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

by Richard van Emden

  The best method of using mice is to have them thoroughly tamed and accustomed to handling. They can be carried in a button-up pocket or little pouch and pulled out in the air to be tested. If a mouse is made to exercise by making it crawl from hand to hand, it takes a great deal more of the tainted air into its lungs, and it will usually collapse more rapidly than a bird sitting on a perch will show symptoms of distress. A mouse used in this way rapidly loses the use of its legs and lies helpless on the palm of the hand.

  Lt Frederick Mulqueen, 172nd Tunnelling Coy, RE

  Early in mine warfare, it became important to find a means to quickly identify its [carbon monoxide] presence and white mice were used for this purpose. Colonies of them were kept at tunnelling headquarters in the front line and many amusing tales were told of them. The British miner is an inveterate gambler and it was common practice to run pools on the different colonies, i.e. which could produce the greatest progeny within a given time. You have no idea of the amount of interest and discussion this created among the different shifts.

  On occasions some of the mice would escape and, while their life expectancy under such circumstances was low due to the large rat population, nevertheless they did find their way into extraordinary places such as the dugout occupied by the colonel commanding the battalion in the line. Whether that officer thought he had had too much war or that the Scotch was more potent than advertised, the record does not say. In any event it was a relatively short time before the mining officer was seized upon as culprit.

  If mice were not used, the alternative was to take a cage down with one or more canaries inside. Tunnels were narrow and inspecting officers were often forced to crawl, wearing such protective items as kneepads and gardening gloves. In one hand they carried a torch or candle while between their teeth they suspended a small cage containing a canary. It was not good to be claustrophobic.

  Men had been taught to watch out for the first signs of poisoning: typically the bird rubbed its beak on the cage wire or perch followed by a vigorous shake of the head and a bringing up of seed. The second stage saw the bird panting, its body crouching, before the final stage when, after swaying backwards and forwards in an effort to keep its balance, the bird would collapse to the bottom of the cage. By this time the men should have already evacuated the tunnel. That was the theory.

  Lt Frederick Mulqueen, 172nd Tunnelling Coy, RE

  I remember on one occasion I was making a tour during the night shift and in one heading I found the men working although the canary was flat on its back with its feet in the air. I wanted to know what they meant by continuing to work under such conditions and the sapper in charge expressed the view of the shift when he said ‘That bloody bird ain’t got no guts, sir.’ Needless to say the shift was quickly chased out.

  Lt Geoffrey Cassels, 175th Tunnelling Coy, RE

  One night when I was in Mademoiselle’s bar in Armentières, a signaller arrived with an urgent message for me to return to Erquinghem. I was drinking gin and Italian and had had a convivial evening. I mounted my motorbike and returned. There I was told that the Germans had blown in one of our galleries near Armentières and as I understood rescue apparatus I was to go and get the men out.

  Near the front line I met the men who had attempted rescue but were overcome by the fumes from the explosion. The MO was one of them and he whispered to me, being practically speechless, ‘carbon monoxide’.

  The gallery was about 3 feet high and 2 feet wide. It had duckboards covered by mud and water, leaving only 1 foot 6 inches to 2 feet of headroom and air space. There was a blacksmith’s bellows and tubing available. This was manned and my batman and I descended, taking turns with the air supply from the tube and holding our breath in between.

  After crawling some considerable distance we came to a junction and turned right, and there we saw a face of a man almost completely buried by sand and obviously dead. The second man lying nearer to us was also dead, by carbon monoxide as he was rigid and had the telltale pink marks under the armpits and in soft spots. Before attempting the hard effort of extricating them, I decided to obtain canaries from Armentières to test the fumes. Two in a cage were purchased from a barber’s shop. He was shaving a customer when a shell fell nearby. Without stopping his shaving, he waved his razor in the air and exclaimed, ‘Ecoutez, monsieur, encore une bombe.’

