Bonzo's War (17 page)

The Minister asked his advisers what had happened in the last war. In 1918 a number of prosecutions took place of people ‘wasting human food by giving it to dogs' in defiance of regulations, he was informed. Unpatriotic pet owners giving bread and milk to Pekingese and meat to St Bernards were two cases in point. This was clearly a political minefield.

The RSPCA waded in. It pointed out that the Waste of Food Order did not mention animals at all. ‘It does not seem possible that any court would hold that the moderate feeding of any pet upon food suitable for human beings would be a waste. Do not deny pets your table scraps because some well meaning person tells you you are liable to a penalty,' it announced.

The Cats Protection League did not know how to reply to a flood of anxious letters – ‘the matter was taken up with the Ministry of Food, from whom a very sympathetic reply was received' so it was reported in
The Cat
. Prosecutions would only be cases where, ‘human food has been used wastefully, either because the quantity was excessive or because other food stuffs were available,' readers were assured.

Meanwhile cats had a card up their sleeves: mice. As
The Cat
asked, ‘is it antipatriotic to deprive the community of so many foodstuffs for one's own pleasure? If the cat were merely a pet, giving no service in return for his keep, the reply would be “Yes”. But the cat is one of the best food protectors known. He saves the community literally millions of pounds worth of foodstuffs annually. Immense quantities are lost to rats and mice.

‘If you live in the country the range of your cat's operations will extend far beyond your house and grounds,' insisted
The Cat
. ‘Not only the mice that eat the household food, but rats, field mice, shrews, voles, etc.,
that attack crops and vegetables will be driven away or killed.

‘No cat owner need worry about the rightness of keeping a cat in war time,' it concluded.

And since the drift of evacuees back to the cities, ‘people have found that mice were overrunning their homes, eating their cereals and nestling in cupboards' so it was also reported. Following the unwarranted destruction of so many pets the year before, ‘dealers now have waiting lists of people who wanted dogs and especially cats'.

But it was now formally illegal to give cats milk. The County Borough of Sunderland applied for cereal coupons to feed municipal swans. Was feeding the ducks in the park on breadcrumbs illegal? It might well be. The RSPCA pressed the Ministry for clarification.

The Duchess of Hamilton stirred with a long letter to
The Times
headed: ‘Feeding Dogs and Cats' – ‘The Council of the Animal Defence Society wish to remind owners that the order does not impose the destruction of animals,' she and Louise Lind-af-Hageby jointly declared. ‘The order forbids the wastage of food. While the order contains no reference to the feeding of animals, Mr. Boothby has stated that it may be taken as a general rule that food unfit for human consumption can be given to household pets.' She saw the real enemy in plain sight:

Those constituents of the National Farmers Union, who now clamour for the annihilation of household pets, can point to the obvious fact that dogs and cats must eat in order to live, but, in considering ‘utility', there are mental and emotional values which must not be forgotten, even in time of war.

It is reported – whether accurately or not we cannot say – that in Germany all dogs not useful for the
purposes of war have been destroyed. This country is certainly not in a state requiring such ruthless measures.

‘Dogs gave comfort to many a lonely wife of a serving soldier,' said the Duchess, while ‘the elimination of the feline population would result in a food-destructive increase of rats and mice.' As for food shortages, ‘many dogs are voluntary vegetarians,' she suggested, while ‘many cats have inclinations to a non-meat diet.' She would not find many votes among pets for that one.

Her Grace's letter was published on 12 August – the day Hermann Göring declared the ‘Eagle Attack', the all-out offensive on southern England to crush the Royal Air Force. That same day Mrs Anne Walters, a farmer's wife, wrote to
Farmers Weekly
to complain about huge flocks of sparrows eating corn in the fields – ‘the people's food,' as she put it. ‘My husband has a rook man,' she said, ‘but the sparrows are worse. I should be glad to know what if anything is being done to prevent it.'

Not just sparrows were swarming in the air. The Germans had turned on the defenders' airfields to smash the RAF on the ground and win air superiority. Bombs and bullets were now falling in the fields of southern England – along with shot-down aircraft and parachuting aircrew. The etiquette of offering tea to bailed-out enemy pilots was debated.

