered him with his own body. Though they were still under fire and Throneburg sustained a second wound, they were rescued from the field. Both eventually recovered.
Nemo returned to the United States and Lackland Air Base, the site of the air force’s dog-training center. He lived there as a mascot and recruiter for the program and made personal and televised appearances. His presence at the training center served as a reminder of the importance of the relationship between a canine and his handler.