  We floated the canaries on a board before us. One died and the other survived. We ourselves still shared the air tube. On reaching the first man, we found it impossible to move him with one hand; the other was needed to hold the air tube. Rigor mortis had set in and his left foot was stuck fast in the duckboard. Only one of us could work as there was no room to pass each other. For the same reason we could not reach the face man until the first was out of the way. We reluctantly decided that it was no use risking further lives, so we tied the end of the air tube to some casing and left it there to clear the air until the next day when it would be safe and two hands could be used.

  On my way out without an air supply I took a breath of foul atmosphere and nearly succumbed. The second canary died. I was assisted out of the shaft but bemused by gas. I had a splitting headache and was nearly deaf but got to the road and mounted my motorbike to drive home. On the way I heard a faint cry of ‘Halt’ bang in front of me, and then louder and louder, so pulled up sharply, but not before I had run on to a sentry’s bayonet levelled at me. Luckily it only cut the skin over my Adam’s apple, but had I gone another few inches I would have had it.

  I must have presented a sorry sight – dripping wet, covered in mud, no cap, no tunic, unrecognisable as an officer. The sentry would hear none of my tale of woe and I was detained in a guardroom while contact was made with the tunnelling company’s CO, Major Danford.

  Underground or overground, man’s abundant industry entrapped any number of animals and insects by both accident and design. Sumps dug to release water or pits excavated for latrines captured any number of unwary creatures, and even trenches themselves were the recipients of animals that had failed to negotiate a jump across and subsequently had neither the strength nor intelligence to find a way out.

  Lt Bernard Adams, 1st Royal Welsh Fusiliers

  I take a long mazy journey down the communication trench, which is six feet deep at least, and mostly paved with bricks from a neighbouring brick field. There are an amazing lot of mice about the trenches, and they fall in and can’t get out. Most of them get squashed. Frogs too, which make a green and worse mess than the mice. Our CO always stops and throws a frog out if he meets one. Tommy, needless to say, is not so sentimental. These trenches have been built a long time, and grass stalks, dried scabious and plantain stalks grow over the edges, which must make them very invisible from above.

  Capt. Archibald McGilchrist, 1/10th King’s Liverpool Regt

  One curious thing about the Epéhy trenches was that they appeared to have attracted to them all the frogs in France. The battalion had long looked on rats as a necessary evil but frogs were a new experience and nearly as unwelcome. By day they remained hidden in the trench drains and in out-of-the-way corners but at night they swarmed into the fire-bays and communication trenches and became a general nuisance to all who had to walk the duckboards after dark . . . it is as slippery as a banana skin and makes an unpleasant plopping sound if solidly stepped on which is distinctly unmanning. One hypersensitive subaltern when on trench duty always insisted on his runner preceding him at night to clear the frogs from his path. When, one day, he found a frog in his newly completed dugout he gave orders for the floorboards to be lifted and the frog removed . . . When his batman shortly afterwards produced the result of his labours, one hundred and fifty frogs in a sandbag, the subaltern was noticeably shaken and his friend declare that he has never been the same since.

  Capt. Alexander Shaw, 1st King’s Own Scottish Borderers

  On fatigue from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. digging sumps at side of big communication trench . . . Hundreds of mice, field voles, moles and small d
eer fall into these trenches and finally get to the sumps where the soil is too wet and slippery, so engineering operations fail. They have no discipline and the galleries get crowded; the tail of the queue push forward and the workers at the head get forced over and fall 6 or 7 feet to the bottom. If one gets injured in this fall, his fellows immediately set on him and tear him to pieces and fight over the cannibalistic feast in a dreadful orgy of hunger and despair. The moles do better, and where there is a mole he digs a tunnel whereby all escape and are saved. I found a bewildered mole lying at the bottom of a sump in hard chalk. Here all his ingenuity and perseverance failed. I carried him to a pit full of mice and he set to work at once and soon disappeared, followed by all the mice. This mole had wonderful black velvety skin. Mice do not understand the law of gravitation; they dig galleries mostly vertically where an incline would save them.

