A new book about animals in the Great War

Press release:

The eBook Animals in the Great War, one of the didactic proposals that was developed by the cultural association Se, has been released and it is avalaible in both Italian and English versions.

Animals in the Great War responds to the association’s pledge to promote the history of the twentieth century, disseminating an inclusive knowledge that develops further secondary subjects that have been excluded from institutional accounts with the aim of expanding the definition of a discipline, in this case history, so that it is no longer the “science of man throughout time” but the “science of the living throughout time”.

It provides teachers and secondary school students with a tool, that offers updated references to develop line of study in the classroom whilst also offering a methodological support for individual or group work at home.

The eBook release was made possible by participating in the first international competition “Europeana Strike a match for Education” promoted by the Europena cultural network in collaboration with the Goteo civic crowdfunding platform and the proceeds from the funds raised, in which Animals in the Great War participated and was one of the three winning projects.

In order to receive a copy for free download (available formats: EPUB, PDF), please contact the cultural association Se to the following link contatti using “Animals in the Great War eBook” as subject line.

Attaching a dispatch on a carrier pigeon, 1917 

© ÖNB, Europeana Collection 1914-1918

Captured Italians bury horses lying on the street, 1917 

© ÖNB, Europeana Collection 1914-1918

"Animals in the Great War”, the forthcoming eBook in Italian and English

Imperial War Museums - The British Army on the Western Front 1914-1918

A kneeling soldier is lifting up a pet dog in his shrapnel helmet, 22 December 1917

"Animals in the Great War” is a forthcoming eBook in Italian and English, edited by Se*, that will be available for free download.

Looking at the First World War from the standpoint of the animals that took part in it, allows to emancipate the Great War from textbook narrative, often exclusively focused on the European fronts and the defeats or victories of single nations.

It is an educational tool, which aims to provide the means to shift the focus to subaltern subjectivities, encouraging a broadening of horizons not only about a single historical event (namely the WWI), but also for looking more widely at the facts that surround us.

This project was one of the three winners of “Europeana Strike a match for Education”, a competition promoted by the cultural network Europeana and the civic crowdfunding platform for social innovation Goteo. As result it is involved in a global crowdfunding campaign, which - we trust - will provide money for a completely free publishing.

Your help to reach this goal is crucial, especially in these first weeks of campaign.

Please, let this project reach the widest possible audience through your social networks and back “Animals in the Great War” with a donation at the crowdfunding campaign page: http://goteo.cc/animalsgreatwar

*Se is an Italian cultural association, which aims to promote the knowledge and study of Twentieth-century history. Find out more at Associazione culturale Se

Photos of animals in World War One: rats

So far we have considered the animals in World War One as friends or somehow close partners of soldiers. But we cannot but consider the other side of this story of animals crowding the trenches. And of course it is not actually a story of friendship and cooperation. It's quite easy to realize how many pictures of rats were taken during the war. In the trenches at night the rats could gnaw the soldiers' feet and of course they were responsible of many other annoyances and diseases, beside worsening an already poor hygiene. Here below is a selection of what you could find searching for pictures of rats in World War One. It's not infrequent to read about rats in diary or letters and from this we deduce they were an important presence in the soldier's life. All the below gathered images share a common sense of pride for the rich outcome of the hunt.

"The Darkness and the Thunder and the Rain". Bath Poetry Café remembers the victims of the global conflict 1914-1918

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other's truer form
And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm
We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm,
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

These lines from a poem by Charles Hamilton Sorley, who was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915, provided the title for the Bath Poetry Café’s annual evening of readings to commemorate the Great War last Tuesday 10th November 2015. As well as well-known poems by Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Laurence Binyon and Rudyard Kipling, they presented works by Guillaume Apollinaire, Anna Achmatova and Giuseppe Ungaretti.  

The programme on 10th November was accompanied by a presentation of archival photographs which conveyed poignantly how fragile men and horses were in the face of the new industrial weaponry of war, and how terrible it was to send cavalry and infantry to their inevitable massacre as they advanced under shellfire against the guns. The choice of materials also tried to show that the tragedy of the Great War was the same whatever a soldier’s nationality. 

