‘Well, look out,’ yells Webster.
Only four yards separate him from the beasts, but as if they know what is about to happen, they rear and plunge more violently, as Webster tries to take aim.
It takes three shots before the first sinks limply down on to its couch of barbed wire, and by now the second animal is struggling desperately in its terror, but by good luck Webster’s second shot gets it between the eyes. It flops instantly and it’s all over – poor, hard-working, uncomplaining friends of man.
Chaplain Thomas Tiplady, Army Chaplains’ Dept
On two miles of road I have counted a dozen dead mules and burial parties are sent out to put them out of sight. One night, alone, I got three dying mules shot. The road was crowded with traffic, yet it was difficult to find either an officer with a revolver or a transport driver with a rifle. I had to approach scores before I could find a man who had the means to put a mule out of its misery; and we were within two miles of our front. So rigid is our line of defence that those behind it do not trouble to take arms. Even when I found a rifleman, he hesitated to shoot a mule. There is a rule that no horse or mule must be shot without proper authority, and when you consider the enormous cost of one, the necessity for the rule is obvious. I had therefore to assure a rifleman that I would take full responsibility for his action. He then loaded up, put the nozzle against the mule’s forehead and pulled the trigger. A tremor passed through the poor thing’s body and its troubles were over. It had come all the way from South America to wear itself out carrying food to fighting men, and it died by the road when its last ounce of strength was spent.
Pte Christopher Massie, 76th Brigade, RAMC
The mule is not so mysteriously beautiful as the horse. When he is wounded he walks away from the battlefield in the direction of the field hospital. The humour of this situation is crowded out by its simple pathos. Men and mules, broken in battle, dragging themselves back down the awful road to Ypres. Often the mules are bandaged with the men’s first field dressings. There is the same ‘fed-up’ expression in their sad eyes, the same selfless humility – a humility which gives one the impression that men and mules are rather ashamed of their wounds.
The warhorse will stand wounded at his post. I remember coming down from Messines one misty dawn and finding a horse standing by the body of his dead mate. He stood quite motionless as I patted his strong neck. ‘All right, old chap?’ I asked. He looked at me with those mysterious eyes of sorrow, like a mother’s, and turned his head away. I looked over him and found a long gaping wound in his stomach. And then, when I had found it, he ventured to glance at me once more, as if he would say quite simply, ‘You see, my friend, it is all over.’
Pte Thomas Hope, 1/5th King’s Liverpool Rgt
We come across many wounded and dying horses. They are scattered all over in shell-holes, and at our approach attempt to get up and off, as if they mistrusted the very presence of a human being. One poor beast with back broken tries to haul its useless hindquarters along, while others just lie where they have fallen, colouring the sodden earth with their lifeblood. A few are still galloping aimlessly about, foam-flecked and wild-eyed – victims of man’s ruthlessness.
. . . Dawn at last, and we plod wearily back for our spell of uncertain off-duty.
Standing near the debris of guns and limbers is a solitary horse gently cropping leaves from a low-lying hedge. At our friendly words it trots towards us as if pleased to have our company, but not sure of its welcome – poor faithful beast, how ill you are repaid for your staunchness.
I have long since become accustomed to wounded humanity. Their plight evokes pity and the desire to help, but a wounded animal leaves me with a feeling of loathing, loathing towards myself and the civilised humanity which I represent. Too often have I seen reproach in the eyes of a dying horse, and outraged frailty in the flutterings of a wounded carrier pigeon.
We may understand; they never can.
The fighting at Ypres was so awful, the conditions so evil, that few men mentioned wildlife; there was no beauty in the Salient in 1917. Entire battalions sent into attack floundered in mud as the unremitting and unseasonal rain flooded the low-lying ground. Men struggled and they died. If messages were sent back, it was pure luck if they arrived. Sometimes, if the situation were not so tragic, it could almost have been funny.
