The Emu War
Over the centuries, nation has fought against nation, village against village and even family against family. But in the early 1930s, a whole country went to war against some animals. The ‘Emu War’ of 1932 saw Australia mobilize its troops to fight back against an avian invasion, using what was then the very latest in military technology. Victory for the Australian army would have been a formality, right? Think again.
For the typical Australian farmer, the emu was a formidable foe. Having been introduced into the country several decades earlier, by the 1920s, they had become a real menace. Not only did they eat huge amounts of crops, they also destroyed fences put down to stop rabbits. Since many farmers were World War I veterans, working the land that had been gifted to them after coming home from the bloody conflict, they believed that the problem could be easily fixed with the use of machine guns. After all, having seen for themselves the power of automatic weapons on the Western Front, they felt they would be able to fix the problem almost overnight.
Australia’s Minister of Defense, Sir George Pearce, agreed. It was he who declared war on the emus in October of 1932, though he declined the farmers’ offer of help. Instead, he deployed the army, hopeful that the exercise would not only help the farming community but serve as good target practice for the soldiers. Such high hopes were soon dashed. As well as having to deal with jammed guns and bad weather, the soldiers failed to kill the fast-moving emus. In fact, by the end of the first week of the war, just 500 birds had been killed, thousands less than the original target.
Before long, word of the army’s struggle began to spread. The newspapers mocked their ineptitude while animal-lovers condemned the war as inhumane. After the failed first onslaught, a second wave of attacks was ordered to take place in November 1932, but these were even less successful. In the battle between man and emu, the emu came out on top, much to the dismay of Australia’s farmers. To this day, the bird roams wild throughout Australia, though, for the most part, fences now succeed in keeping them off farmland.