- Thank you everybody
for joining us today.
I'm really excited to be able
to talk about Loyal Forces.
Lindsey Barnes and I co-authored this book
that was published in 2013
and we did it after an
exhibition about the larger topic
of animals in war that
we had at the museum.
And then for the book, we
actually decided to narrow
the focus a little bit just to talk
about the US military and their use
of animals throughout the war.
So I'm gonna talk about
four main animals today
and then if we have some time,
I'll try to get in a couple
of other fun topics as well.
But we're gonna talk about
mules, dogs, pigeons and horses.
So we'll go to the first
slide, here, on mules.
And so although they're
often looked down upon
because of their stubborn
and abject natures,
the phrase, "Tough as a government mule,"
is probably one that a lot
of us are familiar with.
They are, indeed, very hard
working and widely used
in the military both before
World War II and during the war.
And they really did prove
vital in some areas.
But why use mules?
Well mules have a really sturdy nature
and they're very sure footed
and they were really vital
on some of the rugged terrains
that were impassible by military vehicles.
They require less grain than horses
and are a much more
dependable work animal.
They are actually quite intelligent
which is sort of quite
contrary to popular belief,
and it's actually their intelligence
that helps them recognize their own limits
of strength and endurance.
So this quality that is
sometimes read as stubbornness,
is really a form of self-preservation.
So unlike horses, mules will
not work themselves to death.
So we'll go to the next slide.
So during World War I, the Army used mules
by the hundreds of thousands
and kept nearly 80,000
after World War I during
that interwar period.
But as the US military
became more mechanized
and was drawing more and more
on wheeled and tracked vehicles
along with aircraft, the
use of mules declined.
But as the troops were working through
the terrains of North Africa and Italy
and even more so in the CBI
or the China Burma India theater.
Mules will prove really
vital and the Army would
actually procure local mules in Italy
and then eventually buy
14,000 more during the war.
According to Emmanuel,
about mules in the military,
this is what is says about a good mule,
it says, "A pack mule should be fourteen
and three quarters hands to
fifteen and one half hands
in height and weigh from
one thousand to 1200 pounds,
he should be compact, stockily
built and have a short neck,
short, straight and well muscled back
and loins, low withers and croup,
large barrel with deep
girth, straight, strong legs
and short pasterns and good feet.
If that wasn't enough,
mules were also picked based
on their personality.
They needed to have composure,
quietness, a calmness.
These traits were also really important
when you would have hundreds of mules
all moving together through
really narrow pathways
and often in really intimidating jungles.
So similarly, the US military
selected mule skinners based
on their knowledge of animals
and their lack of fear of large animals.
Mule handlers were expected to be patient,
to be kind and firm.
They were instructed to train the mules
with positive reinforcement,
reward the mule
with petting and hand
feeding when it acted
the way that they wanted it to,
and strictly prohibited
things like sticks, switches
or other items that might
instill fear in the mule.
All the mules were trained
to be ridden, to be led,
to stand quietly, to walk,
to stand fully packed,
move in a herd, swim and finally they
also had to be immersed
in the sounds of battle.
Battle inoculation was really
key to making sure that
the mules didn't panic
when they encountered
some of these loud noises.
So they would be worked
in and around motor parks
which would allow them to become familiar
with the smell of gasoline
and the sound of engines,
they were led among low flying
aircraft and near gunfire.
And this conditioning,
the animals learned that the noises
around them would not
hurt them and as a result,
when they did encounter
them, they remained calm.
In all units, the most well
trained mule was deemed
the bell mare and the lead pack mule.
She wore a special bell around her neck
to alert all the other
mules to her presence.
And all the mules were trained
to follow the bell mare
through any kind of conditions.
So if she swam the river, the
other mules swam the river,
if she climbed the hill,
they climbed the hill.
And they actually used the pack saddle
that you see here in this photograph.
This is the US Army
Phillips Cargo Pack Saddle
and it was for use for
all kinds of pack loads,
those that carried artillery,
those that carried equipment,
even the ones that
actually were the heaviest,
weapons cargo loads as well.
By itself it weights 72 pounds,
and then when you would add sometimes all
of the attachments that it would take
for the different types of loads,
it could weigh 95 pounds alone.
It could hold up to 300
pounds of cargo, though.
So 300 mules carrying
300 pounds each meant
that one pack unit could carry
45 tons, which is a lot of materials.
So during World War II,
mules worked around the world
both for Allied and Axis armies.
And they served in units in Africa
and higher numbers in Italy
but really formed the decisive back bone
in the China Burma India theater.
And this theater was one of
the most geographically
challenging environments
in which soldiers saw
combat during World War II.
It was a place where
mules proved themselves
even more versatile than a Jeep.
So the most famous pack
unit in the CBI was
the Mars Task Force, and
they were a really successful
and self sufficient military unit.
Self sufficient because of the cargo loads
that they supported in operations
with the 612th and 613th
Field Artillery Battalions
they had a traveling medical quartermaster
and veterinary units all
within the pack mule train.
And it was really the ultimate proof
of the animal's importance
in a mechanized army
because the mobility of the mules
in really rough terrain was
actually more important than speed.
And you can see, if you
follow that white line
in the photograph, you can see
how long this mule train is,
here, and in the jungle.
So the Mars Task Force was the second
of two American long
range penetration units
that employed mules and
fought behind Japanese lines
in the jungles of Burma,
which is today's Myanmar.
It's job was to function
behind these lines,
deep in the jungles of the
mountains of Southwest Asia
and protect and keep
China's supply route going.
The US really wanted to continue to keep
the Japanese forces occupied in China
as much as they possibly could.
So from any vantage this
terrain was really intimidating
and it was impossible for most
motorized vehicles to cross,
so these strong, surefooted
mules were needed
to carry artillery on the mountain trails,
sometimes in single file like you saw
in the previous picture.
So the only way that
these men could operate
behind enemy lines was
that they received supplies by air drop.
So you can see some
parachutes falling, here.
And except for these planes, these were
the only mechanized
transportation that was available.
So these mules were the force's
only reliable means of
movement and supplies.
Sorry, can you go back
one, no you're right,
sorry stay were you are.
Okay, so one of the
muleskinners whose material
that you have in our
collection is Hiram Boone.
And Boone was born in
1921 in Marion, Virginia
and he went to work in a gunpowder factory
when he graduated High School.
But then at the age of 22
he decided to join the army.
So he was inducted into the
army on September 23, 1943.
And he was first sent
to Fort Sill, Oklahoma
for basic training and also
there for artillery training
and he worked specifically
with the 75mm Pack Howitzer and mules.
He moved on to Camp Gruber, Oklahoma,
where he joined the 612th
Field Artillery Battalion
and was assigned to their
headquarters and service battery.
Here, again, he did further training
with the 75mm Pack Howitzer and mules.
And then the 612th moved
on to train in Camp Carson,
Colorado to prepare for
the mountains of Burma.
They didn't know where they
were headed at the time
but they knew that they were going
to be fighting in mountain conditions.
So they also trained really specifically
in the rapid unpacking of the artillery
and then piecing it together for combat.
And in an oral history
that we have with Boone,
he says that a gun could
be unloaded in a matter
of minutes and be in a firing position.
So they trained really
hard to get that down.
So the 612th would actually reach Calcutta
in September of 1944.
Believe it or not they
would get on a boat,
come down the Mississippi River,
through the Port of New
Orleans, Gulf of Mexico,
go to the Atlantic coast.
All on a boat, all with
their mules with them.
And from there, from that
Atlantic port till they got
to India, 63 days, across the Atlantic,
through the Mediterranean, Suez Canal,
the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean,
before they arrived in India.
So they spent a long time with
these animals on this boat.
So Boone's job in the field
was to collect ammunition
and food and other supplies
from these air drops
that I've already described.
He had to be in a certain location,
on a given date to reach the dropped goods
before the Japanese found them.
And all the supplies were then loaded
onto the pack mules to be
carried out of the drop zone.
So artillery, ammunition,
including those 75mm artillery rounds
and rations were dropped by parachute
and then the mule feed itself was
actually just free dropped,
no parachute at all and
it was packed loosely
enough that it wouldn't burst on impact.
But all these materials came
from the United States
including the mule feed,
and were air dropped typically from C47's.
So Boone's personal riding
mount was his mule Chick,
and you can see pictures
here of Boone and Chick.
And he traveled with him
really from the beginning
of his journey all the way to China.
He was actually, they were
assigned together at Camp Landis.
And Boone cared for him
and groomed him everyday
in addition to all of his other duties.
And he said of the
mules, of the Mars mules,
in his oral history, "They're smart,
"much smarter than horses,
they will not over drink,
"they will not over eat,
they will not over work.
