A social media post floating around to convince everyone to “stay home” during the coronavirus pandemic has reached the far corners of the internet-...





A social media post floating around to convince everyone to “stay home” during the coronavirus pandemic has reached the far corners of the internet- but is it actually all that accurate?

The post, which is a block of text captioning a black and white photo of a Soldier carrying a donkey, was designed to shame those unwilling to simply “toe the line” with remaining locked up inside until instructed to come out by local governments.

“This picture [is] from World War II, a soldier carrying a donkey,” the post reads. It is not that the soldier loves donkeys or has some sort of perversion. What’s happening is that the field is mined and that if the donkey was free to wander as it pleased, it would likely detonate a charge and kill everyone. The moral of the story is that during difficult times the first ones you have to keep under control are the jackasses who don’t understand the danger and do as they please.”

While the idea of shaming people into compliance is questionable at best, the more questionable aspect of the post is the fact that the photo has nothing to do with World War II.

In fact, the photo was taken over a decade after WWII, during the 1958 Algerian War.

The soldier shown carrying the donkey was a member of the French Foreign Legion, who had rescued the starving animal -named “Bambi”- and carried it back to home base, where it was nursed to health and adopted as the unit mascot.

According to Snopes, the soldier in question was awarded several merits and other praise, but the Legionnaire returned them all, hoping to remain anonymous.

The French Foreign Legion were known for their kindness to animals during the Algerian War, and frequently adopted all sorts of animals as pets and mascots.

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