Bonzo's War (14 page)

Concern was noted meanwhile in
The Animal World
among tortoise owners about the high price of lettuces. It was suggested they be given ‘bananas or oranges' but such luxuries were by now beyond reach: ‘Some will take pieces of apple but many do not seem to appreciate this.'

On 7–9 April 1940 the Germans overran Denmark. Danish bacon and butter was now off the British housewife's menu. German naval and air landings rapidly seized southern Norway. British and French troops hung on perilously in the north. On 7 May, ‘the Norway debate' in the House of Commons made it clear that Neville Chamberlain, moth hunter and bird lover, must go.

On 10 May the Germans invaded Belgium and the Netherlands. Another food larder had fallen. Pet fanciers had their own view of events. When Holland fell
The Aquarist
magazine regretfully recorded: ‘Away goes our last source of imported stock.' It had been the origin of such fancied fish as golden orfe, golden rudd and golden carp.

‘Our hobby,' said the journal, ‘can give a peace obtained by few' – and was the only pet hobby which could be kept going in an airtight room.

Winston Churchill formed a coalition government in London. By the 13th the Germans were across the River Meuse. The next day the new home defence force was announced for men between the ages of 15–65, to be called the Local Defence Volunteers. A quarter of a million offered their services within twenty-four hours. There was
nothing phoney any more about this war, for humans or for pets.

There was a war already raging in Downing Street. ‘Bob' and ‘Heather', the Dover-sole-rewarded Treasury felines of the appeasement years, were still in charge. Churchill's youngest daughter, Mary, recalled the fate of the incumbent(s) when her father took over: ‘He was treated with great kindness but we disrespectfully named him Munich Mouser since he was a holdover from Neville Chamberlain.' In fact there seem to have been two appeasement era cats.

Mr Churchill meanwhile had formed a special relationship with the Admiralty cat he had encountered on his return to the Government eight months before. He had named him ‘Nelson'. Already he was a bit of a newspaper celebrity.

The Washington Post's
London correspondent sensed the tension at the heart of power. ‘Nelson will follow his master shortly to Downing Street and make a problem of protocol. How, it is asked, will the Munich cat react to Nelson? Will he follow Chamberlain next door to his new home at No. 11 leaving the field at No. 10 to Nelson? Or will he refuse to abdicate and call for a show-down?'

It was the former. Lady Mary Soames recalled that Nelson chased the
ancien régime
cat (or cats) out of Downing Street pretty sharpish, though maybe not entirely. Secret Government files reveal that Bob ‘became the pet of Downing Street staff' when the Treasury was hit by a bomb in late 1940 and Heather lost a fight with a rat in a Treasury storeroom in 1941. Bob seems to have survived skulking round the garden entrance while Nelson took up official residence.

The Cabinet Office in nearby Great George Street had acquired a rival cat, ‘Jumbo', sometime in 1939, who had
an official weekly maintenance allowance of 1
s
. 6
d
. for food under the name ‘Mr. J. Umbo'. Jumbo's death certificate, dated 8 June 1942, signed by the ODFL vet at the Eccleston Street Animals' Hospital, is preserved in the National Archives.
¹⁴

11
  A strange story surfaced in 2011 from wartime German files about a Dalmatian called ‘Jackie' owned by Tor Borg, a Finnish businessman. In late 1940 his German-born (but anti-Nazi) wife, dubbed the dog ‘Hitler' because of the way it raised a paw in the ‘German salute' whenever the Führer's name was mentioned. News reached Nazi diplomats in Helsinki, who were not amused and sought ways to bring Borg to trial for insult.

12
  The prescription of free ‘welfare foods', cod liver oil and orange juice, for children and expectant mothers was introduced in December 1941. It was a serious offence to give it to cats but some mothers (but not all cats) found it hard to resist.

13
  Which at 1
s
. a week was one of the cheapest creatures to feed. A lion cost 15
s
., an elephant £1. Most expensive were the sea lions, some of which were sent to America. Visitors were further encouraged to bring kitchen scraps, acorns and stale bread. Such measures in effect kept the London Zoo going through the war.

