Our Land at War

by Duff Hart-Davis

  On 31 July 1940 the Defence (Game) Regulations advanced the start of the grouse season from the traditional 12 August to 5 August, and pheasant shooting from 1 October to 1 September. As many gamekeepers had departed on military service, wild birds were less effectively protected from predators than in peacetime; on the other hand, far fewer were shot than in pre-war days. Landowners snatching a few days’ leave in winter organized a day’s shooting whenever they could reach home, but had to be content with much smaller bags than before the war.

  Manufacturers of sporting weapons looked elsewhere for work. Holland & Holland, the leading London gunmakers, turned to the production of No. 4 (T) sniper rifles for the Government, and during the war converted 23,000 weapons. The company also managed to retain its most valuable asset – the grounds of its shooting school at Northwood, on the western outskirts of London, where it had bought sixty acres of farmland in 1932.

  Farmers under pressure to produce more food accused shooting men of letting their pheasants eat vast amounts of corn, and complaints set off absurd chain reactions among the pen-pushers. In March 1942 Captain Aldred of Beesthorpe Hall, near Newark, applied for a licence to shoot out-of-season pheasants, which he claimed were damaging his crops. His letter went on a fine bureaucratic journey. Passed to the Rodent Control Section of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in the Imperial Hotel at Colwyn Bay, in North Wales, it was forwarded by the Pest Officer there to the War Ag committee, suggesting that the matter be discussed with the Ministry’s Land Commissioner. At the end of May the Ministry at last issued an ad hoc Order, ‘The Killing of Pheasants Lincoln (Parts of Kesteven)’, which gave Aldred the permission he had been seeking – far too late to be of any use.

  Meanwhile another countryman, seeing an old cock pheasant pecking away on a field of wheat which was just sprouting, shot it and sent it for scientific examination. The report revealed that its crop contained 554 wireworms and other harmful insects, but not a grain of corn.

  As for grouse moors – some survived astonishingly well, even though predator control and systematic burning (to renew the heather, on which the birds feed) were much reduced through absence of manpower. Shortage of ammunition also contributed to the difficulties: in May 1940 the police called for 12-bore cartridges to be handed in to equip the newly founded Local Defence Volunteers – although it was acknowledged that enough must be retained by the estates for the keepers’ use. The general lack of maintenance during the war had a damaging long-term effect on many moors, in that bracken encroached round the edges, reducing the area of heather and harbouring ticks, which infest and infect grouse chicks.

  One of the most successful estates was the Duke of Devonshire’s Bolton Abbey, in North Yorkshire, which maintained an astonishing record – 3500 brace of grouse shot in 1941, 4500 brace in 1942 and 3500 brace in 1943, before a crash in 1944 was brought on by disease. How enough guns, cartridges and beaters were assembled, history does not relate; but much of the credit must have been due to the head keeper, James Stitt, who had been appointed in 1925 (and did not retire until 1959, when his son William took over). He must have had the support of several under-keepers – three or four, probably – for in the winter of 1939–40 they managed to burn a thousand acres of heather in strips and patches.

  Another Yorkshire estate, Allenheads, also did well. Between 15 and 24 August 1939 seven driven days yielded 1400 brace; but then a note in the game book recorded: ‘Owing to the international situation, all guns left on 25 October.’ Next year, after a bitter winter, May and June turned out hot and dry, enabling broods of grouse to grow well. Shortage of petrol made the assembly of guns and beaters difficult, but ‘a few evacuees’ were press-ganged as beaters, and shooting continued until the end of November. Whether these recruits were girls or boys, and what they made of their days in the heather, the record does not relate.

  Three moors in Westmorland belonging to the Lowther family – Crosby, Shap and Bretherdale – went steeply downhill. In the early 1930s Crosby had yielded 3000 brace a year, and Shap about 1000; but with the keepers reduced from fourteen to four there was little or no shooting during the war; the butts fell into disrepair, and the general deterioration increased when more sheep were put onto the hill as part of the effort to grow food.

