animals

animals were employed by every combatant country for a variety of tasks, including transporting supplies (see logistics), hauling artillery, finding mines, and as mascots.

General Slim listed carrier pigeons, dogs, ponies, mules, horses, bullocks, buffaloes, and elephants as all being used by his Fourteenth Army in the Burma campaign. His elephant companies helped build hundreds of bridges as well as laying log causeways, launching ships, and transporting supplies. The Japanese used elephants to transport mortars and ammunition during their advance into Burma from Thailand in 1941 and they used a column of 350 of them during their Imphal offensive in March 1944. The British prized them highly and managed to capture more than 1,600 from the Japanese.

During the North African campaign the British Royal Army Service Corps formed animal transport companies which each contained 308 load-carrying mules. As every mule could carry 72 kg. (160 lb.) this gave each company the ability to ‘lift’ about 22 tons. Mules were also used extensively during the Sicilian and Italian campaigns with the Fifth US Army employing fifteen Italian pack trains totalling nearly 4,000 mules in the Apennines during the last winter of the war. In Italy the French Expeditionary Corps, whose North African Goums were skilled in mountain warfare, were almost entirely reliant on them for their logistics.

But, as in the First World War, the horse was the most commonly used animal in combat. Cavalry was more widely employed than might be supposed and two American generals, Patton and Truscott, were convinced that if they had had a cavalry division during the Sicilian campaign they could have prevented Axis forces from escaping across the Straits of Messina. The French and the Poles used cavalry units during the first months of the war, as did the British. The last cavalry charge of the war probably took place in November 1941, when the Red Army's 44th Mongolian Cavalry Division was wiped out near the village of Musino by a German infantry division during the German–Soviet war, but the Red Army, as well as the Germans (see Soviet exiles at war) and Japanese, continued to use cavalry divisions throughout the war for patrolling and mopping-up operations.

Horses were most commonly used for hauling guns and transport wagons, with the German Army relying on them the most. In 1939 a German infantry division required between 4,077 and 6,033 horses to move, and even panzer divisions used them. The Germans assembled 625,000 horses for the invasion of the USSR in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA). Of these 180,000 were lost during the first winter. The casualty rates for horses on the Eastern Front were staggeringly high, with the USSR, which also used horses extensively until Lend-Lease trucks became available, losing two-thirds of its 21 million horses.

Dogs were used for patrol and guard duties—one was reportedly parachuted on operations mounted by the Special Air Service—and in the Pacific war scout dogs were trained to detect Japanese troops at 27 m. (30 yd.) in all conditions and sometimes as far away as 275 m. (300 yd.). The UK and USSR also trained dogs to detect mines, engineers using them throughout the Normandy campaign of June– August 1944, and later in the Netherlands. One Soviet mine dog, called Zucha, apparently found 2,000 mines in 18 days. The Red Army also used dogs to destroy German tanks by training them to crawl under them. An explosive charge with a trigger device was strapped to the animal's back and when the trigger device touched the tank's underside it detonated the 11.8 kg. (26 lb.) charge. During the Stalingrad and Kursk battles 25 tanks were destroyed by dogs, but the method proved a double-edged weapon as the animals, having been trained with Soviet tanks, were more inclined to crawl under them than under German ones. An astonishing variety of animals was kept by many members of the armed forces of the combatant nations as pets and mascots, but perhaps the most unusual was Wojtek, a brown bear cub acquired by soldiers of Anders' Army in Persia. Wojtek saw action during the battle for Monte Cassino with the 22nd Transport Company of the Polish Army Service Corps when he helped move ammunition boxes. After the war he was given to Edinburgh zoo and lived to the age of 22.

Bibliography

Cooper, J. , Animals in War (London, 1983).
Williams, J. H. , Elephant Bill (London, 1950).