In class, we’ve covered the two basic perspectives of war: Soldiers and the Homefront. There are poets like Rupert Brooke, a soldier who writes about the war in only the most abstract terms, talking about the glory and the honor associated with during his duty. Even when he talks about being killed, he does so in the most romantic of ways. Then there are poets like Wilfred Owen. Unlike Brooke who sees the war through rose-colored glasses, Owen’s glasses are gray and smoke-smeared. Owen’s poetry is almost brutal in its concrete discriptions that put the reader in the soldier’s shoes. The memoir of Vera Brittain shows life on the homefront. While her lover goes off to war, she leaves school to become a nurse.
Tragic and, yet somehow, mundane. We can read similar stories about any war in history. Soldiers and the homefront are the most remembered aspects of any conflict because they are the human players and they are able to tell their stories for themselves. There is another human-interest story out there that is rarely told. Maybe there will be a mention in some dusty regimental history, or a torn photograph locked away in some trunk. You’ve all seen them. They’re in pictures of soldiers and pictures of bombed-out buildings. They don’t get immortalized in books and poetry and movies. “What the hell is she talking about?” you ask yourself.
I’m talking about the pets. In every conflict hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dogs and cats are made homeless. Whether it’s because the owner is killed or flees the incoming troops and can’t take them or because they became separated when the bombs started falling, stray animals are a tragic part of war that is almost never mentioned. At least some of those strays become interwoven with the stories of the soldiers because where there is a lot of men, there’s food, and that’s where they go.
In the American Civil War, stories abound about regiments adopting these lost pets as mascots. Granted some were more exotic (Generals Patrick Cleburne and JEB Stuart are reported to have kept raccoons and at least one unit kept an eagle), but most of them were your average mutt. The soldiers loved these animals because they were a warm body and a friendly, happy face no matter what hell they were going through on the battlefield. They talk about them in their letters home, referring to them as “our big black dog” or “that ratty-looking hound dog”. Some of these animals were so loyal that they would follow their human friends onto the battlefield.
Most of the stories end sadly. One story from the Battle of Fredericksburg tells of the company’s big black dog who followed them in the assault on Marye’s Heights and refused to leave even when the heavy fire trapped the soldiers on the field. Sometime during the fight, the dog took a bullet and quietly died beside them. Another from the Battle of Gettysburg tells of a dog running between the Union and Confederate lines, befriending men on both sides. During one assault, the dog was caught in the fire, and when the smoke cleared the dog was still there - one of its legs blown clean off and bleeding from numerous other wounds - licking the wounds of the soldiers.
These are stories that don’t get into the newspaper. They are passed down by the soldiers themselves, and many times they get lost to time. Very few are remembered and even less are immortalized in the same way thier human company was. For instance, the battlefield of Gettysburg is a study in monuments, but there is only one monument to the mascot of a unit, and even she is religated the back of the monument and can’t be seen unless you know where to look.
As technology and warfare change, stories of the loyal animals adopted by soldiers become few and far between. No longer do soldiers line up in neat rows to shoot at one another; nor do they huddle in trench lines not twenty yards from the enemy. But those animals are still out there, and their stories are still being told only by the men that they befriend.
Charlie is such an example. He’s a mutt adopted by a group of soldiers in Iraq, and now that their tour is ending, they don’t want to leave him to fend for himself. They’ve started a campaign called Bring Charlie Home in which they work to bring their mascot of sorts back to the States. Sure, there are groups out there like Military Mascots who deal with cases like this, but where would Charlie be without the soldiers working to tell his story? He’s become entwined with their lives, yet theirs is the story that will be remembered and the general public will have never even heard of him.
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Sallie:
(photo by me)