  Elsewhere, bags fluctuated wildly. At Abbeystead, in Lancashire, which then belonged to the Sefton family, more than 1000 brace were shot in the autumn of 1938, but in 1939, over the outbreak of war, the bag amounted to only eighteen birds. The seasons of 1940–43 proved more prolific, with the Littledale moor consistently producing days of 200 brace; then in August 1944 only one shoot was held, and that yielded a mere seventeen grouse.

  On Egton High Moor near Whitby no driving took place, but energetic members of the Foster family, reinforced by the occasional friend on leave, managed to walk-up on an amazing number of days: twenty-nine in 1941 and twenty-three in 1942. The largest turnout of guns was five, the smallest two, and bags were modest – about ten brace a day.

  A different pattern developed on Midhope Moor, also in Yorkshire. In the 1930s it had been producing 1000 brace a year; driving continued in 1940, but the season’s bag was down to 500 brace, and in 1941 it again fell 50 per cent, to 250. No more shooting took place during the war, for the moor was used as a tank range by US forces, and at one point the peat was deliberately set alight on the higher parts of the ground to create a decoy to divert Luftwaffe bombers away from Sheffield and its industrial areas.

  Between Upper and Lower Midhope lies Langsett Reservoir, and there (as on the Derwent Reservoir in Derbyshire) trials took place of the bouncing bombs developed for the RAF’s Dam Busters’ raid. After 617 Squadron had managed to breach the Möhne and Eder dams on the night of 16–17 May 1943, it was feared that the Luftwaffe might retaliate by trying to destroy the Langsett Reservoir, which provided the essential water supply for the Sheffield steel works. As a precaution, gun emplacements were built at the ends of the dam; wires with chains dangling from them were slung across the water between steel towers and a system for generating an instant smokescreen was installed; but although Sheffield was heavily bombed, the reservoir was never attacked.

  No moor can have had rougher handling than Westerdale, in North Yorkshire, which was used as a gunnery range by both army and navy. Repeated shelling from land and sea burnt off most of the heather, and no game shooting was possible during the war. The result was that vermin from nearby forestry plantations ran riot: when keepers returned to manage the ground again in 1946, they killed 300 foxes in the first season, and, as one remembered, ‘carrion crows were going about not in gangs of a dozen, but in hundreds’.

  As for deer – the continental practice of culling with rifles was not yet established in England, mainly because before the war there were few wild deer at large in the countryside. In contrast, many of the parks surrounding country houses held substantial herds, which for centuries had been a prized feature of the landscape; fallow deer of the Menil strain, strongly spotted with white, were considered the most picturesque species. But now winter weather began to break down the walls, fences and palisades enclosing the sanctuaries; rain and frost cracked the stone and trees fell through the fences. With most of the estate staff gone to the war, there was no one to repair the damage, and deer broke out through the gaps. One typical casualty was Stonor Park, in the Chilterns, where fallow deer had been kept since time immemorial. With the park’s boundaries breached, some of the herd escaped into the surrounding woods, where they began to breed, laying the foundations of a problem which has grown more and more serious ever since. Other parks, like Surrenden near Maidstone, whose owner had evacuated his school to the West Country, were taken over by the military and wrecked.

  Wandering deer irritated farmers, who killed some in shotgun drives, but many went away wounded because the weapons and ammunition being used against them were not powerful enough. In May 1940 a letter from the Ministry of Agriculture acknowledged that deer escaping from a p
ark in Cheshire were doing a good deal of damage, but also revealed the writer’s total ignorance of the subject:

  I gather that farmers do their best to destroy them, but that they have difficulty in getting near, as they are rather wild. I do not see how this can be dealt with under an Order except by entering on the park and destroying the whole of the stock, which seems rather drastic.

  Landowners were divided on the question of whether or not it would be a good idea for the Government to authorize the killing of deer; but in June 1940 the Ministry gave in to pressure and issued the Deer Order, which gave the War Ags the power to initiate culling.

