'Military Dogs of World War II'
This week's excerpt looks at two different roles performed by dogs in the war - and highlights their unique capabilities
Military Dogs of World War II is a recent publication from Casemate that looks at the wide variety of roles performed by dogs in many different theatres of the war. Susan Bulanda has produced a richly illustrated study with many interesting stories about individual dogs of note.
The following excerpt looks at two different aspects of dogs’ work in the war, from the many covered in this book - and just a selection of the related images. N.B. The images below have not reproduced as well as in the original.
Civil Defence Dogs
Although they were not military dogs, the Civil Defence Service (Air Raid Precautions, or ARP, until 1941) used dogs in the cities of Britain to find people trapped or buried in rubble and bombed-out buildings. At first, the dogs were an experiment to see if they would work, and were often handled by women issued with Civil Defence uniforms.
The dogs had to find many blown-up and shattered body parts. For example, a workers’ canteen in Erith took a direct hit from a rocket. The bodies were so fragmented that no one could tell how many people had been in the canteen. Even when targeted sites contained livestock, the dogs were not distracted; they worked well and stayed calm.
When bombing started in London, the PDSA1 formed squads that worked with the Civil Defence. They searched empty or destroyed buildings to help any surviving animals. Often pets wandered off, dazed, confused, and sometimes hurt, looking for their homes or owners. The squads would then treat any injured animals. They destroyed those who were beyond help. Civil Defence workers had to focus on those people injured or trapped and could not take care of animals. The animal rescue squads provided comfort to people who had lost everything by reuniting them with their pets.
Beauty, a Wirehaired Terrier, helped locate buried air-raid victims with the PDSA Rescue Squad. She was given an award on January 12, 1945. Beauty belonged to Bill Barnet, a PDSA veterinary officer who led one of the rescue squads. Beauty was instrumental in pioneering the use of dogs to find pets trapped in wrecked buildings and was considered the first true search-and-rescue dog.
At first, Beauty went with Barnet on rescue missions simply for company. Then one day, while on a mission with Barnet, she started to dig in the debris and found a cat. She had not been trained to do this but took it upon herself. She is credited with saving 63 animals trapped in bombed-out buildings.
Jet was a purebred German Shepherd from the Lada Kennels who had been trained as an anti-sabotage dog at the War Dog School in Gloucester at 9 months of age. When he finished his training, he was assigned to the troops in Northern Ireland where he worked for 18 months at airfields. After that assignment, he was sent back to school to become a search and rescue dog. He was then sent to London where he became the first dog to serve in the Civil Defence during the Blitz. He worked every night and is credited with finding 150 people in bombed-out buildings. His most famous rescue was at a hotel which had taken a direct hit. The rescue workers thought that they had gotten everyone out, but Jet had given a live-person alert and stayed on point for over 11 hours until a woman was pulled out from the upper floors.
If that wasn’t enough to validate Jet’s service, after World War II he continued his rescue work during a mine disaster at the William Pit near Whitehaven, Cumbria, where he saved many miners. Unfortunately, he had breathed in gas in the mine and it affected his health. Jet died at 7 years of age and was buried at Calderstones Park by the Liverpool City Council.
Chum was a 12-year-old Airedale who had happened along at the right time. Chum was walking past a house that had been bombed in the Blitz when he heard a woman cry for help. Without any special training, he then tunneled through the debris to the woman. By doing this he allowed fresh air to reach her: she would have died due to agas leak from a broken gas main. He stayed with the woman until the rescue crews could dig her out. Once the woman was freed, he left the scene.
In many cases after bombs had exploded, buildings and debris caught on fire. In one such instance, a street in West Ham was consumed in flames and Jet, a rescue dog on the scene, would not go through the smoke, but Thorn, another rescue dog, went through the thickest of the smoke and fire. Despite the intense heat, he gave an alert in the rubble. The rescue personnel scrambled to the spot and dug down, recovering the body of a fire victim. Thorn went on to search for more victims despite his burned paws and the intense heat and smoke.
