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

by Richard van Emden

  Driver Charles Keller, RHA

  One of our gunners who must have been a fisherman in civil life made himself a small net on a wire loop and put it on a long pole to get eggs out of the hen house which the farmer’s wife always kept locked. He was almost caught by the farmer’s wife and had to run, leaving his net behind. She took the net as evidence to the Commanding Officer when reporting the incident; also claiming the loss of some of her chickens, which could probably be true, and demanding payment. We didn’t hear whether she was paid or not but she probably was.

  That winter, both sides settled down to a prolonged period of peace and quiet. The countryside was dormant, very little appeared to be living except for the vermin that had been attracted to the trenches by waste food, and to the dead, both human and animal, that festooned parts of no-man’s-land. Attempts to bury the dead were made, but it was a thankless task. The only up side was that, while carcasses smelt, they smelt nothing like as badly as they would in hot weather. Vermin would come to plague men’s lives, but, when it came to being pestered, the louse crawling about the body was king of all species.

  Pte Cyril Baker, 1/28th London Rgt (Artists Rifles)

  Imagine a village absolutely in ruins and smelling badly from old tins, filth, farmyards and the numerous lightly buried men in gardens or what used to be gardens. Imagine snow on the ground and a full moon, deserted houses with holes in both front and back, with part of the roof only remaining and no sound except the constant whizzing of bullets, or the scurry of a deserted cat as you climb through a hole into the room, and you will get an idea of the sort of place I have been in and the weirdness of the walks I have had each night when visiting posts . . . I have found a little bunch of snowdrops in the ruins of what had been a garden, a most cheering sight amidst all this desolation. Our machine-gun officer told me that, in the ruined convent he was occupying, the wind was in the habit of tolling the bell in funereal fashion at night . . . How desolate everything is, with houses knocked to bits and roofs off, although sometimes the china still stands on the mantelpiece. The cats and dogs live on the benevolence of the soldiers, and possibly to some extent on the numerous rats which live on the refuse. Many of these deserted cats have become wild with hunger, and spit if you attempt friendship.

  Trp. Benjamin Clouting, 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards

  Where lice originally came from I never knew, some said from straw, but all I know is that for three or four days I had become frantic to get rid of them. I did not think I could tell anyone; I felt embarrassed and ashamed. I dumped my underpants in the hope that that would help, but of course it made no difference at all. Little did I know that everyone else was just as lousy. No one said anything at first, but then in talk the truth came out.

  From that time onwards, we all suffered from interminable itching as these creatures roamed around our clothes, leaving blotchy red bite marks whenever they stopped to feast.

  L/Cpl Arthur Cook, 1st Somerset Light Infantry

  Had a lovely hot bath and change of clothing this morning. On arrival at the brewery where we were going to have our bath, we undressed in a room, taking off everything except our shirt and boots; our khaki coat, trousers and cap less the chinstrap were tied in a bundle and placed in the fumigator, and our vest, pants and socks were carted off (lice and all) for boiling.

  We were glad to get inside the bathroom which was nice and warm. Our bath tub consisted of large beer vats and ten men were allotted to each vat, so on discarding shirts and boots we clambered up into the vats like a lot of excited kids. Every now and again we peeped over the side to see if our boots were OK for we had been told to keep our eye on them as they were likely to be pinched. By this time we were a very lousy crowd, the lack of washing facilities had bred lice by the thousand, and the surface of our bath water had a thick scum of these vermin. But we didn’t care, we helped scratch each others’ backs (which already looked as if a lot of cats had been scratching them) to ease the itching. We were of course given a piece of soap and towel, and after ten minutes we were ordered out and dried ourselves and were given a clean shirt. We were then issued with clean vest, pants and socks, then out came our clothes all steaming hot which we put on. My! What a sight we looked with all our creases and our hats all shapes. Anyway, we felt nice and clean for a while, but it would not be long before our warm bodies became alive again with nits in the seams, which had not been destroyed in the washing process, making themselves active.

  The hiatus in fighting left men not serving in the trenches with time on their hands. Football and rugby matches were arranged for the men and trophies presented, while some officers made a happy return to a popular peacetime hobby, hunting. The partridge and pheasant season, which ran from October to February, was immensely popular, with officers sending home for their hunting rifles. Shoots were properly organised with safety zones marked out even though enemy shells burst in the distance. General Hunter-Weston presided over one event at Ploegsteert (even as the fighting raged at Ypres), with French gamekeepers assisting officers and beaters driving the game from cover; a telephone cable back to Divisional HQ was manned by an operator in case of an urgent call. Elsewhere, a pack of dogs was brought out from England by one popular captain, Romer Williams, and became known as the 2nd Cavalry Brigade Beagles. Their stay in France was short-lived. A French law forbidding la chasse in time of war was discovered to be applicable to British officers too, and as a consequence after just a few runs the pack was sent back to England.

  Capt. Arthur Corbett-Smith, RFA

  The officers needed recreation if anyone did, and there was very little for them outside an occasional game of soccer with the men. As a matter of fact, officers are never off duty; at least, they never were during the first winter. But when you have British troops on active service you may be certain that the officers will find something in the way of sport. Did not the Iron Duke have a pack of hounds with him out in Spain? An admirable precedent!

  Some cheery souls went out partridge-shooting near Hazebrouck. Birds were fairly plentiful and a good many brace found their way to officers’ messes. But more than one officer complained that it was rather dull when he couldn’t hear the report of his own gun owing to the heavy firing going on.

  1915

  The War in 1915

  The Territorial Force had largely saved the day in late 1914 when they had been hurriedly sent overseas to plug the ever-growing hole in the ranks of the hard-pressed regular army. These territorials might not match the regulars in terms of battlefield performance, but at least some of the discrepancy in training could be made up by enthusiasm – and the territorials had plenty of that.

  In March, the British launched their first large-scale and planned attack of the conflict at Neuve Chapelle. A short but intensive bombardment was followed by an infantry attack that, after some initial success, became bogged down. It set the tone for many offensives in the future. It was one thing to break the enemy line, quite another to know how to exploit the success on a grand scale.

  Small-scale operations continued elsewhere for the next few weeks until, in late April, the Germans attacked Allied forces again at Ypres. Using the evil of poison gas for the first time, they breached the British defences and international law. But once again British and Empire troops held firm and another door of opportunity for the German army was slammed shut.

  Allied efforts to take the war to the Germans led to other intense but short-lived attacks in May. However, an acute shortage of ammunition severely hindered the chances of any success when brief preliminary bombardments could not sufficiently soften up improved enemy defences. On 9 May, regular and territorial troops attacked German positions at Aubers Ridge and then shortly afterwards at Festubert. Neither was a success.

  Politically, it was important that the British were seen actively to support the French, who had suffered by far the largest number of casualties in the war. This imperative led to a joint Allied offensive, the British being invited to atta
ck in the mining district of Loos. Despite senior officers’ concerns that the ground chosen for an attack was unsuitable, six British Divisions were sent to attack enemy positions. Once again initial success could not be exploited, with the blame being laid squarely on the shoulders of the Commander-in-Chief, Sir John French, who, it was claimed, had not released the reserves quickly enough to capitalise on the breakthrough. Soon afterwards, he was replaced by a new commanding officer, Sir Douglas Haig.

  A scandal over the shortage of ammunition forced the British government to reorganise key elements of industry. By the end of 1915 the supply of munitions to the front was not only far greater in volume, but questions over the quality of artillery shells had also been addressed. The supply of troops was also deemed too pressing to leave recruitment simply to appeals for voluntary enlistment. Conscription would have to be introduced. Such sweeping changes in the government’s mindset would bring about a fundamental shift in the balance of power in the West. The Allies would soon have parity of firepower with the Germans.

  The Natural World in 1915

  The trenches in 1915 wended their way around farms and châteaux, through the edges of woods, across untended cornfields and meadows. Farm implements lay unretrieved in the fields, while corn stooks and haystacks rotted in no-man’s-land. In many ways, were a soldier brave or daft enough to look over the top, the scene meeting his eyes would have been one of a countryside largely unblemished by war, where copses and woods remained in full growth, and dykes and ditches were largely unbroken. With the arrival of spring and then summer, this natural environment supported new life, as it always had done.

  As the grass grew and the weeds took hold, so the trenches became suffused with midges and butterflies, bees and spiders, much to the delight of the soldiers who basked in warm sunshine. Larger animals such as stoats and weasels visited the trenches, and the birds chirruped for all they were worth in bushes and trees. There were problems with all this activity: a rat, a stray cat or dog proceeding at night through the undergrowth could scare a sentry out of his wits; grass grew so high in front of the trench that it afforded the sniper a perfect hiding place or concealed a raiding party. Working parties were sent out not just to reinforce the protective barbed wire but to scythe the grass and chop down the weeds. Detailed trench maps of the time included not only notations on the impediments seen in no-man’s-land, the shell-holes and barbed wire, but in places the specific height of the grass which can have been measured only at close proximity.

  Looking through trench periscopes, men marvelled at times that the enemy sat just a hundred yards away and in between was a lush and verdant world that nevertheless hid the occasional body, a dead horse or cow, the stench of which overrode nature’s more delicate scents.

  For the young officers of Kitchener’s new civilian army, many men down from university and some still in their teens, trench life was full of interest and intrigue, and in letters home they fully described the circumstances in which they found themselves, describing in detail the flora and fauna around them, perhaps in a desire to protect loved ones from the horrors that war brought but also, one suspects, because they revelled in their love of nature and the natural sciences.

  The battles of 1915 were intense and vicious but they were small in comparison with those to be fought in the years to come. A battlefield could become littered with the dead, shelling could tear up the ground, and when it rained the trenches became an oozing quagmire – but not like the Somme, not like Arras and not like Passchendaele. The barrages of 1915 were of limited intensity, and it would be those that followed a year or two later that created a land more in tune with the popular memory of the Great War, devoid, or so it seemed, of wildlife.

  Meanwhile, in January 1915, with the war in abeyance, there was hunting to be done, until, as we have seen, the French government banned the sport, much to the ire of one twenty-year-old officer in particular.

