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An amusing and unusual photograph of what appears to be a soldier transporting a donkey on his back was circulated in March 2020 during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The picture served as a sort of parable about the need to prevent people who are oblivious to danger from causing harm to others through their ignorance — a pointed reference to the faltering responses of some governments in dealing with the pandemic. The caption accompanying the photograph stated that the picture dated from World War II and captured a soldier carrying the animal in order to keep it from inadvertently tripping landmines and killing everyone around it: However much truth that parable may hold, it isn't directly applicable to this picture, which has nothing to do with World War II, or landmines, or any danger the donkey might have posed had it been allowed to run free. The picture actually dates from 1958, during the Algerian War (i.e., a war for independence waged against French forces in Colonial Algeria). And it depicts a starving donkey that was rescued by a member of the French Foreign Legion who carried it back to his base, where the animal was nursed back to health, given the name Bambi, and adopted as a unit mascot — as described by author Douglas Porch in his 1991 history of the Legion: Donkeys may create dangerous situations (unwittingly or otherwise) in other circumstances, but not in the one captured in the photograph displayed above.
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