Simpson's donkey is fondly remembered as a great Anzac hero, but it's often forgotten that man's best four-legged mate has proved equally useful on the battlefield.
At the same time the legendary donkey trudged Gallipoli's blood-stained soil shouldering dead and wounded Australian diggers, military dogs were carrying out fundamental feats of their own on the Western Front.
As World War I drew to a close a century ago in 1918, British, French and Belgian forces had employed about 20,000 dogs to match Germany's 30,000 hound count.
Australia, too, dabbled with military mutts for the first time, borrowing some of the British Army's canine brigade.
"We used the dogs for carrying messages between headquarters and also for pulling wire out into the battle space," retired Lieutenant Colonel and vice-president of Trackers and War Dogs Association George Hulse told AAP.
More conscripted canines were called up to accompany Aussie troops in World War II and the Korean War for tracking purposes and to alert soldiers of nearby enemies.
Australia's first homegrown canine squadron made a debut in the 1960s Borneo confrontation, Lt Col Hulse said.
Their roles have since grown across tours of Vietnam, East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Bougainville and most recently Afghanistan.
"It wasn't until Afghanistan that the dog capabilities really came into its own," he said.
"So brilliant were the dogs for finding the IEDs, remote control bombs, caches and weapons stores that the demand for them grew exponentially."
But the perks of having a trained woofer go further.
"The diggers would come up and give the engineer dogs a pat and it might remind them of something they've left behind in Australia," he said.
"Just the sight of a dog was enough to cheer some guys up who were in a dangerous place a long way from home."
After more than a century in the trenches, the war dog's duties are likely to keep expanding.
"We're only starting to learn what we can get out of the capabilities of a dog's senses," Lt Col Hulse said.
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