Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden (20 page)

Capt. Alexander Shaw, 1st King’s Own Scottish Borderers

On fatigue from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. digging sumps at side of big communication trench . . . Hundreds of mice, field voles, moles and small deer fall into these trenches and finally get to the sumps where the soil is too wet and slippery, so engineering operations fail. They have no discipline and the galleries get crowded; the tail of the queue push forward and the workers at the head get forced over and fall 6 or 7 feet to the bottom. If one gets injured in this fall, his fellows immediately set on him and tear him to pieces and fight over the cannibalistic feast in a dreadful orgy of hunger and despair. The moles do better, and where there is a mole he digs a tunnel whereby all escape and are saved. I found a bewildered mole lying at the bottom of a sump in hard chalk. Here all his ingenuity and perseverance failed. I carried him to a pit full of mice and he set to work at once and soon disappeared, followed by all the mice. This mole had wonderful black velvety skin. Mice do not understand the law of gravitation; they dig galleries mostly vertically where an incline would save them.

Signaller Cyril Newman, 1/9th London Rgt (Queen Victoria Rifles)

’Tis a beautiful morning and the air is full of the restless buzzing of aeroplanes. Not only has the sunshine brought out aeroplanes, but also the small inhabitants of the lower world – ants, huge beetles, things with ‘umptun’ legs and other creepy-crawly insects found in freshly dug earth. I have just been watching a large greenish beetle trying to scale the walls of the trench. On his hind legs he has a pair of spurs, like climbing irons, which he digs into the soil to get a hold. However, either he hasn’t learnt how to use them properly or has lived too well and grown fat, for four attempts have failed. He would doubtless have made many more had I not had compassion, spread one of
your
envelopes before him, enticed him on it and thrown him overboard. Now, was not that kind? The ants are too industrious; not content with the trench, they must crawl over me – as if I had notions to spare them! There is a nasty, black, jumping tribe of spiders – I kill any who come near me. I don’t like them.

Lt Arthur Terry, 23rd Northumberland Fusiliers (4th Tyneside Scottish)

Being out in the open is a perfect delight – one hears the hum of insect life, the song of birds, and one sees the swallows darting past nearly under your horse’s nose and butterflies of all colours and sizes, and now and again a flying beetle comes smack against one’s face as it sails along without any steerage way.

These beetles look very funny as they drift along perpendicularly and industriously fluttering their wings as much as to say ‘Don’t you dare to imagine I’m not as good as any bird at flying for I am’ – and all the time they haven’t the faintest idea where they are going and blunder on until somebody’s face or something else brings them up with a sound turn!

Pte Hugh Quigley, 12th Royal Scots

I have taken a new interest in beetles, especially when wakened at midnight by an inquisitive gentleman exploring my chest. They crawl up and down the walls of the dugout, strange jet-black monsters, shaped to inspire terror in a child’s soul. Caterpillars are very constant with their attentions, dear little playfellows escorted by earwigs and huge spiders. Ladybirds preen themselves on your knees and go to sleep in boots; ants delight to scamper up one leg and down the other, get lost sometimes and emerge at your neck in a great state of bewilderment. Greenflies and bluebottles utter dulcet melody all day long, strange buzzers hover on the face and tickle the ears and nostrils. There is a constant interchange of courtesies between grasshoppers on the banks, and crickets rattle lugubriously by the roadside at night . . .

There is something wonderfully picturesque in the life. Two nights ago, while heaving up earth, I saw what resembled a piece of phosphorus lying at my feet. I stooped down and picked it up. When it began to squirm and wriggle over my hand I knew it was a glow-worm, and digging took on interest. Henceforth my concern was to uncover glow-worms not to pile up a parapet.

Apart from their beauty, association makes them precious. I remembered Shelley’s lines on the skylark:

‘Like a glow-worm golden in a dell of dew.’

The antiquarian imagination raised that humble creature lying quiescent on the ground into the scope of fine imagery and broad-winged thought, touching it to the angel and posing it above the sordid. For the moment I forgot I was in the war, and not in the grasp of romance centred in narrative, alive in fiction.

It has been said that glow-worms, when collected in enough numbers, could produce a low luminous light, just enough to read a trench map, or perhaps to write a letter by. Whether there is any truth in this story is uncertain as no quote from a veteran has, so far, been discovered to substantiate it.

Part of the obvious interest in observing insects or animals was the parallels that could be drawn between their lives and those of human beings. There was the aggressive fight for life described by Captain Shaw, the ‘orgy of hunger and despair’, but more often the descriptions were either of ‘fun’ in which creatures appeared to mimic human traits, or a human-like desire to ‘pull a fast one’.

2/Lt Charles Douie, 1st Dorsetshire Rgt

I was sitting one morning in my dugout overlooking the orchard when I witnessed a strange little comedy. I was growing drowsy; we had been through a time of great strain. Our trenches had been destroyed by a barrage of great intensity; the Germans had attacked, and there had been heavy fighting with bomb and bayonet in our lines. Now there was a lull. The sun was warm, and a breeze whispered in the shell-riven trees. There was no sound of war but the intermittent thud of a sniper’s bullet from the ruins of the château as it struck the earth. I was nearly asleep when my eye was caught by a most unwarlike scene in the entrance to the dugout. A dud shell lay partly embedded in the dry mud. A mouse with his head on one side peered at me, then took refuge behind the shell, reappearing a moment later on the far side. This was repeated several times. Then, emboldened, the mouse departed and brought back a friend. A game ensued, and whenever I blinked the two fell over each other in a ludicrously human way as they sought the security of their strange haven.