  Soldiers’ Memories

  Edward, Prince of Wales, Lt, 1st Grenadier Guards

  31 Jan 1915

  Dear Captain [F.W.] Sopper [18th (Queen Mary’s Own) Hussars]

  It was very nice of you to send me what, alas, proved to be the last card of the meets of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade Beagles, and must thank you very much for writing and for having had an orderly to meet me each day.

  To my great regret I never got a 2nd hunt for I was away on a trip in the French lines from Jan. 13–22 and when I returned I found the order that all hunting and shooting had been stopped. I was mad about it, as you all must have been, for that Saturday when by the purest luck I came upon the meet, was the only day I have felt really fit out here. I did enjoy that afternoon’s run and it did me worlds of good!! It was very bad luck on poor R[omer] Williams who took all the trouble to bring out that fine pack; and then to get so little fun out of it.

  I don’t know the real reason for all sport being stopped, but I fancy those bloody French objected and I don’t think it was popular at [the] War Office either. But they didn’t know the facts of the case. I hear you are to go to the trenches again, but leave your horses. It must be a relief and good news for you must be pretty fed up after two months in reserve. Best of luck!!

  Yours sincerely Edward

  The ‘bloody French’ might have passed the law prohibiting hunting, but Prince Edward was right: the War Office was not happy about hunting either. Too many officers had broken their arms, legs and even necks in pursuit of foxes and hares, coming a cropper in dykes and ditches or as they tried to jump hedges, and although the beagle pack was not destined to stay very long in France, it had been out every other day for several weeks.

  It is also likely that the War Office were more than ‘with au fait the facts of the case’. There was always the risk that with men firing hunting rifles in back areas, accidents might occur. The British officer class had suffered greatly in 1914 and with newly commissioned subalterns being sent to the front as young as seventeen, this was not a time to lose unnecessarily an officer of any rank.

  Maj. Patrick Butler, 2nd Royal Irish Rgt

  In spite of the prohibition which existed in France against the shooting of game in wartime, I managed to wheedle a 16-bore gun and cartridges out of the caretaker, and another officer and I used to go out together of an afternoon on horseback and bag a few hares and partridges. We used to take it in turns to shoot, while the one who was not shooting held the ponies. We were even making arrangements for a pigstick, when our marching orders came.

  Not all sports had been banned just yet, and cockfighting was one of the most popular in northern France, especially in the region of Pas-de-Calais.

  Pte Frank Richards, 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers

  The general rule around these [mining] places was church in the morning, and after church the men went to the cafés for a drink and a game of cards, then in the afternoon cockfights were held in the back of the cafés. There were still a lot of miners working in the pits around here and Sunday was the only day when they could get a bit of pleasure. I saw some wonderful cockfights around this area and thoroughly enjoyed them. About the middle of 1916 cockfighting was prohibited until the war was over. It went on just the same.

  In a café in one of these mining villages was a fine stuffed cockerel. I had never seen a stuffed cockerel before so I asked the landlord the reason for it. He burst out crying! I asked his wife. She burst out crying too, and so did their eldest daughter . . . After they had calmed down a bit the landlord explained in French and bits of English that the bird had been the champion fighting-cock of the whole of the La Bassée district, and undefeated for three years. Every Sunday afternoon, when it was fighting, crowds of people used to visit the café and much champagne and other wines were drunk. He had won thousands of francs on that cock’s matches. Then one morning he had found him dead in his cot. At this point they all started crying again. Both he and his wife then told me that they would have parted with one of their children sooner than lose that bird. And knowing the fon
dness for shekels these people all had, I quite believed them.

  Trp. Arthur Brice, 1/1st Essex Yeo.

  In the afternoon we heard there was some cockfighting in an inn. We went at 3 o’clock and saw three fights with gloves, and had to come away at 4 for stables. After we had finished we went back but found the fighting all over – two birds having been killed. Six of us gave the promoter 10 francs for the winner of a proper, spurred fight, and this came off, one bird being killed. They are quite peasants who keep the birds, which are mostly cross-breeds. It was 6.30 when we came out and we had to go by headquarters. It was very funny running into other troopers sneaking home, each thinking the other an officer. However, we arrived back safely before roll call.

  2/Lt Wilfrid Ewart, 1st Scots Guards

  What a desolate country, such squalid people, such squalid straggling towns and tenements! Opposite was a house with a gaping hole in the roof where, a few days before, a German shell had burst. This was our first taste of the war. Henceforth many of the houses by the roadside were similarly damaged, albeit they seemed to be occupied; for besides soldiers, women and children swarmed in the streets . . . Surely this could not be a real war, I thought repeatedly. Surely this must be a dream, or an exhibition, or some kind of excursion, or a moving picture! Yes, no – it was war right enough.

  I am writing this now in a farmhouse a mile from the German trenches. An occasional gun goes off, otherwise nothing comes out of the damp mist but the bark of a dog or the sound of our men chopping firewood outside. It is the strangest thing to see life running its normal course within a mile of the fighting line – children playing outside the cottages, peasants ploughing and threshing.