What next, a tomb of the unknown pigeon?
by Josie Appleton From sniffer dogs to glow-worms: why society is celebrating the ‘sacrifices’ of animals in war. There has been no memorial to British soldiers who died in Iraq. There has been no major museum exhibition dealing with the wars of the Blair era. Yet memorials to animals in war are proliferating like wildfire. The Imperial War Museum in London is hosting a new exhibition on animals in war, detailing the feats and sufferings of cavalry horses, carrier pigeons and sniffer dogs. In 2004, a major memorial was unveiled on Park Lane in London dedicated to all the animals that died alongside British troops, including horses, dogs, dolphins, elephants and glow-worms (apparently troops used them as reading lights). Animal memorials started springing up in the 1990s. A 1997 memorial in Virginia marked animals killed in the American Civil War; the fiftieth anniversary of the American victory in the Pacific island of Guam was marked with a war dog memorial. Australia has two war dog