The next programme, in November 2016, will emphasise this international theme by concentrating in turn on the Battle of the Somme as seen by the Allies; the same battlefront as seen through the eyes of the young soldiers in Erich Maria Remarque’s harrowing novel All Quiet on the Western Front; the war on the Eastern Front; and the battles of the Isonzo in Italy. Wherever possible the readings will be presented by native speakers in the language of the original, alongside English translations read by poets from the Café. Bath Poetry Café has already secured Giulio Passarelli to read Ungaretti’s I fiumi which the poet described as one of the fundamental texts of his collection Il Porto Sepolto. This was written on scraps of miscellaneous paper in the trenches of the Karst and published in Udine in December 1916.

Photos of animals in World War One: what about cats?

So far we have collected pictures of pigeons, foxes, camels, elephants, dogs and horses. Some of these animals were essential in the war everyday life while others were not. But what about the most common pet and its presence in World War One? Cats appear in many photos of the war years and below we propose a short selection. Like the case of the French soldier caressing the little fox that we examined months ago, the images of soldiers with cats were fundamentally taken in moments of rest and serenity. Seen as a series, this bunch of popular images casts light on a kind of backstage of the war, feeding a new imagery and iconography that we will find unchanged in many WWII soldiers' pictures.

Photos of animals in World War One: the Goumiers and their horses

Many North African soldiers fought for France during the Great War and played a decisive role in it. Today we’d like to direct our attention especially to the French colonial troops, whose history still remains marginal in the commemoration of the centenary. In 1914 about 15.000 Moroccan soldiers were organised in different military formation and according to recent statistics their number oscillates between 34.000 und 40.000 throughout the war. Among the different companies of the Moroccan troops special attention is due to the Goums (from an Arabic word meaning “people”). At least 23 Goums were employed from 1914 till 1916, each of them comprising between 200 and 300 Berber auxiliaries. 

Goumiers first came from Algeria and were employed during the first intervention in Morocco in 1908 by the French Army. The format of these indigenous irregular troops was then adopted to enlist the Moroccan Muslim levies. Moroccan Goums were made up of men all from the same tribe or region, who often lived together in dourars with their families and were therefore tied together by strong community bonds. These companies remained separate from the regular Moroccan regiments of the French African Army, and usually mixed cavalry and infantry in one unit (an unusual thing for that time). Their element was the mountainous terrain of the Atlas range. Their skill and fierceness were renowned, contributing so to the “Berber myth”: Goumiers were believed to not fear death and have all physical and cultural qualities of endurance that make them perfectly fit for combat. We can find this image also in the international press, as the photo we offer today testifies. It is taken from the magazine L’illustrazione italiana, January 1915, where it was originally published to depict how the Goumiers used their horses as shield to protect themselves. But to us, today, this photo represents rather a further testimony of the hopeless symbiosis between animals and human beings in the battlefields of the Great War.

We thank Eugenio Bucciol, the author of the book Animali al fronte and the editor of the same for the permission to publish this picture.

Photos of animals in World War One: veterinary hospitals for horses

Animals and Great War are connected in many different ways. We usually focus our attention on the trenches or on the battlefield, where animals and human beings competed or supported each other in a common struggle for existence. Yet also behind the front line their relation was nuanced. We find out also a special care for animals during WWI, as the Army Veterinary Service testifies. Almost all belligerent countries had similar special corps with the task to treat the sick or wounded animals, especially mules, pigeons and, of course, horses, which represented an irreplaceable mean of transport.

Conditions were severe for horses: they were often killed by artillery fire or injured by poison gas, and suffered from skin diseases. Hundreds of thousands died. Those who survived were treated instead at veterinary hospitals and eventually sent back later again to the front. A first task of the veterinary corps was to diagnose diseases and to remove the infected animals in case of epidemics in order to prevent a mass killing in the already precarious sanitarian situation at the front (many horse diseases were in fact transferable to man). The British veterinary hospitals alone treated in one year more than 120.000 horses and we can suppose that similarly was undertaken also at the opposite front.

