The Dogs of War Trivia Quiz

Answer: Marathon

The Battle of Marathon saw the Athenians rout invaders from Persia. If the most often cited sources are to be believed, the Athenian victory was spectacular, with the Greeks losing only 203 soldiers against 6,400 Persian dead. In the mural at Stoa Poikile, students of the stoic philosopher Zeno could see the graven image of a dog rushing to his master's side to fight the Persian line.

Answer: Mastiffs

The mastiff has a history as a war dog that reaches back to antiquity. Some historians speculate that they were used by the ancient Phoenician and Celtic armies, and the Romans made good use of the breed (or an early variant) after conquering Britain in 43 CE. During the Middle Ages and into Shakespeare's time, mastiffs were used as pit fighters, often contending against bears, bulls and lions.

They were also used as military dogs in this period, with one mastiff, belonging to Sir Peers Leigh, distinguishing himself at the Battle of Agincourt. Since the nineteenth century, however, use of mastiffs as war dogs has markedly declined, and the breed standard now calls for a very even temperament. Though use of mastiffs for home defense is still common, it is very rare to see them cited as "attack dogs" today.

Answer: Frederick the Great

Frederick began using dogs in the Russian theater of the Seven Years' War, a conflict which he often thought doomed if his correspondence is to be believed. In the Seven Years' War, Prussia faced an alliance of Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and the German Duchy of Saxony; their only Allies were Britain and the House of Hanover. On multiple occasions, Frederick made plans to kill himself - or at least seek death on the battlefield - if it appeared that Prussia would fall. Largely due to Frederick's brilliance as a commander, Prussia prevailed.

In addition to being a great military leader and intellectual light of his era, Frederick was an avid dog lover. On the death of a beloved greyhound, he wrote: "I believe that anyone capable of indifference towards a faithful animal is unable to be grateful towards an equal."

Answer: Chips

Chips was a sentry dog attached to the US Third Infantry. After serving as a guard during the 1943 Roosevelt-Churchill conference, Chips participated in the invasion of Sicily. With his handler's unit pinned down by pillbox fire, Chips broke from the group and charged the machine gun team. The Italian unit was forced to abandon their fortifications and was summarily captured. For this and other actions, Chips was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, and Purple Heart in addition to eight battle stars on his theater ribbon. All of these were revoked, however, by a new policy that animals could not receive military decorations. Granted, it didn't help that Chips bit General Eisenhower during a personal appearance after the invasion.

Like most military dogs during World War II, Chips was volunteered for service by his owner, Edward J. Wren. As the US military was dramatically downsized during peacetime, the purposeful breeding and training of war dogs had never taken hold in America, so US forces depended on dogs reared for civilian life. Just as many actors and athletes volunteered for military service, many well-known Americans, like Greer Garson, Mary Pickford, and Rudy Valee, volunteered their dogs.

Answer: Training dogs to racially profile and attack Japanese soldiers

Swiss immigrant William Prestre convinced the Army to fund this project, which had Japanese-American Nisei soldiers beating dogs to make them hate people of their ethnicity. Carried out to its extreme, the idea was that the dogs could clear out trenches of Japanese without putting human American soldiers in harm's way.

As one might expect, practically everything went wrong with this operation. Prestre's racist precept that Japanese soldiers had some sort of distinctive smell did not bear out, and most of the dogs would flee from gunfire and shelling without intervention from their human masters.

After five months, saner heads prevailed, and Cat Island's dogs were trained for more conventional duties like sentry work and communications.

Answer: Yorkshire Terrier

Using her natural earth dog instincts and diminutive size, Smoky ran seventy yards of communication cable through an eight-inch channel under a landing strip. Without Smoky, who did her job in about two minutes, this would have required three days work, and the crew would have been exposed to strafing.

It is no exaggeration to say that the four-pound Yorkie almost certainly saved lives in addition to building morale in her usual role as a mascot. Following the war, Smoky and her owner, Bill Wynne, toured for ten years sharing their wartime stories and doing perfectly-executed tricks.

Answer: Training dogs to crawl under tanks while strapped with explosives

The Soviets began their anti-tank dog program in the 1930s. The initial plan was to train dogs to leave bombs and run, but this proved impractical. The plan did have some effectiveness early on; dogs are credited with destroying thirteen German tanks at Stalingrad and 12 Axis tanks at the Battle of Kursk.

Unfortunately, this led to the German tactic of shooting every dog they saw in Soviet territory as their line rolled forward. The United States did experiment with this tactic as well in training exercises, but never implemented the program in combat. Iraqi use of bomb-laden dogs (and, more often, donkeys) has been more precise, with bombs being detonated by remote control.

Answer: Dogs performed in all of these ways

43 US war dogs and 73 US dog handlers were killed in Vietnam. Some military historians have estimated that they saved as many as 10,000 lives. Only 200 returned to the US after the war, however; the rest were declared war surplus and euthanized or abandoned.

Answer: By alerting military vehicles to the presence of small children

Tang's most dramatic rescue may have been when he planted himself in front of a truck and refused to move, howling and barking all the while. When the driver stepped from the vehicle to remove the dog, he noticed a two-year-old child seated on the fender. Without Tang's alarm, the child could have easily been hurt-or worse.

In 1954, Tang was awarded the inaugural Ken-L Ration Dog Hero of the Year medal. His owner, Capt. Maurice Dyer, could not have been more proud.

Answer: Osama bin Laden

The program that produced this combat dog had greatly evolved since the Vietnam War. Many of the dogs currently serving with units like the one that took down bin Laden are fitted with special dental implants of titanium that allow them to bite through body armor. On a happier note, the old policy that saw most military dogs euthanized at the end of their service has been greatly altered. Today, almost all military dogs are able to be reintegrated into civilian life as pets. Thankfully, the titanium implants are replaced with porcelain.