Animals Ready For War
military.com
Unleash the chickens of war! Also the sea lions, possibly camels and, yes, dogs. Homo sapiens is not the only species getting ready to do battle in Iraq.
The U.S. Army will use birds to combat chemical warfare. The Navy has deputized sea lions. And the enemy could retaliate with kamikaze camels.
"For thousands of years of his history, man has made use of the capabilities of animals, their strength, extraordinary senses, swimming or flying ability," said Tom LaPuzza, public affairs officer for the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program. To the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, though, America's nonhuman draftees are a coalition of the unwilling.
"These animals never enlisted, they know nothing of Iraq or Saddam Hussein, and they probably won't survive," said PETA spokesman Arathi Jayaram.
LaPuzza says they will do fine. Navy mammals, for instance, perform tasks that are difficult or dangerous for humans, but "usual, simple and safe for creatures that spend all or most of their lives in the water."
Creatures large and small have been called on to assist military operations. Hannibal's elephants rammed enemy lines like primitive tanks. Dogs wore armor in the Middle Ages and parachutes in World War II.
Before satellites, birds carried miniature cameras. Even spiders were conscripted by American and British defense contractors in the 1940s, to spin silk for crosshairs on bomb sights.
Should coalition troops invade Iraq, chickens will be pressed into service as gas-detectors.
The poultry, which otherwise would end up on Kuwaiti dinner tables, will cross the desert in cages atop Humvees driven by soldiers and marines. If the chickens keel over, troops will know to don protective gear.
The military calls it Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken, or KFC.
United Poultry Concerns, a group promoting "the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl" says on its Web site that it is "ludicrous" that "a military capable of blowing up the world must rely on chickens."
The organization, based in Virginia, has launched a letter-writing campaign, urging the commander in chief to end Operation KFC.
But the Army says the birds are a useful backup if battlefield pollutants clog sensitive instruments and keep them from registering nerve agents and deadly chemicals.
"It's unfortunate that you have to use them," an Army sergeant caring for chickens near the Kuwait-Iraq border told a television news crew, "but it's to save the troops."
While chickens go to war on land, sea lions will patrol offshore. The Navy says some of the 20 sea lions it has trained in apprehension, mine recovery and defusing are deployed in the Persian Gulf.
Two, Alexander and Zachary, specialize in locating enemy divers.
Spotting one while swimming, Alex or Zak will surface and bellow until a handler puts a C-shaped clamp attached to a line in its mouth. Then, like an underwater sheriff, the whiskered, 375-pound mammal will swoop in for the arrest, snapping the clamp on the suspect's leg so sailors can reel him in.
The sea lions will return to San Diego after a "limited-time deployment," said LaPuzza. He would not say whether dolphins, used by the Navy since 1959, are also headed for the Gulf.
Bottlenose dolphins that "assist in thwarting swimmers" that approach a pier or ship, and others that locate and mark mines for destruction, are in units that could embark on short notice, LaPuzza said.
"If orders are received from appropriate authority, these units will deploy," he said.
Also awaiting orders are almost 1,400 "military working dogs" serving in the Air Force, Navy, Army and Marines as sentries, detectors of land mines and bombs, rescuers of the wounded, and recoverers of the dead.
The military, for security reasons, does not disclose how many dogs would be sent to Iraq in the event of war.
In Vietnam, dogs are believed to have saved at least 10,000 Americans from death or injury, according to Michael Lemish, historian for the Vietnam Dog Handler Association and author of War Dogs: A History of Loyalty and Heroism. They alerted troops to ambushes, identified booby traps, and dragged wounded soldiers to safety.
Efforts to commemorate them with statues and plaques have sprung up from California to Washington and to Bristol Township, Pa. Their bravery is recounted in War Dogs, a video documentary narrated by Martin Sheen.
But PETA's Jayaram said canines aren't necessary on the battlefield. "The military can detect weapons and find wounded troops with some very sophisticated equipment," he said.
Not true, said the Navy's LaPuzza. Animals use low-light vision, biological sonar, directional hearing and other qualities to protect the lives of U.S. military personnel - capabilities "currently unattainable with hardware."
Occasionally, animals have been used as weapons. Troops stationed in Afghanistan are still warned to be careful around camels, which the mujahideen strapped with explosives and blew up by remote control in their war against the Soviets. Most animals who die in battle, though, are mourned and mythologized.
In World War I, U.S. Army carrier pigeon Cher Ami, although shot through the breast by enemy fire, struggled back to his loft, a message dangling from his shattered right leg.
The note gave the location of the "Lost Battalion," 194 soldiers desperate for rescue. All were saved. Cher Ami lost his leg.
When he died the next year, he was awarded the French Croix de Guerre with Palm. The plucky pigeon was stuffed, mounted and donated to the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History, where he is now displayed, jauntily balanced on his remaining leg, in the Armed Forces History Hall.
Another pigeon, World War II recruit G.I. Joe, saved 1,000 troops from friendly fire. This won him praise from Congress and the Dickin Medal for Valor from Great Britain.
The Dickin, which has recognized animal gallantry since 1943, has been bestowed on 32 pigeons, 22 dogs, three horses and a cat. The United States has no equivalent.
The feline was a ship's mascot, Simon, who was gravely wounded by gunfire but continued to kill rats, preserving the crew's food supply. He was buried in England with full Naval honors, his tiny coffin draped with a Union Jack.
The most recent Dickin winners were Americans, cited for courage on September 11, 2001. Guide dogs Salty and Roselle led their owners from the World Trade Center. New York police dog Appollo was honored on behalf of all search-and-rescue dogs at ground zero and the Pentagon who, the award noted, "worked tirelessly to find life amid the ruins." |
