Bonzo's War (32 page)

‘Stray and ownerless cats will not be abandoned, when a camp is vacated,' it said. ‘Assistance of the RSPCA in their humane disposal will be sought.' Nevertheless, in the 1943 spring lambing season, there were wildly alarming stories of ‘10,000 killer dogs' roaming the countryside with farmers demanding they be allowed to shoot them on sight. In one night, twenty-seven of his in-lamb ewes were killed by a Collie and a Labrador, claimed an outraged Midlands sheep farmer. The position was even more serious in Scotland.

What to do with the new plague of military canines? While the RSPCA would put them down, the PDSA had an inspired idea: a humane move and publicity coup all in one. It was to make these freelance camp-followers somehow official. The Dispensary's experience in North Africa and dealing with all those desert dogs showed the way. Now there were military pets much closer to home hanging round camps all over the country.

The British Army (and others) had long had ‘mascots'. Over the years a parade of bears, goats, antelopes, even a Sudanese baby boy had been formally ‘attached for rations' to regiments and corps with their food and medical care provided at public expense, for as long as they ‘fulfilled their role in keeping the troops amused'.

‘Regimental pets' were another matter (animals defined as ‘not having War Office authority and fed from government stores when civilian sources are inadequate but only on repayment'). Official or unofficial, military animals had featured in every colonial adventure and campaign, as had the Royal Navy's ship's cats.
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The Ministry of Agriculture however was always extremely alert to the danger of rabies (every single member of the Cairo PDSA hospital had been bitten by a rabid dog) and would rather the mother country's shores stayed unpawed by this shifting menagerie, or at least they were strictly quarantined on arrival. Recording it all therefore was a very good thing, especially if someone else was paying. Everyone could approve of mascots as long as they were qualified healthy and someone else was going to feed them.

As the Dispensary's own post-war history recorded: ‘Soldiers and sailors show affection for strays. When a
move came they became a problem. The poor, uncomprehending mascot got left behind in the deserted camp or given the key to the common.' Hampstead Heath in north London, for example – a vast tented encampment in the first years of the war – was reportedly now swarming with abandoned dogs and cats, ‘all starved and in a deplorable condition'.

It was suggested that a limited number of mascots per unit be authorized, the senior officer in charge accepting responsibility for their care – ‘Any animal or bird vouched for by a commissioned officer as being attached to his unit as a mascot, patrol dog, carrier pigeon or the like, can be registered as a member without any fee.' The mascots' papers would be lodged with the Imperial War Museum in London. And furthermore:

There is a badge of membership and there is issued a medal, named after Mrs. Dickin, the founder of the P.D.S.A. In this way, animals attached to all the services are raised immeasurably in status.

The ‘PDSA Allied Forces Club' would have three classes of members: the ‘thousands of animals adopted by servicemen', ‘animals and birds conscripted into the services for the empires' war effort' and thirdly, ‘faithful beasts', honorary members of outstanding merit. Member animals must be ‘serving with the armed forces or civil defence'. It was not for civilians. The first member was ‘Barney' – a donkey at Hendon Air Station who had been won in a darts match.

Its original registered address was the Hampstead home of the Dispensary's master publicist Edward Bridges Webb. The secretary was Dorothea St Hill Bourne. The medal was a masterstroke and remains so down the decades.

The exotic menagerie of pets in the Mediterranean was ideal recruiting ground for the new Mascot Club. ‘Bonzo' was one (a popular name, wherever) described as an ‘Essex hound' who arrived one day at the PDSA Cairo hospital with two ‘bronzed and tired-looking soldiers', with his eyes ‘swollen, inflamed and full of sand'. Private L. A. Clarke of a ‘Stores Convoy Unit of which Bonzo was mascot' enrolled him in the Club.

Private Clarke would later write in appreciation: ‘I myself was lucky enough to be able to get to the hospital when Bonzo was the victim of a severe sandstorm. He was unable to open his eyes. Under the skilled hands of your representative we were able to take the dog away with his eyes open once more and after a few days of applying the ointment provided, there were no signs of trouble at all.'

But what happened next in Bonzo's war is less clear. The survival of the desert animals beyond the collapse of the Axis forces was going to be tricky. Were they to accompany their masters to new theatres of canine action? Would they find new employment in Egypt? Would they come to Britain? Some did, many did not.