"They are superior in footage
in rough terrain to a horse
"and they're actually
smarter than a horse."
He did hold these animals
in very good regard.
At the end of the war
the mules were slated
to be handed over to the Chinese military.
But unfortunately many
of them had contracted
a fatal disease called Surra,
and they had to be put down.
And so Boone said, at the
end of his oral history,
he ended it with this thought,
"I did want to praise this mule
"and I frankly think that mules
"and other animals did not receive
"and have not received the
recognition they are entitled to
"because they all did pay
the supreme sacrifice."
So, we also have some of
the pictures that you saw
in this presentation are actually ones
that Hiram Boone, himself,
took and donated to the museum.
So it was really amazing to me,
when I started to do the research
for the exhibition and
ultimately for the book,
that I learned about the US not having
a war dog program until World War II.
We think of dogs today as a really
basic tool of military and police work,
that we hardly question
their ability to smell bombs
or drugs or that prosciutto
that you weren't supposed
to be bringing back from Europe.
But at the start of the war,
the US only had sled and pack
dogs working in the military.
Now other countries in
Europe had been using dogs
pretty successfully in
World War I by the French
and the Belgians and Germans
as messengers, medics and pack animals.
But there was some really
forward thinking military men
and enthusiastic dog fanciers
and really felt that the US
military should undertake
a war dog training program.
And so they really were
able to foresee some
of the ways dogs could be useful
in both combat and non-combat situations.
So one of the first things they
had to do was recruit dogs.
So in 1942, Dogs for Defense was formed
and believe it or not,
everyday people would volunteer
their own dogs for service.
If those dogs cleared the health checks
and the intelligence tests,
they were sent on to
be trained as war dogs.
And you can see here,
you could support the
war dog fund financially
as well as volunteering your dog.
So we have a couple of dog
tags for the war dog fund
as well as some certificates
for Boogie and Stinky,
who also donated to the war dog program.
There were four main
types of war dogs needed
for the war effort, scout and
sentry dogs, messenger dogs,
attack dogs and then roving or scout dogs.
There was also a fifth
type, mine detection dogs.
And today we think of this as, again,
a really basic element
of what working dogs do.
But at the outset of the program,
no one realized that they could train
the dogs to smell for the explosives.
Rather, they were trained to look
for disturbances on the ground.
And unfortunately this method
did not work very well,
and the M dog, mine dog,
program was deemed a failure.
Attack dogs, similarly, were also victim
to a bad training program.
They did not use positive reinforcement,
they were actually trained
with really negative methods.
And they didn't also turn
out to be a good success
as the military had hoped.
And they were sometimes
used as a supplement
to a guard dog or if
there was anyone who was
a threat to a guarded facility.
But the real heart of the
dog training program was
in sentry dogs, and all dogs
were trained to be sentries,
but some dogs would go on to get
more extensive training in other areas.
Though the overall
training was less intense
than other working dogs, they still needed
to be moderately intelligent,
willing and somewhat aggressive.
Sentry dogs were trained
to accompany both military
and civilian patrols in various conditions
and to give a warning
through barking or growling
at the approach of another person.
And then probably something
that many of us are familiar
with is the use of dogs as messengers.
So messenger dogs could
carry a message four
to five times faster than
the average soldier on foot.
And dogs have a much
lower profile than humans,
making them harder to locate
and more challenging to shoot.
And the equipment that the
dog needed was minimal,
only a small canister around the neck or,
what you see in this photograph,
a pouch sort of tied
around the body of the dog.
They were the only dogs that
were trained with two handlers,
this way the dog would know who
to seek out to deliver the message.
One of the most famous war dogs was
the messenger dog Caesar.
He was a German Shepherd who served
during the Bougainville campaign.
Caesar was with M Company
of the 3rd Marine Raider Battalion,
and their job was to hold a
road block on the Piva Trail.
Because of the dense foliage,
radios were unable to
send or receive signals
and Caesar provided a
vital communications link
and he completed 11 messenger missions.
Caesar was not only an
accomplished messenger dog,
but also valuable as a sentry dog.
Three days into the Bougainville campaign,
Caesar rushed out of the foxhole he shared
with one of his handlers,
Private First Class John Mayo.
Mayo called the dog back
and as he was returning,
a Japanese sniper shot Caesar.
A firefight ensued but
Caesar had disappeared.