Huge aerial battles raged over southern England. A few stray bombs fell in the north London suburbs on the 22nd. The next day
Farmers Weekly
reported on the battle for the nation's survival: ‘Stock casualties in Nazi raids, first big test of Animal ARP services.' It had urgent news:

Most bombs in the intense Nazi raids of the past two weeks have fallen in rural areas. Farm livestock has
come off lightly. First aid had been given to a heifer valued at £40, which had undoubtedly saved its life.

The next day Fighter Command's most critical week began as ‘savage' bombing aimed to knock out the airfields defending London. On the 25th a straying night bomber hit the City. Battle was also joined in the fields of Kent. As
Farmers Weekly
reported:

There has been no falling off in milk yields. Uninjured cattle show no after effects. One dairy herd lost a cow killed outright but an hour later the owner found the rest of the herd lying quietly around the edge of the bomb craters. Most liable to take fright were horses – which would career madly about the fields at the sound of low-flying machines.

The only way to get compensation was to salvage what could be for human consumption, the journal advised. ‘Dead beasts must be promptly bled – within 20 minutes of death, cut the throat and if possible disembowel it.'

NARPAC's rural scheme of flying squads of vets and butchers appeared to be working. ‘Cattle and sheep had suffered because of their tendency to herd together,' it was reported. Horses and pigs sailed through. Hardly any farm buildings had been hit. All livestock casualties were in the open.

It was tough generally being a farmer. Nazi bombs caused thin milk, it was reported on 30 August. A farmer summoned under wartime regulations for selling milk with low butterfat escaped prosecution when a Land Girl ‘gave evidence that the cows were nervy and jumpy after the first raid'. The case was dismissed.

Meanwhile the propaganda battle to ensure the survival
of the nation's pets raged just as fiercely. On 23 August the ‘Dogs of Britain Fighter Fund' was launched. As
Our Dogs
proclaimed:

Dogdom's direct contribution to the downfall of Germany has begun. You too can join the movement to provide Britain with another weapon in her plan to attack to defend.

The move was at the suggestion of Miss Veronica Tudor-Williams, famous breeder of Basenjis, the barkless African hunting dog. Mr C. Dowdewell, Airedale lover, contributed two guineas and Smoky Snelgrove Pekingese 10
s
. 6
d
in the first week, along with scores more patriotic dog lovers. A total of £5,000 was needed. The Kennel Club became the official sponsor.

Hungry dogs would need all the goodwill they could muster. Food was still the issue. The Bloodhound breeder, Lady Johnson-Ferguson, wife of a Scottish baronet, got into trouble in late August when she wrote to the Food Minister saying that she had special biscuits made of wholemeal flour for her dogs. Why couldn't everyone else? It seems she was trying to be helpful.

A furious internal memo pointed out this was a clear violation of the Milled Wheaten Substance (Restriction) Order: ‘Lady Johnson-Ferguson is keener on keeping her dogs fed than winning the war.' Her dogs had to eat something, though.

Country dogs had a better time of it. It was a question of finding food. Newly-married Mrs Joyce Ixer was in charge of a Spitfire repair depot, part of the Supermarine complex around Southampton, while tending a kennel of her beloved Alsatians (she had been smitten as a small child) at home with her husband. As well as bombing and
invasion scares, she recalled over seventy years later, the daily task of getting meat from slaughtered New Forest ponies to feed them – which was kept in a running stream to keep the flies off. Her dogs thrived

That summer, novelist and journalist George Orwell spent some happy time at his rented cottage at Wallington with its clucking hens and rows of onions. He wrote in his diary for 18–19 August: ‘Two glorious days. No newspapers and no mention of the war. They were cutting the oats and we took Marx [the poodle] out both days to help course the rabbits, at which Marx showed unexpected speed. The whole thing took me straight back to my childhood, perhaps the last bit of that kind of life that I shall ever have.'

This was to prove the case for him and a lot of other pet lovers.