14
  Cats seem to have been at the heart of Britain's war leadership, in contrast to Adolf Hitler's doggy entourage. According to the biographer of his mistress, Eva Braun, the Führer ‘was allergic to cats'. And look how it all turned out.

The Belgian Army surrendered on 28 May 1940. Across the Channel, the British Expeditionary Force began its long retreat to an embattled pocket on the northeast French coast. An extraordinary episode in the story of wartime domestic animals was about to unfold.

Throughout history, armies have always attracted dogs. There's something about field kitchens perhaps, or general, barking excitement. And young men respond with equal puppy-dog affection, compounded by loneliness and a longing for an affectionate companion. It was the same with the British Expeditionary Force, especially in retreat. Second Lieutenant E. J. Haywood was a young infantry officer. He recalled the mournful slouch through Belgium in May 1940:

We passed through village after village. Dogs were whining and running about, vainly looking for their owners. Other dogs had been left tied up, and barked furiously at us, or howled dismally.

To my great annoyance, a contingent of dogs of all shapes and sizes decided to join the procession. These wretched dogs were obviously strays from Bambecque,
and were evidently prepared to forget their newly acquired problems of food and shelter in the transient joy of a walk that had more canine flavour than usual to enliven it.

I cursed them all bitterly and fruitlessly, for, as they yapped and frisked about, they advertised our approach.

Edward Oates, a Royal Engineer, remembered shooting the dogs: ‘The dogs were just roaming about, there was nobody there, and they were getting dangerous, you see. They were getting hungry and snapping a bit.'

Sapper E. V. B. Williams (an RSPCA staff member now serving in the Royal Engineers) took a kindlier approach. He recalled seeing the ‘pitiful procession of refugees, pushing handcarts piled high with personal belongings and sitting on top a small dog quite content and taking stock of its new surroundings. But in some way or another it never took us long to make friends with these gallant pets. Also in quite a number of cases we were able to give these animals a painless end. This was the ultimate fate of our little camp follower, “Sapper”. She was a small black and tan terrier who wandered into our camp the day we had landed in France. She was about seven weeks old when she joined us and was with us the whole time until things got too hot.'

Poor Sapper did not make it to the beaches – it appeared she got a British bullet between the eyes. But there were plenty of pets who did make it. The RSPCA reported: ‘Large numbers of dogs were gathered with the retreating British troops in the Dunkirk area.'

As Royal Navy destroyers came alongside and the ‘little ships' took bedraggled men out to the bigger ships offshore, amazingly, animals were scrambling into the sea
and onto the rescuing ships – ‘knowing with the sureness of canine instinct that the men who had so-far befriended them in their appalling need would not desert them at the last,' as the RSPCA's post-war history put it.

The story would be told of ‘Boxer', a brindled Bulldog who was taken
to
France by his owner, Capt. C. Payton-Smyth of the Royal Army Service Corps, when the BEF shipped out. In the débâcle, Boxer, who hated water, became separated from his master and had to be physically thrown onto a rescuing ship. They were later happily reunited.

Ordinary Seaman Stanley Allen, then aged twenty, aboard the destroyer HMS
Windsor
, recalled: ‘There was a little dog, a terrier-type mongrel, which came on board with some of the soldiers. He only understood French. When I spoke to him he wouldn't leave me. That little dog came back with us on the other two trips that we made.' He called the dog ‘Kirk'.

Seaman Norman Battersby told his son years later that he gone into the blazing port with a Royal Navy shore party and ‘evacuated a very special person' – a stray cat that he found hiding among the rubble and wreckage. He tucked the cat under his coat and smuggled it home, where it lived contentedly, a much-loved family pet, for several years to come.

Our Dumb Friends' League reported ‘one of the little ships put out to sea from the quay at Dunkirk leaving behind an Alsatian, which had been unable to get on board. The dog dived into the sea and swam for its life. A British naval rating dived into the sea and brought the dog to safety. It had been quarantined by the League. The dog's owner has vanished but its rescuer will take it when he can.'