‘Betty' for example, a little Terrier, was found stuck in a cupboard when the Germans left Castel Benito airfield in Tripolitania in a hurry in January 1943. And ‘Tocra', an ‘attractive dachshund terrier cross' attached to a Panzer division, who had been captured at Benghazi in November 1942, became the mascot of the 2nd Army Signals. On the opening of the battle for the Mareth Line in March she had had five puppies. None survived, it was reported bluntly, but the mother, against all odds, reached an English quarantine kennel safely.

‘Tich' was a stray mongrel bitch adopted by the King's Royal Rifle Corps in Egypt in 1941 – and accompanied the 1st Battalion all the way through the desert fighting. When
the Battalion reached Algiers in 1943, the dog was placed in the care of Rifleman Thomas Walker of the carrier platoon, bringing in wounded. In early 1944 ‘she was smuggled aboard the ship that took the battalion to Italy' and had puppies at sea. Tich was said to be able to ‘smoke a cigarette, nestling in the shade of a jeep, rolling it from one side of her mouth to the other' and to thrive on shaving water, a taste she had acquired in the desert. She would have fifteen puppies in total and survive the war. Tich too would make it all the way to England.

In great secrecy meanwhile, the first batches of Army war dogs volunteered by ordinary owners and trained at Northaw had been shipped out to the Mediterranean. These were not mascots, nor freelance regimental pets. The military vet had been right when he had predicted ‘wastage' would be high. It would turn out to be massacre.

Of the dogs supplied to XIII Corps for example, the Alsatians ‘Bob', ‘Gyp', ‘Lady' and ‘Chum' in action with the 1st Surreys, one had drowned on landing in North Africa and three were killed in the bloody battle of Tebourba in Tunisia on 1 December 1942.

Alsatian bitch ‘Mac' ‘had presumably been captured with Major J. H. Hudson M. C. [taken prisoner in Tunisia, April 1943],' according to a terse summary of their fates. Of four dogs with the Northamptons, ‘Prince', Rex', ‘Toby' and ‘Mark', one had burned to death, three had become ill and been shot. Plenty more one-time pets were missing, wounded and killed by enemy action.

Not all official army dogs in the Middle East were on-loan from pet lovers at home, though. According to the War Diary of the Corps of Military Police Middle East Dog Training School (formed at Almaza, Egypt, on 4 January 1943), the bulk of the dogs used for guard duties were originally donated by local civilians or were former
regimental pets that had been acquired from the Italians and Germans. They would be employed in the Suez Canal Zone to combat massive pilfering of military stores by ‘natives'.

By mid-May 1943 the fighting in North Africa was over and a huge bag of Axis prisoners were captured. So were a lot more animals. Of the large numbers of German military horses and mules, ‘most of them, by the end, had been lost, stolen or eaten', so it would be reported. But pets, on the whole, had not gone into the cooking pot.

A dog-loving anonymous ‘Flying Officer' told
Tail-Wagger Magazine
that ‘an incredible number of dogs' had been attached to camps and aerodromes in the Middle East, a lot of them originally captured from the Italians.

He remembered especially, ‘a tiny terrier called “Musso”, which was inseparable from its young sunburned, soldier-master who promised to take the dog with him when he was posted home'. There were lots of such promises. ‘He eagerly took down the name of a quarantine kennel which I gave him' said the writer of the article, who seemed to have doubts that such young men would find the resources to do such a thing in the midst of war. It was clear they were going to have to say goodbye. Were their pets just to be abandoned to the desert?

The PDSA volunteers from Cairo did what they could in traditional animal welfare style. A truck provided by GOC-in-C, British Troops in Egypt, was fitted out as a dispensary caravan with ‘operating table, lethal chambers and humane killers' according to the frank and highly readable post-war history of the Dispensary by the London MP and PDSA Council member, Frederick Montague. It told these illuminating stories from the Cairo hospital:

One soldier who was going home the following day brought three large dogs to be destroyed as he could not hand them to anyone else. He sobbed throughout and waited to see they were dead before leaving.

And there was the ATS sergeant who ‘asked us to come to a nearby camp and destroy her three cats when she was also going home'. Little animal tragedies were acted out in the desert, one by one. The war was moving on.
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Innocent pets could not follow.