So he was later found
with his other handler,
Private First Class John Kleeman,
and the bullet hit too close
to his heart to operate,
but despite his wounds, Caesar survived
and actually returned to
duty three weeks later.
And although injured and scared,
his loyalty to his handlers saved him
and warned others of how close
the Japanese soldiers were.
But it is really the scout
or roving patrol dogs
that really changed the way the military
and servicemen thought
about dogs in the military.
These dogs were some
of the most highly
trained in the military.
Used primarily in the Pacific,
they would walk up to 25 yards in front
of a column of Marines or soldiers,
and when the dog sensed an enemy soldier,
it would give a signal or
an alert to it's handler.
And this signal or alert was really key
because it had to be silent.
And so handlers and dogs
were actually paired together
during basic training for them both,
and they spent their whole
military lives together,
essentially, because the
dog and the handler had
to know each other very well
and have a lot of trust in one another.
And so there are a lot of stories
about dogmen being made fun of
by other Marines and soldiers
but you get one instance like I described
with Caesar, or like
I'll describe with Kurt,
and they often did earn very much
the respect of those
that were around them.
You you can see some
Doberman Pinschers here,
often used by the Marine
Corps in the Pacific.
So by having the dogs go
out ahead of the column,
they would then be able to
sense that enemy presence
before the main body of the soldiers,
or the Marines would walk through.
So Kurt was a Doberman
Pinscher whose bravery
similarly saved the lives of 250 Marines
on the island of Guam.
He alerted to Japanese
soldiers laying in wait
on a jungle hillside above Asan Point.
His handler was Private
First Class Alan Jacobson,
and they killed the two Japanese solders
before a mortar shell exploded near them.
And those Japanese soldiers were part
of a much larger force
and Kurt's discovery
of the outpost kept the
21st Marine regiment
from stumbling directly
into the main body.
Unfortunately, this mortar
shell tore a large chunk out
of Kurt's back and with his spine exposed
and surgery impossible,
he suffered for most
of the day before he
succumbed to his wounds.
But his sacrifice led to
his likeness being cast
in a bronze to memorialize all
the dogs who gave their lives
for the liberation of Guam,
and you can see this monument
that stands there with the names of many
of the other dogs who gave
their lives for that liberation.
So Dogs for Defense obtained 18,000 dogs
during the three years it
was in charge of procurement
for the Quartermaster Corps.
In all, over 10,000 dogs
were trained for war
and nearly 3,000 dogs were sent overseas.
Dogs proved to be an invaluable resource
in the Pacific and on the homefront.
And when the dogs were recruited,
owners were promised that if
their dog survived the war,
they would be returned to them.
And that promise proved
difficult to fulfill.
The US military did not anticipate
the thousands of hours of retraining
and de-militarization
training that would cost
to fulfill such a promise.
But through the work of
Lieutenant William Putney
and Major Harold Gors, the dogs were given
that de-militarization
training and sent home.
So homing pigeons, believe it or not,
we still use pigeons in World War II,
one of the oldest means of
long distance communication,
were widely used.
They are a specific type
of domestic pigeon derived
from the rock pigeon and
not like the feral pigeons
that many of us are
familiar with in our cities.
Believe it or not, the
earliest documented use
of pigeons for communication was
with the Romans 2,000 years ago.
And their ability to carry
important messages has not
really diminished in any of that time.
So even before Japan's
attack on Pearl Harbor,
the American military had begun ramping
up its communication program
with the Army Signal Corps.
And during the war,
carrier pigeons were used
in almost every theater
by almost every army,
both Axis and Allied.
About a dozen American
pigeon units were activated
during the war and the
Army Signal Corps had
over 3,000 soldiers and
150 officers assigned
to the US military pigeon service.
And they cared for more than
54,000 pigeons and 36,000
of those were deployed overseas.
The pigeons were used in all
the combat theaters and
they actually saw service
with ground troops, on submarines,
in bombers and within
the intelligence service.
So in an astounding rate of success,
signal corps soldiers
received more than 90%
of the army messages sent by pigeons.
So that's a pretty good rate.
Pigeons often hand to
accomplish their missions
under really difficult
conditions, bad weather,
night flying, different
home lofts, bullet showers
and even attacks from enemy birds of prey.
Thousands of soldiers and airmen
and sailors owe their lives
to these small animals
and the pigeoneers who trained them
to deliver their messages when
all other means had failed.
In 1943, as a means of communication,
they formed less than 1%
of the signal corps overall services.