  Signaller Cyril Newman, 1/9th London Rgt (Queen Victoria Rifles)

  ’Tis a beautiful morning and the air is full of the restless buzzing of aeroplanes. Not only has the sunshine brought out aeroplanes, but also the small inhabitants of the lower world – ants, huge beetles, things with ‘umptun’ legs and other creepy-crawly insects found in freshly dug earth. I have just been watching a large greenish beetle trying to scale the walls of the trench. On his hind legs he has a pair of spurs, like climbing irons, which he digs into the soil to get a hold. However, either he hasn’t learnt how to use them properly or has lived too well and grown fat, for four attempts have failed. He would doubtless have made many more had I not had compassion, spread one of your envelopes before him, enticed him on it and thrown him overboard. Now, was not that kind? The ants are too industrious; not content with the trench, they must crawl over me – as if I had notions to spare them! There is a nasty, black, jumping tribe of spiders – I kill any who come near me. I don’t like them.

  Lt Arthur Terry, 23rd Northumberland Fusiliers (4th Tyneside Scottish)

  Being out in the open is a perfect delight – one hears the hum of insect life, the song of birds, and one sees the swallows darting past nearly under your horse’s nose and butterflies of all colours and sizes, and now and again a flying beetle comes smack against one’s face as it sails along without any steerage way.

  These beetles look very funny as they drift along perpendicularly and industriously fluttering their wings as much as to say ‘Don’t you dare to imagine I’m not as good as any bird at flying for I am’ – and all the time they haven’t the faintest idea where they are going and blunder on until somebody’s face or something else brings them up with a sound turn!

  Pte Hugh Quigley, 12th Royal Scots

  I have taken a new interest in beetles, especially when wakened at midnight by an inquisitive gentleman exploring my chest. They crawl up and down the walls of the dugout, strange jet-black monsters, shaped to inspire terror in a child’s soul. Caterpillars are very constant with their attentions, dear little playfellows escorted by earwigs and huge spiders. Ladybirds preen themselves on your knees and go to sleep in boots; ants delight to scamper up one leg and down the other, get lost sometimes and emerge at your neck in a great state of bewilderment. Greenflies and bluebottles utter dulcet melody all day long, strange buzzers hover on the face and tickle the ears and nostrils. There is a constant interchange of courtesies between grasshoppers on the banks, and crickets rattle lugubriously by the roadside at night . . .

  There is something wonderfully picturesque in the life. Two nights ago, while heaving up earth, I saw what resembled a piece of phosphorus lying at my feet. I stooped down and picked it up. When it began to squirm and wriggle over my hand I knew it was a glow-worm, and digging took on interest. Henceforth my concern was to uncover glow-worms not to pile up a parapet.

  Apart from their beauty, association makes them precious. I remembered Shelley’s lines on the skylark:

  ‘Like a glow-worm golden in a dell of dew.’

  The antiquarian imagination raised that humble creature lying quiescent on the ground into the scope of fine imagery and broad-winged thought, touching it to the angel and posing it above the sordid. For the moment I forgot I was in the war, and not in the grasp of romance centred in narrative, alive in fiction.

  It has been said that glow-worms, when collected in enough numbers, could produce a low luminous light, just enough to read a trench map, or perhaps to write a letter by. Whether there is any truth in this story is uncertain as no quote from a veteran has, so far, been discovered to substantiate it.

  Part of the obvious interest in observing insects or animals was the parallels that could be drawn between their lives and those of human beings. There was the aggressive fight for life described by Captain Shaw, the ‘orgy of hunger and despair’, but more often the descriptions were either of ‘fun’ in which creatures appeared to mimic human traits, or a human-like desire to ‘pull a fast one’.