Capt. Charles Rose, RFA, 2nd Army

The war horse is an extraordinarily intelligent animal and appreciates anything done for him in the way of comfort. He also becomes very cute and cunning, and always knows the routine of the day, and can tell his time of feeding almost to the minute, and, if allowed, would go by himself automatically to the water troughs and return to his own particular standing in the stable.

One horse familiarly known by the name of ‘Shrapnel’, owing to several wounds of that kind which refused to close up and completely heal, knew at once when he was ‘warned’ for the line. Now he disliked going out at nights, and consequently was in the habit of ‘scrimp-shanking’, and proceeded forthwith to go lame. At first he managed to fool everybody, but on close investigation it was discovered that nothing at all was the matter with him.

Capt. James Dunn, RAMC attd. 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers

A draught dog of the village, wounded in both forelegs, hobbled only a step or two at a time. He submitted trustfully to be handled, and looked grateful. Several medical officers and orderlies must have dressed him since he was hit and given him food . . . At 4 o’clock gas shells wakened me, none were near enough to worry about. The dog had gone. Dogs are like a lot of the wounded, think themselves unfit as long as they are made, or allowed, to wear a bandage.

Lt Andrew McCormick, 182nd Labour Coy

One dog, named ‘Towser’, was most faithful – always accompanying the company when they set out to work in the morning. One day Towser’s leg got gashed by barbed wire. The wounded leg was bandaged up by an NCO and to the amazement of all next day he did not go out with the company, but instead accompanied the sick to the hospital!

The human-like understanding that Shrapnel and Towser appeared to have was observed in a number of animals. Dogs and other creatures were often held in the trenches to warn of an imminent raid. Whether it was simply a case of relying on a dog’s acute hearing or there was something more prescient about any warning is not entirely clear.

Capt. James Dunn, RAMC attd. 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers

A bomb dropped quite near our billets, killed three RFC officers; they had gone out of their cottage and lain down in the garden to look up at the raiders. Those of us who slept near poultry had timely warning of aircraft we could not hear or see; the restlessness of the roosting hens and the loud quacking of the ducks was a sure sign of their coming.

Sapper Albert Martin, 122nd Signal Coy, 41st Div., RE

A black-and-white kitten, about three-quarters grown, lives in our dugout, and forms a centre of common interest. While things are quiet it will run about outside but it will not go far away. It recognises the sound of travelling shells but what is really remarkable is its ability to differentiate between ours and the enemy’s. Shells coming from guns behind us make a noise similar to that of Jerry’s coming towards us. But this cat can appreciate the difference in direction and also understands that danger comes from one direction only. Batteries of all sizes are around us at distances of two or three hundred yards and they are tolerably active. But puss takes no notice of our guns firing nor of the sing and whistle of our own shells coming towards us from the rear and passing over us towards the enemy; but directly Fritz starts to send any over to us she makes a beeline for the dugout. She doesn’t wait for the shell to burst; as soon as she hears its whistle she is off, no matter what she is doing; she will even leave her dinner and won’t come out of the dugout until the shelling is finished although none of the shells may fall dangerously near us. There is something more than instinct in that.

Incidents such as these were benign moments that served only to arouse men’s curiosity. Much rarer were those that appeared to be malevolent in nature and far harder to explain. Private Frank Richards, the down-to-earth pre-war regular, saw such an example, the only one of its kind that he witnessed in his entire war.

Pte Frank Richards, 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers

During one spell in the line at Hulloch, Dann and I came out of our little dugout, which was about fifteen yards behind the front-line trench, to clean our rifles and bayonets. We were just about to begin when there appeared, on the back of the trench we were in, the largest rat that I ever saw in my life. It was jet-black and was looking intently at Dann, who threw a clod of earth at it but missed, and it didn’t even attempt to dodge it. I threw a clod at it, then it sprung out of the way, but not far and began staring at Dann again. This got on Dann’s nerves; he threw another clod but missed again, and it never even flinched.

I had my bayonet fixed and made a lunge at it; it sprung out of the way for me all right, but had another intent look at Dann before it disappeared over the top. I would have shot it, for I had a round in the breach, but we were not allowed to fire over the top to the rear of us for fear of hitting men in the support trench; one or two men had been hit in this way by men shooting at rats, and orders were very strict regarding it.

Dann had gone very pale; I asked him if he was ill. He said that he wasn’t but the rat had made him feel queer. I burst out laughing. He said: ‘It’s all right you laughing, but I know my number is up. You saw how that rat never even flinched when I threw at it, and I saw something besides that you didn’t see or you wouldn’t be laughing at me. Mark my words, when I go West that rat will be close by.’ I told him not to talk so wet and that we may be a hundred miles from this part of the front in a week’s time. He said: ‘That don’t matter; if it’s two hundred miles off or a thousand, that rat will still be knocking around when I go West.’ Dann was a very brave and cheery fellow, the same as the rest of us, and never shirked a dangerous job, but all his former cheeriness had left him. Old soldiers who knew him well often asked me what was wrong with him. But I never told them; they might have chaffed him about it. Neither I nor Dann ever made any reference about the rat from that day on, and though we two had passed many hours together shooting rats for sport in those trenches, especially along at Givenchy by the canal bank, he never went shooting them again.

That summer, the preparations for the long-anticipated joint Allied offensive were well under way. New Divisions fresh out from England, as well as seasoned men who had seen action, all converged on the Somme. It was a region suitable not just for a battle but with two rivers, the Somme and the smaller Ancre, it was perfect for a spot of fishing, too.

Lt Philip Gosse, RAMC attd. 10th Northumberland Fusiliers