However, even as the Army moved
toward near total mechanization,
these birds remained valuable
as they were considered
an undetectable method of communication.
They were used especially when other means
of sending messages had
failed or were not feasible,
such as radio failure or when troops were
under orders for radio silence.
Pigeons were also an important part
of war communications where
stringing wire was impossible,
like the jungles of Guadalcanal
or other Pacific islands.
And they were also equally
important for paratroopers,
who frequently had little
or no radio communications
from their drop zones.
So pigeons brought news
about the drop zone back
to the headquarters swiftly
and without revealing
the location of the soldiers.
And pigeons were actually also dropped,
via specially made parachutes
or inside bamboo boxes or containers.
And you can see here, an
eight bird pigeon container
that would be dropped by parachute.
And they had to be put in these containers
otherwise as soon as they were let out
of the aircraft, they would just fly home.
So the soldiers could collect pigeons,
attach the messages
and then send them back
with the communication
and the previous side was
the message book and one of the
capsules that would be used.
And since they were so successful,
very few of these messages were encoded.
they were so dependable at returning
to their home lofts that they didn't worry
about the messages
getting into enemy hands.
And although their talents
are really well known,
the truth is that we don't know a lot
about how pigeons always
managed to know how to go home.
And we do know that it really does start
with training at a young age.
and the loft can be moved to new locations
and the bird, taken hundreds of miles away
and despite the pigeon's relocation
and sometimes even the loft's relocation,
the bird will return.
So how do they do that?
If you go to the next one.
Okay, so first young homing
pigeons are purchased
or hatched in a loft, and this
becomes their permanent home,
a place that they'll always return to.
They're weaned here and
gradually allowed to fly
short distances around the loft
and when they return they get to eat.
And so gradually this instills
that Pavlovian mechanism
that "If I do this, I get food."
Then they're taken different distances
and dropped off, or tossed
as they say, to fly home.
They start at half a
mile, then a mile, two,
three, five, up to and ultimately
getting into 250 miles.
So once they come home, back to that loft,
easily, then they actually
start to move the loft
as well as taking the
bird different distances.
And so they'll start out by
releasing several pigeons
together so that they can
all fly home together.
And then taking it down
until they're just flying home in pairs.
This is also when they'll
start to attach the capsule
and get the birds used to flying
with the message capsule on their leg.
All of this training was
actually designed to prevent
the birds association with it's home loft
in one specific location.
This way the birds could travel
with advancing forces or aircraft,
stay with them for
multiple days if necessary,
and then when released,
return to their home loft,
despite that loft's probable move
during the pigeon's time away.
Two pigeons who proved
themselves during the war,
on the left is Yank and when
American soldiers stormed
and re-took Gafsa, Tunsia,
Yank was released with
the message of victory.
He flew back to headquarters
at Tebessa, Algeria,
which was 98 miles away,
to deliver the news ahead
of all other means of communication.
Lady Astor is the pigeon on the right,
and she also served in North Africa
and was sent with an urgent message.
She completed a flight of 60 miles,
even after she had been shot by pellets,
which broke one of her legs
and lost a lot of her feathers.
She actually collapsed when
she returned to her loft
but was nursed back to health.
So, horses, probably
another thing that many
of us are familiar with when it comes
to military and police work.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor,
Americans on the mainland were
on high alert for an enemy attack.
And many feared a Japanese invasion
on the Pacific coast or a German invasion
on the Atlantic coast or Gulf of Mexico.
And these fears weren't unfounded,
the Japanese did launch
over 9,000 balloon bombs
with a few hundred reaching
North American shores.
Japanese ships were spotted
off the coast of California,
and German U-boats interrupted shipping
in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.
Military authorities felt
it was really only a matter
of time before Axis forces
attempted landing operations.
Even if the landings were
not on a grand scale,
small, nuisance skirmishes could create
a lot of panic and fear
in the United States.
So ultimately it became the responsibility
of the Coast Guard to protect
and defend America's coastline.
German U-boats had sank numerous ships
and the fear of their landing saboteurs
on American soil called for
this really increased vigilance
in spotting them off the coasts.
And believe it or not, Hitler
did have a plan in place
to create a sense of
unease and panic in the US.
He was really eager to prove
to the United States that,
despite our physical distance
from the war in Europe,
Americans were still vulnerable.
Soon after the declaration of war,
he ordered a sabotage scheme to begin.
