Dogsey

They'd already waved goodbye to husbands, brothers and sons. But as the war with Germany stalled in the blood, mud and chaos of the battlefield, families on the Home Front were asked to make one further sacrifice- their pet Airedales, collies and retrievers.

Thousands of family dogs were pressed into action, joining those that had been rounded up off the streets or conscripted from dogs homes. One little girl wrote: “We have let Daddy go to fight the Kaiser and now we are sending Jack to do his bit.” And a woman offered this send-off: “I have given my husband and my sons and now that he too is required, I give my dog.”

Adam Henson celebrates the heroism of the canine cavalry in a special remembrance episode of Countryfile. He admits he was deeply moved by some of the family letters he read. “It brought a real lump to my throat. In many cases I’m sure the dogs were a major source of comfort for the families who had them. And to see them led away not knowing whether they would return must have been quite hard. But I think everyone did whatever they could to support the war effort.”

Some of the dogs that were recruited were deployed in battlefield positions to listen out for German advances – they were trained not to bark but to use a low growl – while others ran messages between the trenches and military headquarters. To start with, though, the British Army was playing catch-up. The Germans had already deployed hundreds of dogs, ironically many of them sourced from the UK. “They sent scouts over to buy the intelligent collies they didn’t have in Germany,” says Henson. "They were a step ahead of us.”