  In the Scottish Highlands things were different. For 100 years stalking the red deer had been an established sport, and a deep reservoir of skill had built up among the hill men – the stalkers, or gamekeepers, and the ghillies, their assistants – who escorted riflemen to shoot stags in the autumn, and then in the winter themselves culled the hinds. When war broke out, many of these professionals enlisted in Scottish regiments, particularly those specializing in sniper or Commando work, for which their ability to stalk, to move across difficult country and to observe with telescopes ideally suited them.

  Stalkers too old for active service remained in place and carried on the annual cull; but their efforts were hugely augmented when the army decided to set up paramilitary training in the mountains. The hills came alive with Commando-type soldiers of many nationalities making forced marches, firing live ammunition and setting off explosives. Local stalkers were called in by the military to help with instruction in mountain skills – and students were all too keen to try their hand at stalking, with whatever weapons were to hand.

  The result was that the number of deer reported culled in Scotland rose sharply from 7130 stags and 10,971 hinds in 1939–40 to 9890 stags and 12,844 hinds in 1940–41; but these figures took no account of the animals being shot by poachers or soldiers out on their own, and the total cull was certainly a good deal higher. Inevitably, the cull became indiscriminate: a Commando with deer in the sights of his rifle or Bren gun was not likely to distinguish between male and female, young and old.

  Because venison was not rationed, it was in strong demand, particularly before Christmas, when people who could not find a turkey bought a joint instead. Game dealers raised the prices paid for carcasses from 9d to 1s 3d per pound, and butchers lost no time in passing on the increase to customers. Frank Wallace, an expert appointed official Deer Controller by the Government, was not worried by the upward trend, as he believed that the deer population was far too high; but then the exceptionally hard winter of 1940–41 changed his calculations, as nature killed perhaps 20,000 animals through starvation and disease.

  Nineteen

  Animals Under Fire

  Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw

  Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards

  Gamboll’d before them; th’ unwieldy elephant

  To make them mirth, us’d all his might, and wreathed

  His lithe proboscis.

  Milton, Paradise Lost, Book iv

  The war caused severe problems for circuses and zoos. Apart from the risk that enclosures might be bombed, and that valuable or dangerous animals might escape or be killed, feeding them adequately became more and more difficult. Humans could be rationed, and have the need for restrictions explained to them; animals could not.

  Like many others, the Chipperfields, who had built up their family circus throughout the 1920s and 1930s, saw no option but to close their travelling show. Chamberlain’s broadcast of 3 September 1939 caught them on tour in Norfolk, and they decided to head straight for home in Hampshire. For those with mechanical transport, the journey was simple; but Dick Chipperfield, who ran the show with his brother Jimmy, had to take thirty horses on foot, slanting down across England from north-east to south-west, and in three days he rode 165 miles. The family kept their lions for as long as they could, but in the end they could not get enough meat to feed them, and had to shoot them. As Jimmy said, it was a heart-breaking business, for they had invested countless hours in training the big cats, and they had become part of the Chipperfields’ lives.

  The third of September 1939 was a blank day for outdoor entertainment all over the country, as the Government Order prohibiting the assembly of crowds forced circuses and zoos to close. In London Zoo – which normally never shut except on Christmas Day – the keepers noticed that after a day or two the absence of visitors seemed to depress the inmates, especially the apes, who missed the usual milling crowds. To cheer them up, the Zoo got permission from the War Office for some soldiers billeted on the edge of Regent’s Park to come in and walk around – a substitution which seemed to have a good effect. After ten days the prohibition on gatherings was rescinded, and visitors returned to the Zoo, but the fear of bombardment was so acute that the poisonous reptiles – cobras, kraits, puff adders and rattlesnakes – were put down, along with the venomous spiders, and attendance in September was reduced by 90 per cent from the total the year before. Aquaria were emptied, the fish either killed or released. In the Kursaal Zoo at Southend the carnivores were shot by an RSPCA inspector, and the poisonous snakes in Edinburgh were put down. (Painful as these losses were to owners and operators, they did not rival those of the Tiergarten, Germany’s oldest zoo, in the centre of Berlin, most of which was bombed into rubble, and where, out of 3700 animals, only ninety survived the war, including one elephant, one chimpanzee and three lions.)