2/Lt Alan Goring, 6th Yorkshire Rgt (Green Howards)
We had a very busy time, for naturally there were snipers all around us and bullets zinging about all over the place. I was left with just a handful of men, all that was left out of those three platoons, so I wanted to send a message back to see if we could get a bit of help from the artillery. We had two pigeons in a basket, but the trouble was that the wretched birds had got soaked when the platoon floundered into the flooded ground. We tried to dry one of them off as best we could and I wrote a message, attached it to its leg and sent it off. To our absolute horror, the bird was so wet that it just flapped into the air and then came straight down again, and started actually walking towards the German line about a hundred yards away. Well, if that message had got into the Germans’ hands, they would have known that we were on our own and we’d have been in real trouble. So we had to try to shoot the pigeon before he got there. A revolver was no good. We had to use rifles and there we were, all of us, rifles trained over the edge of this muddy breastwork trying to shoot this bird scrambling about in the mud. It hardly presented a target at all.
Well, we did manage it but that still left the problem of trying to get the message back. We did everything to dry off that other bird. We had one man called Shuttleworth, a well-meaning chap, but very awkward. If there was a piece of barbed wire that everyone else had avoided, Shuttleworth fell over it. If there was a shell-hole that everybody had skirted, Shuttleworth fell into it. Shuttleworth, anyway, was the one who suggested that if we had a cooker with us we could have toasted the bird over that a bit until he dried off. Eventually, we did something nearly as ridiculous. We huddled round this bird and blew on its feathers. As a matter of fact we did get it dried off, but we made jolly sure it was dry before we sent it off with the message.
Lt Norman Dillon, 20th Tank Bttn, Tank Corps
Each tank had two pigeons, and often they carried news of vital importance. During an attack in the Salient, one of my friends, Wagstaff, reached his objective, and, taking pity on his pigeons, fed them on seedy-cake and whisky. Soon after, his tank got stuck on a tree stump and although the tracks went round, it was immobile. So he tried to send off a pigeon to report his predicament. Opening a port over a track, he pushed the pigeon out but it sat on the track and refused to move. So they started the track, thinking that it would carry the bird forward and it would then fall off and fly when the track doubled under. But the pigeon was having none of this, and, no doubt hoping for more whisky, started keeping station by marching against the flow of the track.
Pte Thomas Hope, 1/5th King’s Liverpool Rgt
Idly I watch the pigeon man and officer fix messages to the legs of two pigeons, then free them, and up they soar. One second they are there, thirty feet above the ground, the next they have gone, just disappeared. A feather or two floats down gently, and the pigeon man makes off for another pair of birds. He had only been gone three or four minutes when a lance corporal pokes his head round the traverse shouting, ‘Duggan’s hit, sir.’
‘Badly?’ inquires the officer.
‘Dead, sir, a shell got him.’
‘Had he the birds with him?’
‘Don’t think so, sir; didn’t see them.’
‘All right, corporal.’
Then turning to me. ‘See if you can get those pigeons and bring them here.’
‘Very good, sir’ – and off I go.
There’s very little semblance of trench left, and I have to crawl past the spots where the parapet has been blown down, over dead bodies, and past wounded who groan when I knock up against them. I step over Duggan’s body, he’s dead all right,
and further along in a little niche cut out of the trench side I find the wooden cage with the two pigeons. I wait a little as three shells fall in quick succession on the trench just ahead, then make a bolt back to my own section.
One of the birds is taken out. Poor creature, it is cooing away as if it was in some quiet country loft, or at some village race meeting. The message is soon fixed and up the bird goes. I watch it until it is lost to sight, but the lieutenant keeps his glasses trained on it, then as he lowers them:
‘It’s down, we’ll have to send a runner.’
The battles of 1917 tested the British Army to an extraordinary degree, sapping men of much of their resilience. They had little left to live on except the comradeship that bound them to their friends and the love they had for their animals.