It was however the treatment of wounded horses that characterized the veterinary hospitals of all Armies. Special clinics were built uniquely for surgery of horses and mules, where wounded animals were strapped to an elevating operating table and then operated. Sometimes however the surgeons were forced to work in precarious conditions. In this picture from the Kriegsarchiv in Vienna we can see for example the operation at a fistula at the withers in the veterinary Hospital for Horses in Praga Panenska. We thanks Eugenio Bucciol, the author of the book Animali al fronte and the editor of the same for the permission to publish this picture.

Animals in the Great War. A book by Eugenio Bucciol

It is sometimes hard to trace a clear difference between men and animals, not to talk about the – by somebody supported – thesis of the superiority of the first on the latter in the everyday life. This is true especially if we take in consideration the history of the First World War. Especially during wars, all optimistic anthropocentric attitudes are questioned insofar we often witness such a brutalizing of human beings that they seem to turn into beasts, more ferocious and stupid than animals usually are (and we do not need to list some examples to explain what we mean, just turn on the television or read a newspaper). Yet, in extreme situations such as the Great War the distinction between them seems to dwindle in another way: men and animals cooperated providing each other both a physical and an emotional support. Sharing the common effort to survive the destructive force of the conflict, they became co-protagonists of the history, as if the natural dynamics, to which each of them reacts, could overlap in the tiny space of a trench or in the epic scenario of the battlefield.

Let's think for example at the deep relationship soldiers developed towards their horses, or the unexpected comfort that pets or mascots - among others cats - provided to the men in the trenches or in the military camps behind the front line (have a look to this photo, the tender caress of a soldier on a fox). And yet, their cooperation in wartime can not even be reduced to a peaceful and idyllic coexistence; it preserved on the contrary a potential tension. Animals were often just utilized for immediate military requirements (we've already recalled the example of pigeons and dogs) and sacrificed to the final victory (a fate they shared with the simple soldiers, just think about some pictures took on battlefield after a defeat of a cavalry troop). They provided the nourishment to the troops which occupied new territories. And again, men and animals engaged also a "war in the war": rats and mice plagued soldiers' lives, not to talk about the smaller insects hovering or buzzing in and around the trenches. In short, the connection between animals and men during the Great War was much nuanced, and it deserves probably more attention than it had up to now.

We guess that Eugenio Bucciol had this in mind as he wrote his wonderful book Animali al fronte (Animals on the frontline), edited by Nuova Dimensione in 2003. The reader can for sure find today many works dealing with the topic, but we have to admit that the volume by Bucciol has a "plus". Focusing on the "animal perspective", he tries to write a "parallel history" of the Great War, telling us the story of all the creatures, great or small, that took part in the conflict. The first chapter of the volume provides the reader a short survey of the "unknown" protagonists of the Great War. We meet so horses, mules and donkeys, who provided the quickest form of transport and remained the primary source of power needed to transport guns to and from the front line; and then dogs and pigeons, which we have already mentioned; then animals - such as pigs and cattle - used to nourish the army (the Author discusses some episode related to the Austro-Hungarians in the Venetian region after the rout of Caporetto), and finally the parasites. It is however the second chapter that offers very interesting and touching sources and represents the "plus" of this volume, since it is made up of a large collection of pictures, most of them the Author collected in the Austrian War Archives in Vienna, where Bucciol lived for a long time. The photographic materials are arranged according to a "geographic distribution": the Italian Front, the French Front, the Russian and the Galicia Front, that of the Ottoman Empire and of the German and Austro-Hungarian territories. Leafing through this section the reader is kept in a whirlwind not only of images but also of emotions, which cannot easily put in order; yet because of that he can get a vivid impression of the history of the Great War, as if it was told us by the animals. The reach photographic material makes this work usable by everybody, no matter which is the mother-language. 

(Thanks to the courtesy of the publisher and of the author, we will soon offer to our readers some of the most interesting gems collected in this volume. So stay tuned and don't miss the next posts on WWI and Animals!)