It was called Operation Pastorius,
and it's ultimate goal was to land one
or two small teams of
saboteurs in the States
every six weeks or so to create
a network of spies and
saboteurs in the US.
So the operation started
with the launching
of two submarines in May of 1942,
U=202 and U-584, each
carried a four man team
that was to sneak onto American beaches.
They were equipped with four
waterproof wooden crates
containing materials needed
to carry out planned
bombings and explosions.
They were also given
something like $50,000 dollars
in American money for
living expenses, travel,
supplies, and bribes, specifically, too.
So the U-584 team landed without incident
just south of Jacksonville, Florida,
and the saboteurs buried
their crates and explosives
and walked along Route 1 where they caught
a Greyhound bus into Jacksonville.
The second team aboard the U-202 landed
on June 12 on the beach
at Amagansett, New York.
And the men rowed ashore in heavy fog
and managed to change their clothes
and they were halfway
through burying their crates
when one of their team
members, George Dasch,
who you'll see in the picture,
spotted a Coast Guardsmen on patrol,
and this was gonna be Seaman
Second Class John Cullen.
So Dasch climbed over a
dune to approach Cullen
and claimed that he and
his friends were stranded.
Cullen offered to take him to shelter
at a Coast Guard station
and Dasch declined.
At this point Cullen became suspicious,
Dasch offered him a bribe,
and so Cullen ultimately,
armed only with a flashlight,
took the bribe and walked away.
And then as soon as he
was enveloped in the fog,
he ran back to his Coast Guard station.
So this is John Cullen,
and he gathered others
at the Coast Guard station,
they grabbed some weapons and headed back
to the beach but Dasch
and his team were gone.
They had managed to actually
catch a train to New York City.
By 10:30 that evening, though,
the crates and explosives were located
and brought to the Coast
Guard commander and the FBI.
A manhunt ensued and eventually all eight
of the saboteurs were captured.
So the first attempt of
Operation Pastorius failed,
but it was a close call for Americans
because one team had landed
completely undetected.
So the need to protect
and patrol America's
vast coastline was more
important than ever.
So military authorities that realized that
the Coast Guard would need greater support
and better preparation
to keep more incidents
like this from happening.
So no animals were present at
the landings but it made clear
that the speed of a horse
and/or the keener senses
of a dog would greatly have
enhanced the Coast Guard patrol.
So the Coast Guard's need
for horses was immediate.
There was little time to acquire,
train and allocate the animals.
However the decline of the Army's use
of horses resulted in a
surplus of trained animals.
So therefore the US Army
Remount Branch supplied
thousands of horses to the Coast Guard
for the use in the beach patrols.
And most patrols consisted
of two men assigned
to a two mile stretch of beach.
The men walked the beach together
for their 12 hour shift and
these beach patrols were
also tasked with keeping a
vigilant eye on the ocean.
Often it was the beach patrolmen who were
the first people and only people
in an area to give
assistance when an incident,
such as a beach fire, a plane
crash or a shipwreck occurred.
They became the eyes and ears
of the US Navy and the US Army
and horses were ideal for beach patrol.
Their speed allowed Coast
Guardmen to run down enemies
and make prompt reports.
It also ensured that more
help would be forthcoming
when the proper authorities
were quickly alerted
to the presence of unauthorized persons.
And often, since radio communications were
not well established between stations,
horses provided the
fastest way to communicate.
And so in one incidence
the rescue of two people,
from a Greek ship called The Louise,
was directly related to
the swiftness and alertness
of a mounted Coast Guard beach patrol.
The Greek steamer broke
up in the 5th District
near Little Kinnakeet Coast Guard Station,
which is off the coast of North Carolina,
and a mounted patrol spotted the first
of 11 bodies that would wash ashore,
but their quick response initiated search
and rescue missions and actually saved
two people from the shipwreck.
Similarly, in the 8th District,
near the Texas/Louisiana line,
in the swaps, Army aviators were rescued
when their B-26 bomber crashed.
They looked for help and
actually ended up getting lost
in the swamps and it was
a mounted Coast Guard crew who conducted
a difficult but through
search of those swamps
and found all of the missing aviators.
So by June of 1943, almost
3,000 horses were in use
by the US Coast Guard
for shore patrol duties
and almost all of these horses had
actually come from the US Army.
Dogs were also important to shore patrol.
Trained dogs could run down
and attack unauthorized persons on beaches
and the beach patrol used
about 2,000 trained
dogs in its operations.