Lt Andrew McCormick, 182nd Labour Coy
I recall one of the things which pleased and cheered me most of anything I saw during the war. I happened to be on a railhead one day when wounded horses from the line were being entrained. I saw a man leading along a horse that was severely wounded in several places. He could not have shown more consideration for a human being than he did for that horse. After every few paces he succeeded in coaxing the animal along, he placed his shoulder under the animal’s jaw and allowed it to rest its head there. I was so much struck by that soldier’s humane conduct that I went forward to him and said, ‘Your kindly treatment of these animals is most praiseworthy and I have seen nothing finer in the war.’ He seemed pleased but excused himself for his tender heartedness by saying, ‘Well, sir, how would you feel if you was both deaf and dumb and could not make known the pain you feel?’
Further along the railhead I saw another officer standing, and I repeated what I had told the soldier. By slow degrees the soldier and his horse came right opposite where we were standing. To my surprise the soldier said to the officer, ‘This one is not quite so bad as the last one, sir’, and then I felt glad that I had not failed to praise that kind, thoughtful soldier to his own officer.
Cpl Robert Evans, 36th Div., Signal Coy, RE
I remember only too well working with several others for hours in the darkness in a desperate effort to save a pair of beautiful draught horses who were gradually sinking in the mud. As this was happening well within range of the German machine gunners, we had to work in darkness while their driver spoke quiet endearments to his horses, to encourage them.
It was a heartbreaking, horribly long-drawn-out, losing battle, and gradually we knew that they were doomed. Poor tragic driver! I have never forgotten you; you, who had looked after them for so long and loved them so much, now wept, heartbroken, and who shall wonder that you wept?
Lt Charles Bennet, 162nd Brigade, RFA
Just as I finished my last letter to Mary a shell fell in the middle of one of our teams wounding five mules, two of which had to be shot. The poor driver who had one of the mules was heartbroken at its death. By some merciful chance no one was wounded, except that driver whose ear was cut: he didn’t mind that because the death of his mule absorbed him: he kept on saying ‘and he was my donkey, my donkey’ poor fellow. They do love their animals.
Driver Herbert Doggett, RFA
Our ammunition wagon had got up and it had only been there a second or two when a shell killed the horse under the driver. We went over to him, tried to unharness the horse and cut the traces away. He just kneeled and watched this horse . . . A brigadier came along, a brass hat, he tapped this boy on the shoulder and said, ‘Never mind, sonny!’ This driver looked up at him, just for a second or two, and all of a sudden he said, ‘Bloody Germans!’ Then he pointed his finger and he stood there as though he was transfixed, stood there like stone. The Brass Hat said to his captain, ‘All right, take the boy down the line and see that he has two or three days’ rest.’
When an animal was so badly wounded that there was no possibility of it continuing in the team, it had to be abandoned to an uncertain future. Not knowing what would become of a treasured horse or mule was worse than knowing it was out of its misery.
Rifleman Aubrey Smith, 1/5th London Rgt (London Rifle Brigade)
Very early the next morning I went out on to the lines to see the old horse who had been my mainstay for over a year and a half. There he stood, with his mutilated leg swathed in the rough and ready bandages that had been applied by lamplight, his brown eyes looking sadly at me, as much as to say: ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ Chrisp had said that he would be of no further use and would probably have to be shot; did he instinctively know this as he rubbed his old nose against me?
I thought of his good points, not his jibbing qualities, in that moment; how he had taken me all through the mud and squalor of the Somme at the expense of the flesh he had put on in the blessed days at Third Army Headquarters at St-Pol, and how the third winter, the Battle of Arras and Ypres had all seen Jumbo ready at any time to pull his share even though it was sometimes such a bore to start off!
After I had handed over my pair I had watched them with a fatherly interest, even to the extent of putting down more than their fair share of hay while on picket! Now, I was really upset at the thought of parting with Jumbo.
After an early breakfast, the other horses were taken off the lines and hooked in their limbers. Leaving Ben in someone’s charge I crossed over to my old friend again and stood by him until the last moment, a lump rising in my throat.
