True Stories of the Great War, Volume 5 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
History
True Stories of the Great War, Volume 5 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
1.--_As Ambulance Dogs._ The animal seeks for wounded men lost on
the battlefield; he searches in holes, ruins, and excavations, and
hunts over wooded places or coverts, where the wounded man might
lie unnoticed by his comrades or the stretcher-bearer. The dog is
especially useful at this work in the night-time, when he can often by
his scent discover fallen men who would otherwise be passed over, for
at night-time ambulance-men often have to work in the dark, as lights
would attract the enemy's fire. Having found a wounded man still alive,
the dog brings his master (or the ambulance-man to whom he is attached)
some article belonging to the sufferer. This object tells the master,
"I have found someone--search!" Usually the object brought is the
fallen man's _képi_ (or nowadays his helmet), and the trainers teach
the dog to find the man's headgear, but if this is missing some other
object must be brought. It is a fatiguing operation for the animal, as
he has to return with closed mouth. The ambulance-man who receives the
article at once puts the animal on a leash, and is immediately led to
his wounded comrade. The leash is about two yards long, so that the
movements of the animal shall be hindered as little as possible.
If dogs were utilized in this service long during wartime, their value
would be incalculable; and their use is all the greater when fighting
takes place over an extended area. The situation of the wounded man
overlooked or abandoned on the battlefield is a truly horrible one; he
has to wait in the forlorn hope that he will be found, for the army
has gone on, and the more victorious it is the farther it will push
ahead. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1 more than twelve thousand
men were thus lost to the French alone, while in the Russo-Japanese
War the Japanese lost over five thousand in this manner, showing that
the methods then used for the exploration of the battlefields were
inadequate. In that war three dogs sent by a military dog society found
twenty-three wounded men who had been abandoned after the battle of
Cha-ho. In the Boer War the collie dogs taken out by the men, it is
said, saved hundreds of wounded men who would never have been found by
the ambulance-workers in the difficult country where fighting mostly
took place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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