Last week , I assure you aboutPrivate Derby , who is mascot of a military unit , the 2nd Battalion Mercian Regiment ( Worcesters and Foresters ) in Derby , England . He ’s the only sheep military mascot Mom discovered when she research The Backyard Sheep , but there have been oodles of military laughingstock !
now , regimental Capricorn like William Windsor of the first Battalion of the Royal Welsh , an infantry battalion in the British Army , are kept for ceremonial purpose . In former clock time , they travel to warfare ! Mom ’s favorites are World War I and II hoagie : Air Commodore William de Goat , mascot of the British 609 West Riding Squadron of the Royal Air Force during World War II , and Sergeant Bill , who served in France in World War I as part of Canada ’s 5th ( Western Cavalry ) Battalion . This is Sergeant Bill ’s tale . ( If you like these historic sketches , please annotate and I ’ll state you about William de Goat another time )
On Aug. 23 , 1914 , a train sway soldiers of the newly come up 5th ( Western Cavalry ) Battalion stopped at Broadview , Saskatchewan , Canada , where a mathematical group of recruits stag Miss Daisy Curwain and her go-cart goat , Bill . They expect Daisy if they could have her goat as their mascot . She said yes .
Private Bill proceeded with his newfangled family to Valcartier training camp , then overseas to England . at last , the unit received their orders to proceed to the front . No regimental pets , however , would be tolerate go along .
The men of the 5th had other ideas . According to Sergeant Harold Baldwin , who wrote a book called Holding the Line while serving on the front , “ We could not part with Billy ; the boys argued that we could easily get another colonel , but it was too far to the Rocky Mountains to get another goat . The difficulty was solved by buying a huge crate of oranges from a woman who was doing brisk trade with the boys . The Orange sell like hot cakes and in a trice the orange box was convert into a crate and Billy shanghaied into the crateful and smuggle aboard the caravan . ”
Bill was famous for drinking canteen beer and eating important written document left lying around . However , Bill redeemed himself and make the rank of sergeant at the Battle of Ypres when he was found in a shell crater standing over a nervous Prussian guardsman , even though he himself had been wounded by shrapnel . Bill was gassed with his boys at the Second Battle of Ypres , fought at Vimy Ridge , was shell shocked at Hill 70 , and was hurt double at Festubert , where he knocked three soldiers into a oceanic abyss seconds before a shell burst incisively where they had been standing . By war ’s end Bill was one of the few original soldier of the fifth still active . He was award the 1914 - 1915 Star , the British War Medal and the Victory Medal , for his proud 4½ years of service .
Despite immigration problems , Bill give back to Saskatchewan with his unit , where it was demobilized on April 24 , 1919 . He was later returned to Miss Curwain in Winnipeg and lived several more years . What an exciting living for a caprine animal !
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