The Germans used some 30,000 dogs on the Western Front, and the Entente kept around 20,000.
(The Germany army would remain majority horse-drawn through World War II.)īetween 19, gas hospitalized 2,200 horses and killed 211, mostly because logistical uses limiting their exposure to the more dangerous areas at the front. The railways that carried the millions of tons of food and ammunition to the rear were frequently several miles away, so horses, mules and donkeys bridged the gap even after engineers set up light railway and automobile supply lines. Pack animals carried supplies and weapons on the front and rear lines. Animals were important companions and workers to the soldiers at the front, and like their human compatriots they needed protection from the perils of chemical warfare. Everyone knows the enormous human cost of the conflict, but it is easy to forget the fates of the million of animals that supported the war on all sides. More than eight million horses, mules and donkeys and a million dogs died in World War I. German soldiers and a donkey in gas masks. What’s more, thanks to their natural abilities, slugs would actually survive the attacks unscathed - which is more than could be said for every other animal on the Western Front. They would compress their bodies and temporarily stop breathing, alerting soldiers to the danger and giving them enough time to pull on their gas masks. Three times more sensitive than humans, slugs reacted to mustard gas at one particle per 10–12 million. Army was the first to discover the slug’s life-saving secret. Slugs were far more effective than dogs at detecting incoming mustard gas attacks. However, there was one other tiny gas-detecting hero on the Western Front - the slug. The death or immobilization of these animals meant curtailing their enormous and unique contributions to the war effort. Gas threatened the lives of all military working animals on the Western Front. 1st Infantry Division - fell foul of a German gas attack, as too did Tommy, a German Shepherd in service with the British Expeditionary Force. Stubby wasn’t the only dog left with a fear of this deadly new weapon. After his recovery, Stubby went on to save human lives because he understood the danger. It was an undoubtedly traumatic experience that taught Stubby all he needed to know. During that attack, mustard gas sealed his eyes shut with viscous mucous and he barely moved for days. Stubby’s strong response to poison gas had its roots in an earlier close call. A dog’s nose can be tens of thousands of times more sensitive than a human’s - which makes canines useful detectors of explosives, drugs and even cancer. The most decorated dog of the war earned many of his accolades from alerting his human comrades to incoming gas. Take the most famous canine hero of the war, Sergeant Stubby of the 102nd Infantry Regiment, American Expeditionary Forces. And it wasn’t just human combatants who suffered - many military working animals died from chemical weapons. Soldiers succumbed to the strangling effects of chlorine, phosgene and mustard gas for years as the stalemated armies searched for news ways to defeat each other.ĭuring World War I, more than 90,000 soldiers died on all sides from gas attacks, which debilitated many more. There was nothing more terrifying in the trenches than the call of a gas attack - “GAS! GAS!” This warning cry sent men scrambling for their masks as the poisonous fog enveloped them. Horses, dogs and slugs fought the chemical war