During the Blitz, rescue workers used experimental, metal-cone sound-location devices to locate people in the rubble and felt that these were better than rescue dogs. This belief was proved wrong during one incident where Mrs Griffin and four of her dogs, Irma, Bruce, Psyche, and Dawkin, were on site. The sound men had come onto the rubble, taken over the search, and dismissed the dogs. The sound device did detect people in the rubble but the rescuers lost their location. However, the dogs were able to pinpoint the missing people. They were so successful that more dogs were sent for training and the animals regained their status as search dogs.
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Marine Devil Dogs
The Marine Corps preferred Doberman Pinschers, which became the official breed for the Corps. As soon as the call went out, the Doberman Pinscher Club started a nationwide recruiting program headed by Richard C. Webster of Baltimore, Maryland.
The dogs earned the name “Devil Dogs” after the nickname that the Germans gave the U.S. Marines during World War I. Even though the Marines preferred Doberman Pinschers over other breeds, they also used German Shepherds.
The Marines learned at Bougainville that their dogs needed to have a stable temperament. They preferred dogs that were 25 inches at the shoulder and about 60 pounds in weight. This size was ideal for the type of work that they had to do. Keep in mind that if a dog was wounded, the soldier would have to carry the dog back to base. The military likes regulations and aims to keep things standardized. Even the Marines had to be a certain height and weight as well as being healthy. The Marines also discovered that bitches were not as desirable since they often did not have the temperament to withstand the noise and confusion of explosions and gunfire.
The success of the Devil Dog program can be attributed to a schoolteacher named Clyde A. Henderson, who taught chemistry at the James Ford Rhodes High School in Cleveland, Ohio. Henderson was also an amateur dog trainer and a judge at obedience trials, as well as chairman of the training committee for the Doberman Pinscher Club of America, president of the Doberman Pinscher Club of Greater Cleveland, and a member of the board for the Western Reserve Kennel Club. Because of his success in the organization and recruitment of dogs for the Marine War Dog program, he was offered a first lieutenant’s command to join the Marines and run their dog training program. Needless to say, he accepted.
Marine Devil Dogs were taught two jobs, scout and messenger work. The scout dogs worked ahead of the patrols or larger units. When the dog found the enemy, the handler told the dog to “down” while the soldiers in the unit fanned out to look for the enemy. The dog and handler then retreated to the safest area possible.
Messenger dogs not only carried messages, but ammunition and medical supplies to the front lines and maps to the rear command posts. They were noted for being very fast and had been clocked doing a mile in four minutes. Keep in mind that this was not done on a smooth paved road or path, but in the terrain and vegetation of the jungle.
The Devil Dogs would attack if necessary and were trained to go for the arm holding a weapon. They were taught to release on command as well. They were never taught to kill a man. The dogs were also taught to crawl with their handler. They were taught to never bark, since it would give away the soldier’s position, and never to show gun shyness.
Bougainville is a large island part of Papua New Guinea. It is rainforest with mostly inactive volcanos. Earthquakes are frequent but typically do not cause damage. There is a wide variety of tropical birds and bats. It rains almost every day and because of the heat and moisture, it is very humid. The lush vegetation made movement difficult. The Marine Dog Platoon first made history in Bougainville, saving many lives while securing the beachhead.
Before the Marines and dogs landed towards the end of 1943, the Japanese positions were bombarded by ships offshore. After that, American planes flew over the island dropping bombs and strafing Japanese positions. At the same time, smoke was pouring forth from an active volcano. However, the Japanese were still dug in and as the Higgins boats with the Marines and dogs sped to shore, the Japanese began launching mortar shells at the boats. It is impossible to imagine what the dogs might have felt. It was rough for the soldiers, but the noise had to be deafening to the dogs’ sensitive ears. The smell of cordite and explosives would also have been unpleasant and the shockwaves from the enemy mortars and the American shells overhead must have been very disturbing. Yet the dogs did not flinch, even as enemy machine-gun bullets pinged against the sides of the boats.
On patrol, the dogs alerted the Marines to ambushes and snipers. The success of the dogs was demonstrated by the fact that if a patrol was led by a dog, the patrol rarely suffered casualties, and the Japanese were not able to infiltrate Marine positions that had guard dogs.
Military Dogs of World War II © Susan Bulanda 2023 Reproduced by the courtesy of Casemate.
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