These dogs were also acquired
through Dogs for Defense.
I have a few more minutes,
so I wanna talk to you
on a couple other topics
and then I'm gonna take
some of your questions.
Hard to believe that also
bats and spiders made
a contribution to the war effort.
So bats, there was this idea to use small,
incendiary bombs attached to bats
to firebomb towns and villages.
Basically, we wanted to take small bombs,
strap them to bats, then let the bats out
over enemy territory.
They constructed a special
kind of bomb to hold the bats,
which is what you can
see the picture of there,
so this where we get
the idea of a bat bomb.
The idea is the bats
would roost in the eaves
of houses and when the bombs went off,
they would already be well in place
and spread over a wide area.
So there were these
small time-delayed bombs
and they had to put the bats
in semi-hibernation state
and they would gradually warm
as they dropped out of the planes.
It sounds crazy but it actually worked.
It's most well known for burning down
a brand new airfield and they
couldn't let the fire crews
in because of the secret
nature of the program.
It ultimately did not get launched
in any kind of full scale
way, it was only in testing.
And there are some great books about it
and one of them talks about how they were
in a race against the Manhattan Project,
that's where they thought the
bomb might be most helpful.
And believe it or not, spiders.
So how did spiders
contribute to a war effort?
Well, for a long time, since the 1800's,
scientists had been using spider silk
in their optical equipment.
It was ideal for instruments
like scopes and sights
because spider silk is so fine that
the crossed strands can
lie in the same plane,
thus allowing for better focus.
So the upsurge in production
of many military instruments
like bomb sights, sniper scopes,
meant that more silk was needed.
So there were people all
across the country who would collect silk
from spiders and sometimes even splitting
that silk into finer threads.
Then they would sell it to the military
to be used in the instruments.
So what struck me as the
most interesting part
of this though, is that of course
the best silk came from
the black widow spider.
And soldiers at Fort
Knox would be sent out
to collect spiders to be
sent off to silk farms.
And then lastly, one more slide.
I have to touch on pets and mascots
because they were also a vital part
of the war effort for many people.
They offered a lot of comfort
and a lot of companionship.
With that, if you'll
go one more (laughing),
shout out to my dog
who's downstairs sleeping
and to Felix, which is Lindsey's dog,
and our two buddies who
helped us to write the book.
Okay, I will take some questions.
So Steven asks, in London,
England, there's a beautiful
and sizable monument to
the animals of the war,
are there similar monuments
in the United States?
There's nothing quite on that
scale in the United States,
there are smaller memorials
across the country,
usually for specific animals
or specific units that are doing it,
but that's a beautiful
memorial, I have been there.
What is the most unusual use
of an animal at war
that I have discovered?
I would say probably the bats.
I think the spiders to me,
even, kind of make sense
because it had been around for before
but this idea that bats were gonna do
major fire bombing was really
the most surprising thing to me.
Someone asks, what are the
main breeds of dogs used?
Okay, believe it or not,
initially any dog of a
proper size could be used.
And I'll post a chart
in the Facebook later
that we made that shows all
the breeds that were accepted.
Basically anything in the
medium to large size range.
But it was actually during
the war that we discovered
that Shepherds and other dogs were
the most suited for military service.
Believe it or not, Doberman Pinschers are
not great war dogs, they're
actually kinda skittish
and so the Doberman
Society had actually gifted
a lot of dogs to the Marine Corps
and that's why they're
often associated together,
but it turns out that Dobermans don't make
the best war dogs, but
a lot of Shepherds do.
Elaine asks, if the handler
was killed in action,
would his dog go to another or did
the dog have to be re-trained
onsite with another handler?
Often the dogs were very
loyal to their handlers
and there're stories of the handlers dying
and the dogs defending the body.
But typically, if a handler was killed,
it would depend a little bit
on the personality of the dog,
they might bond with another handler,
but typically they would have to go back
and have some re-training, yes.
Oh, they're going faster than I can see.
(laughing)
Do I have a sense of the
fatality rate of dogs or pigeons?
I don't, the pigeons are really hard
and the dogs, to a certain extent,
there probably are some numbers
and I can post that in the Facebook, too.
I don't remember the number
off the top of my head.
Oh, Brian wants to know,
what do the pigeons do on a submarine?
Similar to how they would be
used dropped out of aircraft.