‘Goodbye, Jum! You’ve been a faithful old pal and I shan’t forget you. Yes, the old Grey’s leaving you. So am I. Let’s stroke your nose for the last time.’
‘Get mounted.’
‘Goodbye, Jum!’
He begins to fret and whimper. Gordon rides past. The Lewis gun limbers are moving off down the brick-laid slope into the road, brakesmen are ready waiting their opportunity to slip half their impediments on to the limbers. Taking a last look round, I see the other unit preparing to take possession of the deserted lines. I also see a solitary horse, head erect as far as his chain will permit, plunging against the rope and prancing to and fro – on three legs.
1918
The War in 1918
Six months after the United States entered the war, Russia under the new Bolshevik government sued for peace with the Germans. The Tsar’s regime had been overthrown and so, in a sense, had his war. Peace with Russia released a million Germans from the east to fight in the west – a piece of undoubtedly unpalatable news to the Allies in France and Belgium. If Germany could force a wedge between the Allies, throwing the British back on to the Channel ports, there was just a chance that the war could be won.
It was not until mid-March that Germany would be in a position to strike and, with the knowledge that an offensive was on the way, the Allies prepared in detail to meet the onslaught. When it came, helped by a fortunate spring morning mist, the German troops caused havoc among the British front-line soldiers. The speed and penetration of advance were so fast, so deep, that many British gun batteries miles in the rear were overwhelmed before they started firing.
Within three weeks, Douglas Haig, the Commander-in-Chief, issued his ‘backs to the wall’ address to the men. Such was the seriousness of the situation that every man was expected to fight it out with the enemy, and that included cooks and transport drivers. As the British retreated, so canteens and dumps of food and supplies were burnt to stop them falling into the hands of their enemy. However, not all canteens were destroyed. German soldiers, poorly fed and hungry, were astonished at the sight of the quantity and quality of the foodstuffs available to them. The food did a lot to stave off their immediate hunger but it helped to undermine morale, too.
The German forces were eventually held in front of Amiens, but, rather than battering away at the same position, the Germans switched their attack to the north, to Armentières and then Ypres. Once again their success, though startling at first, soon ground to a halt. The German forces simply did not have the military infrastructure and the necessary supply lines to maintain the momentum.
Energy was dissipated and, when attacks were made elsewhere, it was clear that the failure of the German effort in the west was approaching.
By mid-1918, the Americans had already taken to the field in force and had suffered many casualties too, but there was an almost infinite number of fresh units to come. German morale began to crack. When the British and Empire troops launched a well-planned and well-executed counter-offensive in August, the great swathes of prisoners taken were testament to the enemy’s rapidly eroding will to resist. So many prisoners were boys, so many old men, far too many with poorer quality, worn-out equipment. Allied artillery was now predominant and barrages cripplingly heavy and sustained, while the assimilation of all arms into one combined operation was not only technically possible but could at last be implemented. Many Allied soldiers predicted that the end of the war was coming, fewer that it would in the end come so rapidly.
The Natural World in 1918
Most historians agree that, with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that German chances of delivering a knockout blow against the British and French in 1918 were in fact small.
Nevertheless, the ferocity of the German strike opened up the Western Front in a way not seen since the earliest days of the war. The tactics had moved on. Terms such as rapid infiltration, elastic defence and all-arms operations were all the rage and for good reason: they worked. Yet despite the advances on almost all fronts, in tactics, weaponry and communications, there was something unnervingly reminiscent of the fighting in 1918 compared to that of 1914. There was the rapid retreat, civilians thrown once more on to pavé roads, belongings and all, farm animals let loose, hungry soldiers, large tracts of battlefields that looked, on first viewing, untainted by war.
Armies were on the move, and, while modern weapons such as tanks were critical to the breaking of enemy defences such as the Hindenburg Line in September 1918, it was the cavalry that came to the fore, once more harassing the enemy. It was the horses, not the tanks, that ended the war, dragoons and hussars charging enemy positions close to Mons just as they had done in August 1914.
Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden Page 24