‘Men of the French Army rescued from Dunkirk and Calais had been accompanied by twenty-two dogs and one cat,' said the reports. Two were snatched from German
boats captured by the Royal Navy and one from a Danish ship. (‘The German and Danish dogs have now been placed in English homes,' the League would later report.) The
Daily Telegraph
told the story of a French soldier with ‘a large, fierce looking Alsatian,' coming ashore at an English port. ‘I found him in Lille. He marched and fought with us all the way to Dunkirk. I bring him over on the boat; he is staying, I think,' said the Frenchman. And, according the
Telegraph
, the Alsatian did just that.

Meanwhile,
The Cat
magazine got cross about pictures in the press of ‘returned soldiers with Belgian kittens'. Did people not understand that without paying for months of quarantine these poor creatures must simply be destroyed? Better they were allowed to stay alive in Belgium whatever the conditions were like there.

Thus it was that hundreds of cats and dogs were involuntary participants in the ‘Miracle of Dunkirk'. Amid the chaos there must be order. What about rabies? What about quarantine? The RSPCA recorded:

All along the Thames Estuary and the south and southeast coast where the little ships of all kinds landed wearied men, equally wearied and homeless dogs were also brought ashore. The danger to this country's animals resulting from an outbreak of rabies in such circumstances is too obvious to be stressed and R.S.P.C.A. Inspectors did a great work by caring for these animals until something could be done for them.

Frequently the soldiers would leave the ships and the dogs would still be aboard. In such cases the Society's Inspectors would have to round them up.

The Folkestone inspector found himself in the heat of battle when the ship he was on returned to the beaches still
with a cargo of dogs – to pick up more men and their pets.

Kirk, the HMS
Windsor
dog, made it. His rescuer would record later: ‘After Dunkirk was all over, he was collected by a PDSA van to go into quarantine for six months before he was taken on to the staff of the parish where our Sub-Lieutenant's father was vicar. All of us cheered the old dog off.' But many were not so fortunate: ‘Where the owners could be traced, the RSPCA placed a few dogs in quarantine at its own expense but the majority of the animals had to be painlessly put down as they were either severely wounded or suffering from hysteria owing to the strain they had undergone.' They were innocent victims of a conflict they had not sought and could not possibly understand.

And among the animals (but these were definitely not pets) that did not get away were some 1,700 Indian Army mules of so-called ‘Force K6' sent to France to carry ammunition and stores for the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). One company was captured outright in the German advance, three more (each 400-strong) were left behind at Dunkirk and St Nazaire.
¹⁵
The men got away.

As news of the Dunkirk pets' plight got out (the animal welfare charities could not resist the publicity), ‘there were many inquiries from animal lovers anxious to know whether arrangements can be made for individual soldiers to keep these animals,' reported
The Animal World
in the July. The RSPCA was unsentimental: ‘All dogs entering this country must undergo six months quarantine at an approved kennel,' it sternly stated. ‘The cost of maintenance for this period is around thirteen guineas.' And most of them were ‘camp-follower dogs, not attached to any
individual,' so
The Animal World
reported. Their fate looked bleak:

Hard facts cannot be ignored. There is a grave risk of rabies and full quarantine would entail heavy expenditure. Where it is not practicable or desirable to keep these refugee dogs they will be given a speedy and humane end. At one port, 66 have already been put down, 20 at another.

The French Army dogs had ‘been segregated, provided with leads and given exercise and are being looked after until their owners go back'. The fate of the lone French military cat that escaped the débâcle was not recorded. Presumably it was not there to answer General Charles de Gaulle's call for Free France to fight on.

Our Dumb Friends' League was less quick to condemn. ‘Many dogs attached themselves to the retreating British armies,' stated its 1940 report. ‘What was to happen to these dogs? The answer was destruction or outside help. When asked by the Ministry of Agriculture for help, the League came back at once. We will take them! Send them to us at once! So the League has or had 107 dogs in quarantine.'

There were ninety-five dogs, and one cat who had fled for safety with Allied civilians (rather than the military), so the League reported. Dumb Friends' had ‘adopted the same policy of paying for their quarantine' and although this had attracted anonymous criticism, ‘there was not just a national, but an international duty to save them.' Formal thanks had been received from the Belgian and Dutch Governments in exile for the League's humane intervention.