Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden (30 page)

Lt Andrew McCormick, 182nd Labour Coy

I was sitting in the mess one night when one of my corporals flung a puppy inside the door, remarking in the most casual sort of way – ‘a souvenir for you, sir’, and before I could even thank him the door had closed. It was a dear wee Manchester terrier, black with brown points. It certainly brought brightness and liveliness into the mess. It was chameleon-like in its movements. It captivated everybody about the place – but still it was my dog – and my dog I was determined it would be. One day about a fortnight after it had thus been gifted to me, I was walking along a road when a lorry drew up. An NCO hopped down, saluted, and as he said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but you’ve got my dog’, he picked it up. I observed the dog struggling to get away. I said, ‘How long have you lost the dog?’ He said, ‘About a fortnight, sir.’ I said, ‘We’ve just had it a fortnight and we’re very fond of it’, and he said, ‘And I’m fond of it too, sir.’ I thought, well, I’ll see whether you are or not – and so I said, ‘Would ten francs be any use to you?’ He said, ‘I’ll be glad to let you have it for that, sir.’ And gladly I paid him the filthy lucre, for I thought that anybody who could part with that dog for 7/6 [seven shillings and sixpence] should never have the privilege of keeping a dog.

Like all soldiers’ dogs ‘Teddie’ was made a great deal of, but she repaid it all many times over. She fed as and when she pleased, and even made free with my bed – although she knew that my batman banned sleeping on my bed. Often when I came in late, as I turned on my flashlight I would see where the wee doggie had been snugly lying and would just catch a glimpse of her hind legs disappearing into her own box. She loved to sit on my shoulders, and one day an old French woman, seeing her sitting there thus, addressed me: ‘Ah, M’sieur, bonne piccaninnie!’

We dubbed the doggie ‘Teddie’ because she loved to dance round on her hind legs when ‘Are you there little Teddy Bear?’ was played on the gramophone. Bell, my batman, took a great pride in Teddie. He used to try to undo all the bad habits I taught her. Being a soldier’s pet dog, I just felt that she did so much to cheer me I could scarcely do enough for her in repayment. Chocolate at 5/- [five shillings] a packet was entirely consumed by Teddie, and when the magic word ‘choco’ was uttered she just danced with delight. Bell was firmer with her – at any rate where the bedclothes were concerned. When he caught her on the bed he would look angry and say, ‘I’ll warm you, my lady’, but I’m sure he never had it in his heart to hit her. He used always to say, ‘If we have to part with that dog, sir, I’ll shoot her first. It wouldn’t be fair to leave that dog behind.’

Lt Reginald Dixon, 251st Siege Batt., RGA

Soldiers love animals and will make pets of any strays they find. After the Vimy Ridge battle, the battery I was serving with at that time found in the battered village of Thélus a small mongrel dog that had had its front paw shot away by a shell splinter. The brigade MO had treated it, the wound had healed, and the MO had actually made and fitted a little artificial wooden leg for the little beast. We named him Thélus, because that was where he was found, and he became the battery pet, running around among the guns as if the business of war was his natural milieu.

It was not only French farmers who used dogs in a working capacity. Dogs worked on an official basis in the army, running messages from the front line back to headquarters. Senior commanders had had to be convinced that dogs were capable of carrying messages in battlefield conditions, and after extensive trials in 1916 Airedales were found to be among the most reliable. However, despite this evidence, a large number of varieties were used in France and Belgium with varying degrees of success, although, as a rule, dogs with darker coats were chosen as they blended in better with the surroundings. Each dog was given a name such as Rab, Nipper, Ray and Surefoot, with notes including the name of the handler and the battalion to which they were attached. Records were also kept as to what happened to the dogs. Rab, an Airedale and Ray, a whippet, were killed in service, Surefoot, a collie, was destroyed for ‘being useless’, while Nipper, an Irish terrier/Airedale cross, survived the war.

Rifleman Alfred Read, 1/18th London Rgt. (Irish Rifles)

My first job was to take a dog up the line. The idea was to train this one (and others) to bring back messages. Anyhow, they were a complete failure, because whenever a shell came over they would dash into the nearest dugout and sit whining, so that the boys would make a fuss of them, and they would not leave. One dog, a black retriever, was at Bedford House [a destroyed château used as HQ]. The strange thing about this one was that he would never leave the place. As one brigade took over from another, so he would attach himself to the newcomers. He was named ‘Wipers’ and was a marvel at catching rats. Shortly after, orders were issued that all dogs found within three miles of the front line were to be destroyed, because it was discovered that the Germans had been training some of them to cross our lines. Old ‘Wipers’ must have known something, because he suddenly vanished.

