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Loaned for the purpose by patriotic owners, dogs were being trained in England for a number of important war duties, including the guarding of Service installations and property at home and overseas, described here by Leigh M. Scully. The Germans also had their war-dogs and the Commandos learned by practical experience how to deal with these.
“Wake up you! One of the dogs has gone sick, and you've got to take his place!" was the caption to a new Army cartoon unofficially issued at an important Air Service Command post where dogs were used as guards, each dog releasing three men for more important duties.
The U.S. Eighth Air Force headquarters started the scheme early in 1944, when they opened a dog-guard training school here in England. Men from all parts of the country were sent there to learn to handle the animals and train them for their war duties. Men and dogs were trained as a team, so that when they complete their term at the school they virtually "talked the same language." Some of the massive dogs were killers, and it was fascinating to see how implicitly they obeyed their masters.
It was a stiff course for the dogs. They were taught discipline, how to manage a stranger, how to keep him in captivity, and how to trail and pick up scents at prescribed distances. Dogs were assigned to a post just as ordinary soldiers were; and incidentally they didn’t whinge about their guard duties, but took a pride in their work! An expert at the training school reported that the use of dogs for guard duties was first started as an experiment, but they had proved so efficient that they were used extensively. In the last war dogs were used chiefly as messengers by, Royal Engineers signals detachments. Their use as guards for Army property was a new development
"It was necessary for us to keep them in constant training," one of the school trainers reported. "We followed a daily routine for teaching them obedience. In the exercises we had to wear a leather sleeve to protect us against their teeth. This helped the dogs to learn the proper way of attacking an intruder." Two dogs which never left the heels of the two school instructors were Wolf and Danny, pedigree Alsatians lent by their British owners for the duration of the war. Not all the dogs were killers, but their method of attack was not a happy experience, and their watchfulness was such that no sniping German would be able to get a shot in before the dog’s teeth penetrated his uniform. There was evidence that genuine "killer" dogs, including Alsatians and other large breeds, were being trained by the Reichswehr as part of their anti-invasion defences. There was reason to believe that large numbers of them were stationed at frequent intervals along certain stretches of the coasts of France, Belgium and Holland, to give the alarm when anyone approached from the sea at night.
Four footed forces were in training at special schools for war dogs in Britain. Thousands had completed their course and were on patrol work, guarding ammunition dumps and Army headquarters along with other duties. Above, A.T.S. kennel maids groom Alsatians: below, a war dog receives first aid.
Each of these sentry dogs was in charge of a German N.C.O. detailed for its training. It was drilled to run to its master, who would be on sentry near by, to give warning of suspicious noises out at sea. The Germans believed that their "Alsatian Guard," with their acute sense of hearing, could pick up sounds that would fail to register on the most sensitive sound detection apparatus. They claimed that their most skilfully trained killer dogs could detect even a carefully propelled rowing boat when still a considerable distance off shore. It was no myth that these dogs did exist. They had been encountered by British Commando units on their spasmodic raids, and from some of these forays came back stories of savage attacks by German trained dogs.
It was even reported that as a result of encounters with dogs, many Commandos started to carry their knives on the left hip instead of on the right. The reason is that Commando soldiers, instinctively raising their right arms to keep the dogs at bay, lost a split second in getting the knives in the right hand position. One difficulty of training dogs of the Alsatian type for this work was, although they have good natural "guard" properties they do not willingly obey more than one master. Thus each dog had to be under the command of one sentry with whom it had been trained possibly for several weeks. In Australia the experiment was being tried of dogs with radio control, and the first tests had shown that the scheme may be of use in jungle warfare where dogs were used to follow a scent. A midget short wave radio set was strapped on a harness worn by the dog, or carried on a stout collar; it worked from dry batteries, and received for about 60 hours before new batteries needed to be fitted. The sets were flatly tuned and gave good quality, so that a dog, hearing the midget loudspeaker behind his ear, at once recognised his master’s voice.
With this radio control, a man could call on or call off, several dogs at once. As all the receivers would be tuned to one frequency the radio control did not upset any other form of radio transmission used. In training, gramophone records of the "masters" voice were used, while he stands near the dogs and alternately shouts real words of command. After about a week the dogs accepted the loudspeaker as a real "voice," and the radio control worked quite well even though the master at the microphone may have been several miles away.
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