While June 7 is ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Military Working Dog Day, Defence also acknowledges the great number of other animals who have served throughout history.
From elephants to pigeons, camels to donkeys, and even mice, millions of animals have been sacrificed in conflicts throughout the ages.
³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Military Working Dog Day is an opportunity to reflect on the brave canines – and all animals – that have worked alongside military forces during conflict.
Before mass mechanisation, the loss of animals in war was staggering. It is estimated that 16 million animals served during the First World War – of those, 1.8 million horses and 8 million other animals were killed.
One of Australia’s best-known wartime animals was a brave donkey who accompanied heroic medic Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick, rescuing injured diggers on the slopes of Anzac Cove in 1915. Private Simpson was killed on May 19, 1915, but the fate of his donkey (which was known by a variety of names, including Murphy, Duffy and Abdul) is shrouded in mystery, with reports it may have survived and was subsequently evacuated.
In 1997, the RSPCA awarded a Purple Cross and certificate to the donkey. The legend of the pair lives on more than a century later and they are honoured with a statue at the Australian War Memorial.
Our reliance on these brave beasts, none of whom volunteered to go to war, is evident through history.
About 136,000 Walers, a sturdy breed of horse used by the light horsemen in the Middle East, were sent overseas during the Great War. At the end of the conflict, the Australians had 13,000 surplus horses that could not return home because of strict quarantine restrictions. While the majority of them were sold as remounts, some Australian soldiers could not bear the thought of leaving their trusty companions behind and chose to euthanise them rather than leave them to an unknown fate. The only horse known to have returned to Australia after World War 1 was Sandy, the mount of Major General Sir William Bridges, who was killed at Gallipoli. The contribution of the Walers to the war effort is immortalised in bronze, with a statue of a trooper saying farewell to his Waler unveiled in Tamworth, NSW, in 2005.
Pigeons are another animal that played a vital role on the front lines. When reliable communications were hit and miss, the carrier pigeon was sometimes the only way to get a vital message through. In fact, the first reports of the D-Day landings arrived in London strapped to the leg of ‘Gustav’, a member of the ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Pigeon Service from Portsmouth (UK) who had flown more than 240km in five hours and 16 minutes to deliver the news. In 2023, Gustav was awarded the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross, 80 years after its historic act.
There were also countless cats and dogs roaming the trenches of the Western Front, killing vermin to prevent the spread of diseases among the soldiers. Alongside canaries and mice, bizarrely, slugs were also employed to detect poisonous gases in World War 1 trenches. Soldiers would keep bugs and insect larvae in small boxes, and when the grubs began to writhe and die, the diggers would dive for their masks as the enemy unleashed mustard gas.
Our reliance on these brave beasts, none of whom volunteered to go to war, is evident through history. Many of them paid the ultimate price for their devotion to the men and women they served alongside on battlefields across the world, proof that heroes come in all shapes and sizes.