  2/Lt Charles Douie, 1st Dorsetshire Rgt

  I was sitting one morning in my dugout overlooking the orchard when I witnessed a strange little comedy. I was growing drowsy; we had been through a time of great strain. Our trenches had been destroyed by a barrage of great intensity; the Germans had attacked, and there had been heavy fighting with bomb and bayonet in our lines. Now there was a lull. The sun was warm, and a breeze whispered in the shell-riven trees. There was no sound of war but the intermittent thud of a sniper’s bullet from the ruins of the château as it struck the earth. I was nearly asleep when my eye was caught by a most unwarlike scene in the entrance to the dugout. A dud shell lay partly embedded in the dry mud. A mouse with his head on one side peered at me, then took refuge behind the shell, reappearing a moment later on the far side. This was repeated several times. Then, emboldened, the mouse departed and brought back a friend. A game ensued, and whenever I blinked the two fell over each other in a ludicrously human way as they sought the security of their strange haven.

  Capt. Charles Rose, RFA, 2nd Army

  The war horse is an extraordinarily intelligent animal and appreciates anything done for him in the way of comfort. He also becomes very cute and cunning, and always knows the routine of the day, and can tell his time of feeding almost to the minute, and, if allowed, would go by himself automatically to the water troughs and return to his own particular standing in the stable.

  One horse familiarly known by the name of ‘Shrapnel’, owing to several wounds of that kind which refused to close up and completely heal, knew at once when he was ‘warned’ for the line. Now he disliked going out at nights, and consequently was in the habit of ‘scrimp-shanking’, and proceeded forthwith to go lame. At first he managed to fool everybody, but on close investigation it was discovered that nothing at all was the matter with him.

  Capt. James Dunn, RAMC attd. 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers

  A draught dog of the village, wounded in both forelegs, hobbled only a step or two at a time. He submitted trustfully to be handled, and looked grateful. Several medical officers and orderlies must have dressed him since he was hit and given him food . . . At 4 o’clock gas shells wakened me, none were near enough to worry about. The dog had gone. Dogs are like a lot of the wounded, think themselves unfit as long as they are made, or allowed, to wear a bandage.

  Lt Andrew McCormick, 182nd Labour Coy

  One dog, named ‘Towser’, was most faithful – always accompanying the company when they set out to work in the morning. One day Towser’s leg got gashed by barbed wire. The wounded leg was bandaged up by an NCO and to the amazement of all next day he did not go out with the company, but instead accompanied the sick to the hospital!

  The human-like understanding that Shrapnel and Towser appeared to have was observed in a number of animals. Dogs and other creatures were often held in the trenches to warn of an imminent raid. Whether it was simply a case of relying on a dog’s acute hearing or there was something more prescient about any warning is not entirely clear.

  Capt. James Dunn, RAMC attd. 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers

  A bomb droppe
d quite near our billets, killed three RFC officers; they had gone out of their cottage and lain down in the garden to look up at the raiders. Those of us who slept near poultry had timely warning of aircraft we could not hear or see; the restlessness of the roosting hens and the loud quacking of the ducks was a sure sign of their coming.

  Sapper Albert Martin, 122nd Signal Coy, 41st Div., RE

  A black-and-white kitten, about three-quarters grown, lives in our dugout, and forms a centre of common interest. While things are quiet it will run about outside but it will not go far away. It recognises the sound of travelling shells but what is really remarkable is its ability to differentiate between ours and the enemy’s. Shells coming from guns behind us make a noise similar to that of Jerry’s coming towards us. But this cat can appreciate the difference in direction and also understands that danger comes from one direction only. Batteries of all sizes are around us at distances of two or three hundred yards and they are tolerably active. But puss takes no notice of our guns firing nor of the sing and whistle of our own shells coming towards us from the rear and passing over us towards the enemy; but directly Fritz starts to send any over to us she makes a beeline for the dugout. She doesn’t wait for the shell to burst; as soon as she hears its whistle she is off, no matter what she is doing; she will even leave her dinner and won’t come out of the dugout until the shelling is finished although none of the shells may fall dangerously near us. There is something more than instinct in that.

  Incidents such as these were benign moments that served only to arouse men’s curiosity. Much rarer were those that appeared to be malevolent in nature and far harder to explain. Private Frank Richards, the down-to-earth pre-war regular, saw such an example, the only one of its kind that he witnessed in his entire war.

  Pte Frank Richards, 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers