Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 279, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 November 1916 — DOGS DO GREAT WORK IN WAR [ARTICLE]

DOGS DO GREAT WORK IN WAR

Perform Great Variety jf Tasks With Sagacity and Intel- * ligence. SAVE MANY WOUNDED MEN Correspondents Tell Many Stories of Remarkable Feats of Canines— One on Outpost Duty Barks Warning Into Telephone. Paris.—No medals are pinned on the breasts of the dogs of war, but they have played a wonderful p#rt as assistants to the ambulance corps, on patrol duty, carrying dispatches, and dragging machine guns into action for the Belgians and others. In addition to their work on the battlefield, dogs did much to aid refugees. They took their masters and their families out of the line of invasion. War correspondents have told how much sagacity and courage the Belgian draught dogs displayed upon the battlefield at Haelen, where with the aid of the Lewis machine gun they held back for a time the German advance through Belgium. Just how many wounded men on both sides of the firing line have been saved by sheep dogs and other breeds probably never will be known. These dogs have been trained to search for wounded, and by taking a man’s cap to.headquarters in the field a trained nurse or doctor follows the dog, who leads back to the place where the man is lying. Frequently a wounded man with his last ounce of strength will use it to drag himself out of the line of fire. It is in the out-of-the-way places that the dog has been partlcuuarly valuable. Training War Dogs. Europe has been training dogs for years to the work which.they did upon the battlefield. Those trained dogs immediately became attached to the Red Cross work and many of them gave up their lives in aiding humans. There is a story told of Belgium dogs which aided their masters. The Belgians, surrounded so that it seemed hopeless to break through, probably would have been destroyed but for the idea of a captain in charge of what was left of the machine-gun section. He gave orders to loose the dogs from the guns, and to encourage the dogs to fling themselves upon the enemy. The dogs did it with such telling effect that they made a lane through which some of the Belgian gunners escaped. Sergeant Major Pouissigue’s dog Artemis was wounded in the Argonne. Lying beside his master in the trench at a listening post he smelled the German advance guards and indicated a warning of the enemy’s approach. Sergeant Pouissigue ordered the dog back to warn the regiment to be on the alert. The dog. however, refused to go, when suddenly there was a slight noise behind the listening soldier and Artemis sprang over the parapet and flung himself at the throat of 1 a German soldier. In the fight between man and beast a bullet went through his right front leg. Later the dog recovered. On another occasion, when his master was attached to the Ninety-fourth regiment of Infantry in the Ypres sector, the soldier was .haying a fierce hand-to-hand fight with one German while the other was slipping up to bayonet him from behind. Artemis leaped at the latter’s throat and finished him. The dog’s master also got the better of his adversary. Some Hero Dogs. Other dogs which deserve medals for their work are Marquis, which carried a message around his neck to a far-off detachment, arriving breathless and panting at his destination only to die; Stop of the Fifteenth army corps, which saved many lives by his activities, and Flora of the Twelfth Alpine chasseurs, which did linking work for two days, running under a rain of shellfire. The French war department has on record a letter frOm the father of a family who wrote saying: “I already have three sons and a son-in-law with the colors; now I give my dog, and v|ve la France!” Dogs on both sides do sentry duty at night, carry messages back to line vylth more security than men and give notice of the advance of the enemy by barking. These Mogs are trained to bark whenever a stranger approaches witiiin’ r 2OO yards, and surprise attacks have often been frustrated by this advance knowledge. According to,,the de Franco a certain French regiment possesses a dog which is sent out from advanced sentry posts at night with a telephone strapped ovei* his mouth and a wire connecting the instrument with the post. If the dog hears the Germans approaching he barks quietly Into the telephone.