Photos of animals in World War One: camel stories

Not only horses, pigeons or dogs. Also other animals were used during the First World War according to the different geographical and climatic conditions of the single fronts. If we think about the Sinai and the Palestine campaigns, for example, it is not hard to imagine that horses were not really the most suitable animals for a war in the desert. Camels were instead naturally adapted for the terrain and the climate, that’s why they were largely used during the WWI for service in the Middle East. When mentioning these animals in Great War the image that comes to mind might be that of the British Officer Thomas Edward Lawrence, in one of the sequences of the famous film “Lawrence of Arabia”. Yet, turning to the prosaic reality of the conflict, camels were the distinctive feature of  specials Corps raised since the beginning of the conflict to support the campaigns in the Sinai region. The most important one was probably the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade (four battalions from Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand), who took part in different campaigns from 1616 till 1619 and even printed in Cairo its own review, entitled Barrak. But we cannot forget the Bikaner Camel Corps, a unit of the Indian Army that existed long before the WWI and was then used in warmer battlefields, especially in the region of the Suez Canal. On the other side of the front, also the Ottoman Army was provided with a Camel Regiment included in 1916 in the Hejaz Expeditionary Force.

Camels were slower than the horses, yet they required less rest on the march, were able to carry heavy loads (soldiers – the so called cameleers – including their equipments and other goods) and to walk for days without water. Camels were not only employed by the fighting troops on the front (however, only to get the soldiers to where they had to go; they usually fought then dismounted). These creatures served also in the zone behind the front, carrying water, ammunition and stores to the first line or conversely carrying the wounded from the battlefield to the hospitals, as we can see in the picture we choose today.

Photos of animals in World War One: elephant with machine-gun

The most well-known war photo was not taken during World War I and neither during the Second World War. As you have already guessed, we are thinking about Robert Capa’s The fallen soldier. It's notorious that many debates rose around the authenticity of this image. This premise is important to set the background of all possible discussions about the relationship between photography and war, moreover since our war imagery (and above all our World War I imagery) is still a photography-driven one. Also the images taken during the Great War present similar problems of authenticity or propaganda aims and sometimes it’s not so easy to separate the images taken “in real action” from the ones that were probably put up like a show due to the presence of a camera in the trenches or behind the front line. 
Look for example at the above image of an elephant and two soldiers. We know that elephants were used during the Great War but everything in this image makes us think about a kind of photomontage useful to prove the presence of such big animal in war operations and is probably just reproducing one of the uses of this animal (let’s say elephants like a “living machine-gun turrets”). We saw also images of camels used as provisional trenches and shelter. Of course we might be wrong about the above image, but look also to the electric pole on the background... These thoughts open a new chapter and namely the one of truthfulness of photography and its value as testimony, another intricacy that the historians already know very well.

Photos of animals in World War One: Mercy Dogs

Maj. Richardson & British Red Cross dogs

That the WWI was a largely static war it is a commonplace definition, which may not be so stimulating to approach new insights in its history but is in many regards correct, at least if we keep the common anthropocentric point of view. Nevertheless, animals counterbalanced someway the motionless of the human beings: While soldiers were lying in the trenches, pets were often employed to move constantly between the front line and the HQ. Dogs for example.
A conservative estimate places the number of dogs employed at nearly 50.000, most of them enrolled in the German and French Army (Americans troops borrowed dogs from their allies, since they had no organized dog units). A variety of breeds (above all German Sherperd and Labrador Retriever) were used during the Great War for different purposes. As pigeons, dogs were employed to deliver messages, but – different from the birds – they were also able to transport others materials, carrying food and ammunition for troops. They were also used for sentry and scout, even to haul machine guns on wheeled carts.  We’ll try to consider each of these dogs units in the future posts, we'd like to focus for the moment on a special one used during the WWI, i.e. the Red Cross dogs, also called "mercy dogs". These animals were trained to provide wounded men with two essential service. Firstly, they carried medical supplies and small canteens of water or spirit, so that wounded soldiers, if conscious, could avail themselves of these supplies. Secondly, the mission of Red Cross dogs was mainly to search and rescue soldiers, who were not able to move. If the wounded man was behind his own battle line, the mercy dog had simply to call for his handler. If they had to work in no man's land, the dogs were trained, once a wounded man was located, to return to their handler carrying the helmet or a piece of his uniform in order to inform the medical unit this way, someone who needed urgent help had to be rescued. To accomplish their mission mercy dogs had to deal with deadly gases, slit trenches and artillery. Sometimes dogs were able to drag men into protective places and trenches before alerting their master.
Thousands of soldiers owed their lives to these mercy dogs during the Great War and it is therefore not astonishing that a special cemetery was dedicated to this animals. If you are in New York, we recommend to visit, just outside the city, the Hartsdale Canine Cemetery and have a look to the monument of a German shepherd, dedicated to all dogs, as we can read, “for the valiant services rendered in the World War, 1914-1918.”