39
  Banned by the Ministry of Defence in 1975.

40
  The desert adoptee, ‘Tich' (see p.269), was smuggled with the Battalion from North Africa to Italy, where his military career continued. There is a story of a Great Dane, called ‘Beauty', the property of an RNVR sub lieutenant, who, ‘drifted ashore on a Carley float and was the first dog ashore in the invasion of Sicily'.

All was not heart-warming goodwill in the matter of mascots as far as wartime officialdom was concerned. Rumours of airborne pets were especially worrisome to Ministry of Agriculture Inspectors. Airmen seemed to favour them as good luck charms on bombing missions.

‘All these stories of flying kittens can they be believed?' so
The Cat
commented in January 1943. Unlike a ship where rats might be expected, ‘the presence of a cat on an aeroplane is not necessary'. ‘Aerodrome cats,' the journal conceded, ‘might provide amusement and comfort to our splendid airmen. But the idea of them being taken on bombing expeditions, merely for the sake of “luck”, is not an idea that commends itself.'

A picture of tousle-haired Battle of Britain pilots awaiting action in 1940 was not complete without a lovable pooch. Squadron pets were always a big feature of RAF (and now US Army Air Force) life. But whether cats or dogs,
they were meant to stay on the ground
.

There had long been rumours about animals going up in single-engine aircraft but the fleets of bombers now being assembled offered much more room for pet misbehaviour.
The Cat
would report in July that in response to ‘the alleged
practice of taking cats or kittens up in planes' the Air Ministry had recently pointed out – ‘the carrying of dogs and cats and others by air is forbidden by Paragraph 737 of the King's Regulations and Air Council Instructions. This regulation is applicable to airmen of the Polish Air Force as well as the Royal Air Force.'

‘We trust that the British example will be followed by other Allied air forces,' said
The Cat
sternly. It continued – ‘The stories published about flying mascots implicate more than one of them. A newspaper, now before us, tells the story of a dog, owned by a US sergeant, which has a record of 600 hours in the air, including 50 combat flights.'

A Polish airman with the RAF, Flying Officer Stanislaw Orski, lifted the lid on what was really going on in an article for the consistently subversive
Tail-Wagger Magazine
. He laid down the ‘rules' for having an airfield pet – ‘first get the CO's permission, second get the President of the Mess Committee's permission to let the dog stay with you, and, third, get the kitchen staff's goodwill'. The sergeants' mess was often more reliable than the officers' mess, he advised. On flying pets he said:

The rules say that no dogs or cats are allowed in HM aircraft but the rules are constantly being broken, plenty of pets have taken part in operations against the enemy.

But he warned that vibration and noise can cause deafness, so ‘plug your dog's ears with cotton wool and wrap a heavy scarf round his head'.

Watch turning propellers on the ground, he warned, plenty of dogs have run into them. And, however amusing it may seem, ‘do not let your dog run after the CO snapping at his legs. He will not find it funny.'

Some airmen were just too dashing altogether to obey pettifogging regulations. As well as ‘Nigger', his well-known black Labrador, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, the CO of No. 617 Squadron, the ‘Dambusters', had a cat called ‘Windy' that reportedly accompanied him on combat missions – although the sources for this yarn are elusive.

‘Straddle', a black Labrador, was routinely taken on Atlantic patrols in a capacious Short Sunderland flying boat of 622 Squadron RCAF, as photographs testify. The story was told of ‘Peter', a Cairn Terrier who stowed away aboard the bomber aircraft of a Pilot Officer Boyd. Attacked by an enemy fighter over the target, they took damage, which showed itself on the home journey when the port-wing tank burst into flames. Peter and PO Boyd bailed out. They landed on the garden of a lady who ignored the pilot but made a great fuss of Peter.

And there was ‘Antis', an Alsatian picked up as a puppy in France by refugee Czech airman Vaclav Bozdechem, who later stowed away in his master's Wellington bomber on a mission flown by No. 311 (Czech) Squadron. It has been reported that, ‘Antis took part in over 30 missions over Germany – twice being wounded by flak.' In 1949 the multi-regulation-breaking Antis was awarded the Dickin Medal by Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell.