U.S. special operations forces last week killed ISIS terrorist leader and coward Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in Syria’s northwestern Idlib Province. Along with Delta Force troops, drones, and air support, the raid included another brave participant: Conan, a 50-mission combat veteran who also happens to be a Belgian Malinois dog.
The four-legged hero is far from the first canine used in warfare. In fact, the earliest mention of dogs of war occurred in a battle between the Cimmerians of Asia Minor and Alyattes, king of Lydia, circa 600 B.C. Alyattes ordered his troops be accompanied by a fierce escort of hounds that reportedly ravaged many Cimmerians and caused the rest to break in fear.
In 525 B.C., Cambyses II, king of the Achaemenid Empire and son of Cyrus the Great, set upon invading Egypt with the help of his own canine retinue. As the Macedonian author Polyaenus wrote in his Stratagems in War, “When Cambyses attacked Pelusium, which guarded the entrance into Egypt, the Egyptians defended it with great resolution. They advanced formidable engines against the besiegers, and hurled missiles, stones, and fire at them from their catapults. To counter this destructive barrage, Cambyses ranged before his front line dogs, sheep, cats, ibises, and whatever other animals the Egyptians hold sacred. The Egyptians immediately stopped their operations, out of fear of hurting the animals, which they hold in great veneration.” Cambyses, naturally, exploited this religious devotion to great military effect.
Dogs have held sway in American military engagements since the Revolutionary War, in which Gen. Charles Lee was accompanied by his beloved hounds at nearly all times. George Washington, too, held man’s best friend in high regard, veneration that carried through even on the battlefield. After the Battle of Germantown in 1777, when the defeated American troops withdrew from the field, they were accompanied by a lonesome dog. Ever the gentleman, Washington ordered the immediate return of the pup to its owner, an enemy Redcoat, under a flag of truce with a note reading, “General Washington’s compliments to General Howe, does himself the pleasure to return him a dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and by the inscription on the collar, appears to belong to General Howe.”
“Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war,” declared Shakespeare’s Mark Antony. A medal and bone to brave Conan, echo a grateful America.