On the morning of 4 September 1940, the War Cabinet Committee on Civil Defence met in London to consider: ‘Item 1 – The Restriction of Consumption of Food by Cats and Dogs.'

Sir John Anderson was in the chair. Lord Woolton, the newly appointed Minister of Food, had produced a short paper concerning not just pets but also ‘dog racing and the maintenance of zoos'. Protests from poultry keepers that their feedstuffs were being severely restricted were considered. Racing greyhounds were apparently consuming oceans of milk and mountains of rice too. What were these useless dogs doing to help the cause of national survival? But as Lord Woolton reminded everyone, any drastic steps to reduce the dog population would arouse ‘intense public clamour just as taxation of dogs did in the last war'. Interfering with the people's pets was politically contentious.

The Committee agreed: ‘There should be no action [yet] to reduce the dog and cat population generally.' But the fact that moves had already been made to reduce the use of human foodstuffs in the manufacture of dog biscuits to one half of pre-war levels should be stressed to ‘critics' (meaning those grumbling farmers).

In Berlin that evening Hitler made an exultant speech at the Sportpalast. In retaliation for a pinprick RAF raid on Berlin, he declared London to be a target. Britain's cities would be erased and the last island of resistance extinguished. That same evening air raids were made on port cities – Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, Liverpool and Newcastle. The ‘Blitz' had begun and domestic animals were in the firing line as never before.

As for invasion, the Führer promised not to keep the British waiting too long. He was ‘coming', so he promised the enraptured audience, dog-biscuit shortage in England or not. The crowd screamed: ‘Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!'

That day GHQ Home Forces issued a briefing note: ‘Germany is presently engaged in an attempt to gain superiority over our fighter force. If a firm measure can be gained over the next few days then a full scale invasion may be attempted over a broad front in an area between Shoreham to Southwold.'

The Chiefs of Staff met in Whitehall on 7 September and concluded the Germans had completed their preparations. For the next few days the moon, tide and weather were all favourable. Regional commissioners were teleprinted: ‘You must assume invasion might be attempted at any time now though it is not assumed as a certainty. Civil departments to be so informed.'

At around tea-time that afternoon the first wave of bombers arrived over the capital, followed by a second, two hours later. The attack started in the East End before creeping westwards to central London, leaving more than 430 dead and more than 1,600 injured. It was the first mass raid on London (and the last in daylight) but it heralded the first of fifty-seven consecutive nights of bombing.

Mothers and their children were evacuated all over again, not in a mass but in ‘a daily stream piloted to areas
of relative safety according to the circumstances' in an evocative post-war description. Families were sundered, pets abandoned while whole streets were burning.

There was a renewed rush by pet lovers to the lethal chamber – but this time with no official encouragement to do so. A 23-year-old Mass-Observation diarist, Miss M. Rose of Grays, Essex, noted:

Tonight I have been registering animals for NARPAC. Very few people have ever heard of it, although one or two have trained their dogs to go to the shelters with them. At least 30% of animal owners say they will have their pets destroyed if the air raids should get any worse.

At the time Miss Rose was writing, late July, bombing of towns had not even started and in fact NARPAC had been strongly urging do-not-destroy-your-pets through the spring. Individual expressions of anguish are much harder to find than during the mass slaughter of September 1939.

For humbler Londoners, this time it seems to have been a case of outright abandonment of their animals. Christopher Pulling reported a despairing phone call from Colonel Stordy in the early hours of 18 September: ‘Dogs left behind in the East End have strained all their [NARPAC] resources, all the accommodation is full and they have had to slaughter wholesale. They are applying to the Home Office for assistance, particularly in the disposal of the carcasses.'

Mr Pulling could report that the Dogs' Home, Battersea had responded with the minimum of fuss and bother and had found extra vans to round up East End strays. Harrison, Barber & Co., however, were being difficult in the disposal of carcasses. And so the PDSA would report, ‘again we had
to open our grounds for the receipt of their bodies, this time receiving a further quarter of a million animals. Our Technical Officers will never forget the tragedy of those days.' But this time it was more commercially organized.