Photos of animals in World War One: a French soldier with a pet fox

Photography is probably the main media shaping our perceptions and feeling of the Great War time. We may find some videos, we could read important books or diaries generated by a raw realism, but the five years of the World War I represent somehow a pressing debut of photography in the world social history, and not only during the hectic moments of the battles and assaults. Think about the role of photography in the militarized civil affairs and industries, think about the women and kids portrayed during the Great War. A picture like the one above is a kind of buffer between the military use of photography and its employment in a civil context. Forgetting for a while the strange presence of the small animal (probably not so strange for the time), we should rather take into consideration the person who shot this image. The English Romantic poet William Wordsworth once wrote about "emotions recollected in tranquillity". He was describing his poetry, but we could apply those words to this scene framing a French soldier (we see only his helmet hiding his face), the vague gaze of the fox and the caress provisionally joining the two protagonists. Just behind them some war signs appear...

We took the picture from Great War Primary Document Archive:Photos of the Great War, a rich source of perfectly tagged and elapsed copyright images that we are linking beside and from where we are drawing again in the future.

Photos of animals in World War One: the pigeon with the camera

Pigeons were widely used since the antiquity to carry messages and for the same purpose they served all Armies – not only the British Intelligence Service – during the WWI, and even later, during WWII. Faster than dogs, these birds were trained to fly, even for a long period and through the bombardments. Each time a telephone line or a radio connection was not available, pigeons were able to keep important dispatches from the front to a settled position – generally the headquarters –, no matter where they were released. Besides, they were sometimes fitted with cameras in order to take pictures of the enemy position, so important was the aerial photography in the strategic conflict (this is the case of the picture we post today). It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that pigeons have to be regarded as soldiers at all intents and purposes. Stories such that of Cher Ami confirm this statement: probably the most famous carrier pigeon, Cher Ami served on the French front in 1918, during the last stage of the Great War; it helped to save 200 Americans soldiers surrounded by the enemy, because it succeeded in delivering the message to the headquarter, although it was badly wounded – renowned is in fact its picture without the left leg. Harry Webb Farrington devoted even a poem to this war bird. Pigeons were decorated during the Great War as human beings were and memorials devoted to war pigeons can be found in many countries, such as at Worthing, England or in Brussels, Belgium.

(If you wish to contribute with a picture, feel free to write an email to the beside address. We will mention your name in the recommendation's credits. Thank you!)

Photos of animals in World War One: dogs with gas masks

This new section of World War I Bridges indexed as "Animals" tries to get a glimpse of animal life during the Great War starting from a briefly commented image. We may find animals at the front, behind the lines or even flying over the no man's land. This is a painful side story of the Great War. The World War I bridge we could build again is thus the one between men and animals during the war time.

In the above picture you recognize a German soldier equipped with a gas mask. Beside him, you see two dogs wearing probably the same type of mask he wears. Men and animals in the trenches share the same destiny and the same dangers.
Here we are probably at a first stage of the development of these masks.
During the Second World War we may discover dogs equipped with gas masks likewise. It is interesting to know that, due to the increasing importance of dogs in war operations, the belligerent countries developed customized masks for them.

(If you wish to contribute with a picture, feel free to write an email to the beside address. We will mention your name in the recommendation's credits. Thank you!)