  In England big carnivores were obviously a liability wherever they were – and alarming to members of the public when they were on the move. One night in the winter of 1940 a family in the Cumbrian town of Dalton-on-Furness were woken by angry roars: when they looked out, they found a circus wagon full of lions lying on its side in the street right outside the house, with the inmates giving vent to their displeasure.

  Luckily for the London Zoological Society, it had a priceless asset thirty miles to the north-west of the capital, in the form of Whipsnade, where, in December 1926, it had bought a rundown, 600-acre farm on the windswept crest of the Dunstable Downs. On a site fifteen times larger than its home in Regent’s Park, it had laid out an animal park with large, fenced paddocks, mainly on the gently undulating land on top of the hill, but partly on the slopes of the Downs, one of which was embellished with the figure of a huge white lion carved in the chalk. When the new zoo opened on a fine Whit Sunday, 23 May 1931, there was such intense interest, and such a press of cars and charabancs, that many prospective fanciers never reached their target.

  When war broke out, the largest of London Zoo’s animals – the elephants and rhinos – were already at Whipsnade, having been sent to the country because new quarters were being built for them in Regent’s Park; and when the threat of bombing became acute, the Zoo’s star attractions – the giant pandas Ming and Tang – were taken to the country as a precaution; but Tang died on 13 April 1940, and two factors prompted Ming’s return to the capital. One was petrol rationing and the lack of buses, which drastically cut the number of people able to visit the park out in the wilds; and the other was the disappointment of the metropolitan public, who were saddened by the panda’s absence from Regent’s Park and clamoured for her to come back. One of her keenest admirers was Winston Churchill, who, when taken to see her, gazed at the animal for a long time before saying, ‘It has exceeded all my expectations … and they were very high.’

  A few bombs fell harmlessly on Whipsnade during the war, and some of the craters they made were put to good use, being fashioned into ponds. A former circus elephant delighted keepers and visitors alike with her prowess at ploughing up grassland for the planting of wheat. But London Zoo was more heavily bombarded. The keepers were issued with rifles, in case any dangerous animal escaped, and although there was only one major fatality – a giraffe which was so frightened by an explosion that it died of a heart attack – many of the enclosures were badly damaged.

  Among the casualties of a nigh
t raid was the zebra house, which was totally destroyed. One of its inmates, a zebra called Johnson, cantered off through the tunnel onto the Outer Circle road, heading for Camden Town. In pursuit went Julian Huxley, the Zoo’s Secretary, who, with help from the air-raid squad, managed to round the stallion up and drive him towards home. Every time the anti-aircraft guns opened up on Primrose Hill, the zebra backed violently towards the little cordon behind him, and Huxley was convinced he was about to be disembowelled by an almighty kick in the stomach; but by 4 a.m. the runaway was safely back in an empty shed, and when next day Huxley confessed his fear, the zebra’s keeper said, ‘Cor bless you, Sir. You needn’t have been frightened. ‘E’s a biter, not a kicker.’

  Bristol Zoo remained open throughout the war, even though there was a constant risk that bombs might set dangerous animals loose – a possibility vivid in the minds of residents of Clifton, who would not have enjoyed having a tiger at large in the blacked-out streets. The Zoo never suffered a direct hit, but the polar bears were put down, and some of the lions and tigers were sent elsewhere.

  Elephants had always been one of Bristol’s most popular attractions, in spite of their propensity for the removal and consumption of hats, particularly those made of straw. One, Celeste (named after the Queen in the Babar stories), was sent off to Dudley Zoo, but Rosie, who had been sold to Bristol by the Chipperfields, remained in situ throughout the war. As a member of the travelling family circus, she had once distinguished herself by bolting down Monmouth High Street and becoming jammed in the outdoor lavatory of a pub. She had also smashed up a lot of church furniture stored in a barn, and eaten a pair of Jimmy Chipperfield’s trousers. But by 1939 she had become more sedate, and throughout the war she delighted scores of children by giving them rides.