INFANTRY UNGULATE

When a group of soldiers from Western Canada stopped in the small town of Broadview, Saskatchewan, en route to joining the Fifth Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, in Valcartier, Quebec, a family gave them a goat named Bill. The troops dubbed their new mascot Sergeant Bill and snuck him first to England and then, in 1915, to the front lines in France. Arrested twice — once for eating paperwork — the goat later distinguished himself by standing guard over a Prussian soldier in a crater, despite his own injuries. Another time he butted three Canadians into a trench seconds before a shell exploded where they’d been standing. Sergeant Bill lived through battles at Vimy Ridge and Festubert in France and at Ypres and Passchendaele in Belgium, enduring gassing, shelling, and trench foot — or, in his case, trench hoof. He was awarded a sergeant’s chevrons as well as the Mons Star, the British War Medal, and the Victory Medal. He is shown below, in his finery, with an unidentified member of the Fifth Battalion. Despite a commanding officer who wanted him left behind and an immigration official who was reluctant to allow him back into Canada, Sergeant Bill paraded with his brothers-in-arms back in Saskatchewan, where he was returned to his family. He died soon after but was preserved and mounted, and he now stands behind glass in the Broadview Historical Museum.