Dogs in war zones are not only there to protect
their handler, they also assist in protecting
The History Of
civilians. Major Richard Pope was serving in
Kosovo with the Royal Army Veterinary Corps
Dogs At War
as part of the Commanding Multi National
Working Dog Support Unit in 2002, when the
skills of his four and half year old German
Shepherd Dog, Charlie were to prove vital to
maintaining peace.
“I had been working out in Northern Kosovo
on a peace maintenance mission. I received
a call very late one night telling me I needed
to track some ‘persons unknown’ back to the
Serbian border. An Albanian farmer had been
receiving intimidating threats from two men
who were believed to have come over the
border from Serbia. It was my job to establish
whether there was anyone coming from over
the border. The farmer showed me the area
where he believed the men had last been,
Charlie then picked up their scent and tracked
it back all the way to the border, following their
exact movements. I had total trust in Charlie’s
actions, I did not know whether we would come
across these men and would be shot at, but we
made sure that the scent went from the farm
all the way up to the border. This enabled us
to report an infringement back to the UN which
was essential in the peace keeping mission.”
During more recent confl icts, dogs have
played a large part in preventing deaths and
casualties through explosives detection. In
1971 British forces trained bomb detection A Tribute To History’s Dogs of War
dogs for service in Northern Ireland. Since
then, the Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms have begun an anti-terrorism dog
training campaign geared towards reducing
terrorist activities through actively identifying
explosives.
With all these stories of bravery, intelligence,
loyalty and honour, it is a shame that it has
taken until now to establish a monument in
memory of these incredible dogs.
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