Soldiers and Sled Dogs - A History of Military Dog Mushing

Dean's small, fascinating book provides handy reference on the military use of dogsleds. The first soldier to use them was Bill Mitchell, while laying a telegraph line across Alaska. The French used them in the Vosges Mountains and the Italians in the Alps during World War I to supply outposts that couldn't be reached by mules. In World War II, the leading user was the U.S, which, despite many experiments with sleds and breeds of dog, ended up using them mostly for search and rescue in the Arctic. The Germans' SS mountain division used Finnish-trained dogs on the Russian front. After the war, the U.S. Air Force maintained search and rescue dog teams until helicopters replaced them in the mid-1950s. The book is full of fascinating tidbits, particularly for dog lovers, such as the report of a French Canadian musher whose dogs understood commands only in French. Even today, Dean reveals, Danish dog teams patrol Greenland's ice cap.