During the summer of 1918 I spent two months in Alaska, and while there
became familiar with the characteristics of the Alaskan Eskimo dog.
Travel during the long sunless winter season would be next to impossible
were it not for these tireless sled dogs. Summer is their vacation
period and they wander through the villages, camps and mountains, much
as the ordinary farm or country dog, spending the long hours of constant
sunshine playing and sleeping. From the moment of the first fall of
snow, play and sleep, become—if a dog ever thinks—but a thing of memory,
as work is then the order of the day and dogs instead of horses
transport burdens of every description. To the hustling Alaskan, a team
of sled dogs is the most important asset in his possession.
With the approach of winter, the armies of the Allies were confronted
with a very serious problem, namely, how to supply the troops in the
mountain camps and trenches with sufficient food supply. Motors and
horses were alike powerless to overcome these conditions. Falling snows
and howling blizzards made the work of provisioning these soldiers an
impossibility. Hundreds of dogs were sent from Alaska and Labrador, and
these hitched to sleds loaded with food and munitions made their way
through the mountain passes and over pinnacles, relieving the threatened
destruction of thousands by starvation.
Ernest Harold Baynes, in the National Geographic Magazine, has this to
say relative to the work accomplished by these dogs. “One woman brought
back to America a Croix de Guerre awarded by France to her intrepid
teams of sled dogs. The occasion that won them that honor was their
salvation of a stormbound, foe pressed outpost in the French Alps.
Despatch bearers had been sent back repeatedly, but no succoring answer
came, for the messengers were overwhelmed as they passed through the
blinding blizzard. At last matters became desperate. The foe was
pressing his advantage with dash and courage, and nothing but quick
action could save the situation. So Lieutenant Rene Haas hitched his
dogs to a light sled and started through a blizzard before which human
flesh, in spite of the ‘urge’ of a consecrated patriotism, had failed.
In ‘sweepstakes racing time’ they covered the trip down the mountain and
over a perilous pass to the main army post. There twenty-eight dogs were
hitched to fourteen light sleds, and these were loaded with ammunition.
Back over the forbidding trail they went, under an artillery fire,
facing a bitter wind, and plowing through blinding clouds of snow. On
the fifth day at sunrise the panting malamutes reached the outpost,
their burden of ammunition was rushed to the gunners, and the mountain
was saved from the foe.”
We must all agree that the “Huskie” takes his place of honor among the
many other species of dogdom who did his bit in the World War, and if it
is true that he is a lineal descendant of the timber wolf, we must even
have a higher respect for this much maligned animal.
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