You could let them go, off the coast
or in the middle of the ocean,
and they would fly back to the home loft
with whatever message they needed
to send from the submarine.
So if that was the location
of other subs, the location of ships,
which they didn't want to use radios for,
because they might be
giving away their location
to an enemy.
What about cats?
Of course, what about cats?
Cats were typically just mascots and pets,
which like I said is very important,
so we certainly do appreciate them.
I knew I was gonna cut it close on time
and I did have one picture of a cat,
I'll post it on Facebook,
too, so you guys can see it.
Let's see I got some
other questions, here.
Oh, and then someone says
wondered if you were aware
that the last horse-mounted
cavalry charge conducted
by the Army took place?
Yes, I did, in the Philippines.
The horse chapter in the book
is actually split into two,
it's split into the
use by the Coast Guard,
and then this last mounted
cavalry charge story.
And that's a great
story about the fighting
in the Philippines and how the drawback
that they took to get everybody down
into the Bataan Peninsula,
only then for most of them
to be marched back up.
Lieutenant Ramsey was
the leader of that charge
and he actually escaped the Japanese
and fought as a guerrilla.
That's a fascinating story,
I highly recommend the book,
"Lieutenant Ramsey's War,"
it's his autobiography,
if anybody has a chance.
What about elephants in Burma?
So, yeah, I couldn't cover all of them
and then this was mostly talking
about the US military's use of animals.
But elephants could also
be used as pack animals,
and in the book we actually
also have a chapter
that we called "Exotics"
because I always use
the example of my grandfather,
who grew up in West Virginia,
probably hadn't been
more than 50 miles away
from the house he was born in,
and goes to Guadalcanal,
and I'm sure he saw
a lot of animals that he
had never seen before.
A lot of octopus, and
elephants, and water buffalo
and things like that.
So there's a whole chapter,
mostly just of pictures.
Would an animal be able to earn a medal?
Yes and no.
They did initially allow animals
to be awarded things like
Purple Hearts and all that.
But they took them away,
it's a contentious story.
It's also in the book.
But there is a medal
called the Dickin Medal,
which is a British society,
the Dickin Society,
and they offer medals to
animals who have acted
in brave ways and so you
could read about them, too,
the Dickin Medal, some of the pigeons
that I talk about earned the Dickin Medal.
What did de-militarization
training look like for dogs?
Well, because part of
what the dogs were trying
to do was be kind of aggressive,
so they had to get out of
that sort of aggressive mode.
And that was really the only
thing that could keep you
from graduating to go
home was if you continued
to stay too aggressive.
And I think there's only a
case of that happening once
or twice of all the dogs
that were de-militarized.
But like people, combat is difficult,
there were definitely dogs that suffer
from stress from the battle
conditions that they had.
They needed time to
feel safe and to be back
in a totally different environment,
in a home environment,
versus a battle environment.
And Lieutenant Putney
also wrote a great book
and he talks a lot about the
de-militarization training
of the dogs in his book.
About dogs and animals getting ranks.
And yes, they did get a
rank and their rank was
always one above their handler.
So if a handler got promoted,
the dog got promoted, one up.
Sort of that typical military style of...
that rank matters and so
if your dog out ranks you,
then you owe it a level of respect.
Any Laboratory Retrievers used?
Yes, I'm sure, I can't
think of a story off the top
of my head but they were definitely one
of the breeds that was
used during the war.
Somebody asks did they dolphins?
I looked that up, when we were researching
the book and it was kind of unclear,
it seems like dolphins have been used
by the military since
then for different things,
but it wasn't really clear to me
if we were doing any of that
training during World War II.
We didn't have any pictures of it
and we didn't have any stories of it,
so we left it out of the book, overall.
Oh, yeah, and then Wojack
the Bear, used by the Polish.
Yes, again, American
animals for this book,
so we couldn't cover the bear.
We did talk about it in
the larger exhibition
that we had the year
before the book came out
because we also talked about
the Germans' use of horses
because the Germans
actually used more horses
than anybody during the war.
Does the military still use dogs?
Yes, actually very much so.
And were Newfoundlands used?
Probably, they were one of
the breeds, also, that was acceptable.
Okay, I think that that's
pretty much all the questions.
Unless I see any others, looks good, okay.
Well, thank you all very much
and I really appreciate you taking time
to listen to me talk about Loyal Forces.
If you have questions later,
feel free to put them
on the Facebook thing
and I'll post some other pictures
and information in there as well.
