ANIMALS IN THE GREAT WAR: Rare Photographs

Images include mules and donkeys, one of whom survived a 14oz time fuse which was pulled from his head, and Ragtime, a grey Arab horse displaying his service medals on his brow band. A Canadian staff officer bids farewell to his horse after being demobbed, soldiers risk their lives to free horses or winch them via a sling on the Italian front in the Alps, July 1915, and a poster for Our Dumb Friends League encourages kindness to animals. A regiment of healing horses at Elstree were responsible for the supply of tetanus serum and horses were rehabilitated by listening to gramophone records and trained to wear gasmasks. A kangaroo used as a mascot for Australian troops; the strength and power of the British Empire symbolised by a pride of lions in a recruitment poster of 1915; a ferocious cat used in a recruitment poster for the US Tanks Corps 1917 and the real life-saving cat Pitoutchi who became the mascot of a big-gun crew on the Western Front. Used as symbols and propaganda as political animals, here are daring rescues of canaries in France, a pet thrush, a tame blackbird, and of course dogs who went into the trenches with their masters and afterwards accompanied battalions when it went into billets behind the line. Rin-Tin-Tin was the rescued wartime pup turned world-famous dog film star and also pictured is the Red Baron with his crew and beloved dog Moritz. Here is Lassie at Crufts framed with a life belt and pictured with the sailor whom she miraculously revived. Dogs of the French Canine Corps wore special harnesses for transporting ammunition or were used for pulling the wheelchairs of wounded soldiers. See a rare picture of a terraced colony of dug-outs for French ambulance dogs and famous mascots like Peggy the bulldog on HMS Iron Duke. Dogs have helped substantially in the winning of the war as mascots, sentinels, despatch carriers, and Red Cross dogs have played their parts bravely to the finish. There was a British War Dog School at Shoeburyness in Essex which used gentle ways and encouragement rather than punishment for undesirable behaviour and the dogs were trained to overcome obstacles such as fences and streams and to dash fearlessly through a line of attacking infantry or clouds of smoke and gas. Through unrivalled access to rarely seen illustrated wartime magazines, books and postcards including the Illustrated London News Archive. 160pp in large softback, over 100 illus. reproduced to the best possible quality given their age, plus artworks.