"By late 1915, word of Allan's reputation for handling sled dogs had reached the French army, which turned to him for help in the war against Germany. Supply lines to army units in eastern France had become hindered by deep snow and the French had heard that the sled dogs of Nome could succeed where horses and mules had failed. Allan needed more than four hundred sled dogs for this secret mission. To avoid skyrocketing prices, he went around Nome and its surrounding villages and quietly bought up 106 dogs, and harnesses and sleds, as well as 2 tons of dried salmon for food.
"To transport the animals, he rigged up a 300-foot towline and attached the dogs in pairs to the heavy rope. The end of the towline was hooked to two draft horses and a heavy carriage that held the dogs back in case they got too excited or tried to flee. A crowd watched as Allan drove the team up a bobbling gangplank to a barge and then out to a ship waiting offshore. They sailed to Canada, where they boarded a guarded train and traveled to Quebec; there Allan assembled over 300 more dogs from the Canadian Arctic, 60 sleds, and 350 harnesses. Then Allan and his 'K9 Corps' sailed to France on the Pomeranian, an old cargo ship that had recently been brought out of retirement.
"Once on shore, Allan divided the dogs into sixty teams and trained fifty cavalrymen to drive them. They hauled 90 tons of ammunition to a stranded unit in the Vosges Mountains, and helped soldiers lay down communication lines to a detachment that had been cut off by the Germans. In addition, they hauled in the wounded to field hospitals. 'It was enough to make one forget all about the war, even when the shells were singing, to see a line half a mile long of dog teams tearing down the mountain to the base depot, every blue devil whooping and yelling and trying to pass the one ahead,' Allan remembered."
--Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury, The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race against an Epidemic (NY and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), 24-25
chained_bear commented on the word K9 Corps
"To transport the animals, he rigged up a 300-foot towline and attached the dogs in pairs to the heavy rope. The end of the towline was hooked to two draft horses and a heavy carriage that held the dogs back in case they got too excited or tried to flee. A crowd watched as Allan drove the team up a bobbling gangplank to a barge and then out to a ship waiting offshore. They sailed to Canada, where they boarded a guarded train and traveled to Quebec; there Allan assembled over 300 more dogs from the Canadian Arctic, 60 sleds, and 350 harnesses. Then Allan and his 'K9 Corps' sailed to France on the Pomeranian, an old cargo ship that had recently been brought out of retirement.
"Once on shore, Allan divided the dogs into sixty teams and trained fifty cavalrymen to drive them. They hauled 90 tons of ammunition to a stranded unit in the Vosges Mountains, and helped soldiers lay down communication lines to a detachment that had been cut off by the Germans. In addition, they hauled in the wounded to field hospitals. 'It was enough to make one forget all about the war, even when the shells were singing, to see a line half a mile long of dog teams tearing down the mountain to the base depot, every blue devil whooping and yelling and trying to pass the one ahead,' Allan remembered."
--Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury, The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race against an Epidemic (NY and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), 24-25
January 24, 2017