To mark Remembrance Sunday we are pleased to share this very special guest blog by author Lucinda Hare, which reminds us that not all of the sentient beings who suffer, endure and show courage during wartime are human beings.
Remembering Animals in War
(by Lucinda Hare)
Throughout history, man has taken animals to war with him whether they willed it or not. From Celtic tribal war hounds to Hannibal’s elephants, from trained medieval war horses to carrier pigeons, from mules in the Burmese jungle to IED bomb sniffer dogs in Afghanistan, they have been at our side; and in serving us faithfully and unflinchingly, they have died in their tens of millions from exhaustion, starvation, thirst, exposure, wounds and disease, unremarked upon save for a few. Then there are those casualties hidden from public view: the hundreds of thousands of primates and domesticated animals used by the military for experiments; their isolation, indignity and agony, unseen and unheard. Animals are the forgotten victims of war.
Those very characteristics that we cherish so much in animals are sadly the same that led to their being enlisted. Dogs are intelligent, devoted and courageous. Mules have great stamina, and are sure footed even in adverse terrain. Horses are brave hearted, swift and strong, able to bear a knight in full armour, or drag a gun and ammunition. Over a quarter of a million died of heatstroke, exhaustion, thirst and wounds in the Boer war alone; eight million horses, mules and donkeys were subjected to the same terrifying conditions as men in the trenches of the First World War. Those that survived were then abandoned to fend for themselves or sold into hard labour; they never came home. Dorothy Brooke, the wife of a British army general posted to Cairo in 1930, discovered thousands of ex-cavalry horses being used as beasts of burden. Her compassion for these old abused animals led to the foundation of the Brooke Hospital for Animals. Around three hundred thousand pigeons served in the two World Wars, countless others over the centuries that preceded modern communications. The list of animals drawn into our wars is endless, their sacrifice immense.
For those of us to whom all life is equally precious, each and every death in war, human or animal, is a source of grief, because to us, we are all of one kind. As Ghandi said so succinctly, “There is little that separates humans from other sentient beings – we all feel pain, we all feel joy, we all deeply crave to be alive and live freely, and we all share this planet together.” So as we remember our armed forces and their families this coming Sunday, so too we should remember those animals that serve and protect them and us, in many theatres of war across the world today.
Animals like Theo. Theo, a young springer spaniel is reported to have died of a broken heart shortly after seeing his master, Lance Corporal Liam Tasker, a bomb-disposal expert, being shot and killed in March of this year. Theo and Lance Cpl Tasker, an Arms and Explosives Search dog handler of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, 1st Military Working Dog Regiment, were part of the Theatre Military Working Dogs Support Unit based at Camp Bastion.
(Pic:Lance Cpl Tasker and Theo)
The Ministry of Defence praised the success of L-Cpl Tasker and Theo, who had made fourteen finds of bombs and weapons stores in five months in Afghanistan. The spaniel, on his first tour of duty, had uncovered so many improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that his time in the country was extended by a month. Theo was honoured at his master’s funeral. They would have returned home just four days after the attack.
The powerfully emotive Animals in War Memorial, unveiled in 2004, bears two inscriptions: “This monument is dedicated to all the animals that served and died alongside British and Allied forces in wars and campaigns throughout time.”
A second, smaller inscription reads: “They had no choice.”