Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden

by Richard van Emden

  The BEF had helped to hold the German onslaught and in September the first trenches were dug as both sides stopped to catch breath. If neither side could beat the other front-on, then an outflanking manoeuvre would be needed. The race to the sea begat the Western Front and in October and November the fighting raged in the villages and fields of northern France and around a beautiful but slowly disintegrating Belgian city: the name of Ypres entered the British consciousness.

  Elsewhere, in early October, an ill-advised attempt to halt the German advance on Antwerp saw the embarkation from England of the Royal Naval Division to Belgium. It was a short-lived and costly campaign. British Marines were forced into a hasty retreat and civilians were once more ousted from their homes, as one British nurse recalled.

  Staff Nurse Clara Holland, Territorial Force Nursing Service

  My heart bled at the pathetic sight of the many dogs and cats that refused to leave the piles of what had once been their homes. Many of them were mad with starvation and snarled when we approached them. It seemed so terrible that these faithful dumb pets of scattered families should also have to suffer in such an awful way.

  The next day I returned, borrowed a rifle from a soldier, and another soldier and myself went around shooting these miserable, howling and starving things. We had very nearly finished our gruesome job, when we had to stop suddenly as the Germans began to answer our rifle shots from a wood beyond.

  I saw a small kitten, frightened by our firing, rush out of the remains of a house, and I was just about to shoot it when it ran towards me and sat down at my feet. I hate cats, but this little poor wee thing looked so pathetic as it stared up at me with its little mouth open, that I stooped and picked it up, and it was then I saw that it had but three feet, one of its back ones having been shot off, and the stump was bleeding. I carried it to the hospital and dressed its wound, and that night it went back to Antwerp with me as the smallest and youngest ‘blessé’ and the mascot of our hospital.

  Would you have believed that a cat would have eaten chocolate? No, no one would and yet this little starving thing eagerly ate chocolate, all that I had in the food line with me, and swore over it as if it had been the most delicious of ‘catty’ meals.

  It was not just domestic pets and farm animals that became tangled up in the war. In towns and cities, public zoos and privately owned collections of exotic animals were overtaken by the fighting. Keepers were forced to leave and the animals were abandoned to their fate.

  Staff Nurse Clara Holland, Territorial Force Nursing Service

  All the beautiful animals in the zoological gardens were shot. Lions, tigers, elephants, monkeys, in fact every animal in the building was killed in case they got out and added to the terrors.

  Not all animals ended up dead, however. In time, a few elephants were used by the German army in northern France for ploughing, pulling and heavy lifting, while the odd lemur and a few lion cubs ended up as mascots on both sides of the line.

  As for farm animals, the outlook remained almost uniformly bleak. From 1914 until the end of the conflict, the total number of farm livestock within the war zone would fall by nearly 95 per cent.

  Staff Nurse Clara Holland, Territorial Force Nursing Service

  On a quiet day, of which there were a few, when no vigorous fighting was going on, we went on a hunting expedition to a village to replenish the larder of the hospital. It was a big bag consisting of a fine fat pig, a sheep and many fowls. We had great fun and a good run, for the pig’s squeals outdid the scream of shells. The fowls gave us a lot of trouble; some of them got on to the top of some haystacks and it was a hot job getting them, but we caught them all in time and put them, pig and all, into a motor. It seemed such a pity to leave them for German consumption when we were in need of these so badly at Malines Hospital and they were only roaming about amongst the ruined farmyards.

  At Ypres the fighting was the fiercest of the war to date. The Germans, sensing that they could force the issue in the west, launched attack after attack on the beleaguered British infantry. Hand-to-hand fighting often resulted as last-ditch efforts were made to hold a trench line. In the midst of the fighting, bemused animals roamed free while, further back, civilians who had bolted occasionally returned to pick up any remaining possessions that might still be at home.

