“For Gallantry,” the heavy bronze medallion reads in ornate script. A classical laurel wreath brackets the words in bas-relief.

Below, in modest type: “We Also Serve.”

The Dickin Medal is a rare honor, bestowed on those who demonstrate exceptional bravery, sacrifice, and — above all — loyalty under fire.

Loyalty, because the award is reserved for animals.

During the 20th century’s most brutal conflicts, dogs, pigeons, horses and one well-known cat performed so heroically that military authorities and humane societies alike honored their exploits.

“War Animals” by Robin Hutton (Regnery), out now, spotlights recipients of the Dickin Medal, instituted by a British animal charity in 1943. Most of its 70 honorees served during World War II, in every theater of the global fight.

Chips, a collie/German shepherd/husky mix, was a humble household pet in Westchester County when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Americans dove into the war effort with such fervor that 40,000 families donated their own dogs to the Department of Defense. Two-year-old Chips was one of them.

The muscular mutt was trained for sentry duty and saw nine months of action in North Africa before his US Army unit joined the Allied invasion of Sicily.

As they hit the beach, they were pinned down by fire from a machine-gun emplacement. The men took cover; Chips charged. He took the machine-gun barrel in his jaws and yanked it off its mount, then went for the four gunners, sinking his teeth into an enemy soldier’s throat and terrifying the other three into surrender.

Higher-ups in his division awarded Chips the Silver Star for valor in combat. He was the first non-human recipient of the honor — and the last. Complaints from veterans groups forced the Army to revoke the canine’s medal.

If Chips knew he’d been disrespected, he never let on. He served faithfully for the duration of the war, then returned home to his loving suburban family.

Judy, an English pointer, was the mascot of a British Royal Navy gunboat guarding Singapore when Japanese forces took the city in 1942. She and 15 crew members were taken prisoner, beginning a three-year odyssey through some of the most horrific slave labor camps in Southeast Asia.

Captured Royal Air Force officer Frank Williams convinced their camp’s commandant to declare Judy an official POW to protect her under international rules of military conduct. She was the only animal ever so named.

Judy’s cunning and spirit gave her human companions the will to survive beatings, starvation and 16-hour days laying railroad track in the jungle heat. In her finest hour, when a ship transferring them to a new camp was torpedoed, she saved dozens of prisoners by swimming them to safety, one by one.

“Every day I thanked God for Judy,” Williams said.

He returned to England, Judy in tow, when their final camp was liberated in 1945. She became the only dog to join the Returned British POW Association.

Dogs, which serve military units as scouts, sentries and guards to this day, have earned 32 Dickin Medals over the award’s 75-year history. (The trophy has gone to only one cat, the Royal Navy’s “Able Seaman” Simon, who saved his crew’s dwindling food supplies by exterminating their gunboat’s rats when the ship was held hostage by Communist Chinese forces in 1949). But the species awarded more Dickin Medals than any other — the homing pigeon — is now a relic of military history.

During WWII, crates of homing pigeons often traveled with the troops as a backup communications channel.

The US Signal Corps deployed more than 36,000 pigeons overseas, including a blue checkerone given the proud name of GI Joe, the war’s most celebrated bird.

In 1943, Joe and his US Army unit fought alongside British infantry in Italy to take a village held by German troops. The British commander called for an airstrike. But before the bombers could arrive, the Germans retreated and the Allies moved in.

Victory, it seemed — until radio attempts to call off the Allied planes failed. With 20 minutes to spare, the Americans attached a desperate note to Joe’s leg and sent him to headquarters 20 miles away.

The plucky bird flew a mile a minute and delivered his message as the bombers were about to take off, saving the lives of at least 1,000 Allied soldiers.

After the war, as the first American recipient of the Dickin Medal, Joe was feted at an elaborate Tower of London ceremony. He retired to the Detroit Zoo in 1957 as a conquering hero and died there in 1961 at the advanced age of 18.