  Pte Frederick Bolwell, 1st Loyal North Lancashire Rgt

  Just in front of the King’s Royal Rifles’ trenches was a huge German officer waving with one hand to the retiring Rifles to surrender and with the other waving his troops on. It did not seem much good for us to attempt to fight that dense mass of Germans, but we did. Out of the thousand [men in the battalion], or thereabouts, that we lined up with a couple of nights before very few got away, the enemy taking about four hundred of my regiment prisoners and our casualties being about the same number.

  I had a run for my life that day. A chum of mine who was with us had a cock-fowl in his valise that morning from the farm; he had wrung its neck but he had not quite succeeded in killing him; and, as we ran, this bird began to crow. As for myself, I had no equipment; I had run having left it in the bottom of the trench. It is quite funny as I come to think of it now, the old cock crowing as we ran; but it was really terrible at the time. We were absolutely overwhelmed, not only in our particular spot but all along the line, and had to concede nearly one thousand yards to the enemy.

  L/Cpl Arthur Cook, 1st Somerset Light Infantry

  There was a terrific rattle of musketry as we advanced into the village, but we were not wanted so we retired about two miles where we remained till 5 p.m. We have been greatly praised for yesterday’s work. The Germans have set fire to many houses and ricks in the vicinity by shellfire. Most of the houses have been hit, places that had been vacated only a few hours previously by peaceful inhabitants. Birds were singing in their cages as if nothing unusual was going on; pigs were grunting for food in their sties; horses were neighing for fodder; remains of a hasty meal are left on the table and hot embers are still burning in the grate. The furniture is still orderly except where a hostile shell has penetrated the room and disturbed it. The houses have the appearance of being hastily abandoned with the hope of returning again in a few hours. God only knows if they will ever see their homes again, or what is left of them.

  Pte Frank Richards, 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers

  There were plenty of ducks and chickens about, pigeons in the toilet of the house we were staying in, and vegetables in the gardens. We also scrounged a lot of bottles of champagne and other wines and made up for the starvation diet we had been on for some time. Our usual rations were also more plentiful now and we were getting a bread ration. One morning a man came up with a permit. He had formerly occupied the house we were staying in and he told us he wanted to take two pigeons away. We had killed some pigeons the day before and only that morning I had killed another four which were boiling merrily away with a couple of chickens in a dixie. He went up to the toilet and came down crying. He made us understand, by pointing to the photographs of two pigeons hanging up on the wall, that they were the two finest pigeons in the whole of northern France and that they had pedigrees as long as ships’ cables. But we also made him understand by pointing to our bellies that they were as empty as drums.

  Pte Frederick Bolwell, 1st Loyal North Lancashire Rgt

  Most of my regiment being gone and the remainder mixed up with other brigades which had formed another line, two chums and myself went to a farmhouse fifty yards behind this newly made line. There we had a field battery; and, after getting a little rest, we started out to find the remnants of the regiment. The enemy was still shelling, and the battle was still going on; but by nightfall, not finding any of them, we came back to the old house and found the battery gone. That night we slept on beds in the farmhouse, and next morning, 1 November, after a hurried breakfast of biscuits and beef, we all set out to join our respective regiments; but, after wandering about for an hour and seeing no signs of any of ours, my two chum
s decided to go back to the farmhouse and make a dinner.

  There were plenty of vegetables in the garden and an outhouse full of potatoes; and we found a spirit-lamp and a pot; so we commenced to prepare our meal. In a short time it was all in the pot, when alas!, the Germans began to shell our house, sending over incendiary shells. They let us have it battery fire. The first lot took off the foreleg of a cow, which along with some others was grazing at the back of the house; the poor thing hopped around on three legs for a second or two and then dropped, the other cows running up to lick the blood from its wound. The next lot hit the top of the house, one shell taking away the roof of the scullery, behind which one of my chums was standing; the other had already run into the trenches fifty yards away. I was the last to go, the other two having thought that I had been hit. I did not leave the place until the house was well alight; and three hours after, when the enemy’s guns had died down and the fire had burnt out the house, I went over to see how the dinner had got on, and found it done to a turn, cooked by the heat from the burning house. Needless to say, we did full justice to that dinner, all three of us.

  Pte Frank Richards, 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers

  There was a decent orchard in the farm at the back of our trench, and Stevens and I used to slip over in the night and fill his pack full of apples. We had to fill our bellies with something. There was one cow and one pig left in the farm. Buffalo Bill [nickname of A Company’s CO, Major Clifton Stockwell] had the pig killed and sent back to the company cooks with instructions to melt a lot of the fat down and cook the remainder; the pork came up the following night and we enjoyed it greatly although we had no bread to eat it with. The fat that was melted down we used for greasing our rifles with . . .

  One morning the officers were about to have breakfast at the end of the trench leading to their bay, from where it was possible by stooping low in a ditch to get into the farm by daylight. One of the officers’ servants, whose duty it was to milk the cow so that the officers could have milk in their tea, reported that the cow had broken loose and that they would have to do without milk that morning. Buffalo Bill jumped to his feet, revolver out, and roared at the man: ‘My God, you’ll catch that cow and milk her or I’ll blow your ruddy brains out!’ The cow was grazing about twenty yards away where there was a dip in the ground. The man ran after her, the cow ran up the slope to the rear, the man following; if they kept on they would be in full view of the enemy. Buffalo Bill saw the danger the man would soon be in. He shouted: ‘Come back, you ruddy fool, and never mind the cow!’ The man evidently did not hear him, but kept on. One or two bullets hit up the dirt around him. The enemy had been sending over a few light shells that morning, and now they sent over one or two more. One burst quite close to the cow. The cow got killed and the man received a nice wound in the leg which took him back to Blighty. I expect when he got home he blessed Buffalo Bill, also the cow and the German who shot him: even at this time we used to reckon that anyone who got a clean wound through the leg or arm was an extremely fortunate man.

  Cpl John Lucy, 2nd Royal Irish Rgt

  The first great battle of Ypres was drawing to its climax. Such were the conditions in which I took my small part one afternoon, assisted by a comedian of a militiaman whom I had posted on observation duty. He was put on guard at the forward corner of a wood overlooking the ground between our reserve trench and the weakly held front line. His task was to give the alarm in case of a breakthrough, so that we might get ready to counter-attack without wasting time.

  He deserted his post, and left his sector unobserved.

  The adjutant came fuming at me, his section commander. I hurriedly turned out another man, gave him his orders, and showed him the small funk hole I had shown his predecessor, in which to take shelter if shelling became intense near the observation post . . .

  I quartered the country behind, and as I was doing this a rifle bullet fired at close range spurted earth a few yards from me. Good Lord, I thought, is my sentry turned assassin, or have the Germans broken right through? I automatically hit the ground, rolled into a depression, and released the safety catch. A squealing pig topped a little crest to my front, and bounced about bewildered, flopping its ears. Another bullet smacked near it, and it bolted.

  The mystery was solved, and I got up out of my hole, raging, and accosted a sporting lance bombardier of artillery at his evening pig hunt. He met me calmly, and, ignoring my senior rank, said familiarly, as many gunners will: ‘What cheer, chum. Any idea of where that bloody pig buggered off to?’

  I let him have it: three years’ condensed experience of the choicest verbiage of two countries. He was quite unconcerned, regarding me as quite normal. So I changed my tactics, and reminded him in an icy voice that a general routine order recently published forbade indiscriminate sporting activities with firearms behind the lines, and I ordered him back to his battery. That appealed more to his English mind. He looked respectful and obeyed, but not before requesting me to keep my hair on.

  With frayed nerves I pursued my quest of the missing sentry. God help him, when I got him. Darkness fell, and aided me in my search. He was sitting over a large coal fire, in the ruins of a bombarded cottage. The household supply of fuel had caught light, and the deserter was roasting a plucked fowl, spitted on a stick, over the red coals. Above his head, a second fowl roosted innocently in the branches of a small tree. A peaceful scene.

  I sat down on an upturned bucket near my squatting man.

  ‘Well,’ I opened, ‘what have you got to say for yourself?’

  ‘What for?’ he countered, cheerfully, giving his chicken a twist.

  ‘Look here, my lad. Are you aware that you have committed an action that amounts to deserting your post in the face of the enemy?’ And seeing him looking only slightly bored, I added tersely: ‘And you’re looting!’

  I looked as savage as I could.

  ‘Ah, come off it, Corporal. What’s an ould hen? And I never ran away from the bloody Germans. I saw nobody’s face. There wasn’t a man of ’em within miles of me. But they smashed up that wood, and that hole you gave me was worse than nottin’.’

  ‘Well, consider yourself under arrest for desertion, and come along.’

  ‘Here,’ he said indignantly, ‘what’s the bloody joke, anyway?’

  He stood up. I caught him by the collar of his greatcoat with both hands, and backed him against the tree.

  ‘This is the bloody joke,’ I said, emphasising every few words by banging the back of his head against the tree trunk. ‘You are now a soldier on active service. You were given a responsible job on which the safety of the regiment depended. You left that job without being properly relieved, and without reason. Do you know I could have you shot?’

  ‘Ah, for God’s sake, Corporal, let’s go, and chuck it. Without reason indeed! What bloody man would stay there?’

  ‘Anyway, you’re for a court martial.’ I released him. He simply did not believe me.

  ‘I came out here to fight,’ he said, ‘and not to stand for a bloody cockshy.’ And attending to immediate affairs, he picked up his cap, slung his rifle, and carefully collecting his roast chicken, stumped after me.

  I was really perturbed, and I lied boldly to cover him when we got back.

  It was an education for soldiers from urban backgrounds to see how those who were raised in the countryside turned their hand to foraging and making do with whatever came to hand. Hunger opened up a completely new range of delicacies for many men who were aghast at what could pass as food.

  L/Cpl Alfred Vivian, 4th Middlesex Regt

  One of our number, foraging about, now captured a hedgehog, which he brought to the circle with him. Here, with a very businesslike air, he produced his knife and killed it. I was rather surprised at this brutal and wanton action, and I asked him why he had done it.

  ‘Ter eat o’ course,’ he replied, smacking his lips and evincing signs of anticipation of gastronomic pleasure.

  The body of the little
beast was enclosed in a ball of clay. A fire was kindled and the ball placed in it and covered over. The remainder sat around, watching these proceedings with great interest, not unmixed with repulsion at the thought of anybody eating such a thing.

  Presently, the ball having cracked open through the effects of the heat, our gourmet removed it, and, breaking it in half, exposed to our view the steaming carcass of the hedgehog, devoid of all its bristles, which had been left imprisoned in the clay. The result was a tasty looking and pleasant smelling morsel.

  He handed this product of his culinary prowess around, permitting each of us to take one small pinch by way of a taster, and, as he put it, to teach us to refrain from sneering at the knowledge possessed by our betters.

  It proved extremely succulent and delicious, and we sat around him, enviously watching him with watering mouths, like a crowd of expectant hounds, as he consumed the remainder with aggravating noises of profound enjoyment and satisfaction.

  With the onset of winter, the fighting died down. The supply of food was a little more regular than it had once been, but anything that could be bought or stolen locally to supplement the diet was always welcome. Pilfering was not reserved for other ranks, either; officers were also not averse to helping themselves. One, a Lieutenant Gallaher, was chased by pitchfork-wielding French peasants after being discovered illegally fishing. Gallaher and his batman had caught two salmon, both of which had been stuffed down their breeches. The fish continued to struggle as both men ran across fields to make good their escape.

  Anonymous, 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards

  ‘Nasty’ Carter thought it would be a good idea if the troop had some fish for dinner, so he and some of the lads set some dead lines in the local river. As the water was a bit low, they shut off the sluices and then got down to some serious fishing. About one o’clock in the morning the guards woke me up and told me that the horse lines were under water. We soon opened the gates again and for the next few days the whole troop was feeding off rainbow trout. It takes a war to do these things and get away with it.