A number of soldiers referred to this order to shoot stray dogs. Certainly both sides brought bitches on heat into the front line to distract enemy messenger dogs from carrying out their duties.

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

We have some dogs that have been trained as message carriers. They go backwards and forwards between us and certain stations in the line. They are fairly big, ugly looking mongrels and they are persuaded to do their work by the prospect of food at the other end. That is to say, a dog that is to do a journey is kept from food for a few hours. From experience he knows that he will get a meal at another certain spot, so as soon as he is released, with the message fixed to his collar, he makes a beeline for grub.

The principle of focusing on food was used in exactly the same way when it came to the army’s use of carrier pigeons. Unlike dogs, pigeons had been trusted messengers from the earliest days of the war. By the end of 1915, fifteen pigeon stations were in use on the Western Front but with the introduction of mobile lofts on the Somme, their number had grown exponentially with several thousand available to carry messages during the battle. There were some clear advantages to using pigeons. Unlike dogs, pigeons were less likely to get bogged down in mud and, given their relative size, they made a difficult target to shoot. However, they remained vulnerable to attack by birds of prey and more susceptible to failure and capture in adverse weather.

2/Lt Frank Mitchell, Tank Corps

A squad of officers was marched into the pigeon hut, where a sergeant explained to them, with great detail, how and when to feed a pigeon, how to release it from its basket, how to roll up and attach a message to the clip on its leg, and how to start it off on its journey.

One weary pigeon acted as a demonstrator. Each officer advanced in turn, grabbed the poor bird in one hand, attached the message with the other, and replaced the pigeon in the basket. These lessons were going on all day long, and the wretched bird had become so used to being clumsily handled by scores of officers that it scarcely made a movement, realising perhaps that passive resistance was the wisest plan.

It is interesting to recall that when a pigeon is released with a message from a tank in action, it is thrown downward so that its wings will open out, and it can then rise swiftly and fly away.

Colour Sgt William Meatyard, Plymouth Bttn, RMLI

The artillery had a telephone in the dugout, so that we could soon get a message through to the guns. Pigeons were kept in case of emergency only, the message being fixed to their leg in a small aluminium cylinder. The bird when let loose would make for its loft at Brigade Headquarters. There, by entering its loft, pushing through a trapdoor, an electric bell rang, which told the attendant that a bird had arrived. A fresh couple were then let loose with a practice message, ‘Wind S.W.’ or something. Only water was given them whilst up in the trenches so that they went quickly for grub. These birds will fly through artillery barrages and even gas, although after a time gas would affect them and for this purpose a sack treated with chemical was kept in the dugout.

Lt Murray Webb-Peploe, 23rd Heavy Artillery Group

I went for a walk with the doctor this evening and we captured a Boche carrier pigeon which was apparently exhausted. It just flopped along in a field and we caught it quite easily. It has a nickel ring on one foot with NURP and some figures on it. Haven’t found a message on it so far. I suppose it will have to be sent to the Intelligence Department. We have it in a cage and are feeding it on water, oats and bread. Had another look at it just now and found my servant had supplied the pigeon with a liberal slice of bread and jam!

The bird had become exhausted from flying into the wind and died a few hours later; whether this was from overexertion or jam poisoning, Webb-Peploe was never sure.

By 1917, the British Army was awash with ‘schools’ giving training courses and lectures on almost every aspect of army life in which it was deemed a course would help with the long-term prosecution of the war. Hygiene and vermin control were perhaps not as high on the agenda as some officers might have liked but even this attitude was changing, as Philip Gosse was about to find out. His role of hunting voles for the Natural History Museum was about to come to an abrupt end.

Capt. Philip Gosse, Rat Officer, 2nd Army

The staff officer quickly came to the point, ‘Are you Captain PHG Gosse?’ ‘Yes,’ I admitted, though wondering whatever it was all about. ‘Well,’ continued the staff officer, ‘am I right in understanding you know all about rats?’

I wanted to learn a little more before giving a definite answer. So to gain time I replied, ‘Well, I know a good deal about birds.’

‘That’s excellent,’ said he. ‘You are appointed Rat Officer to the Second Army and will report forthwith to the Director General Medical Services to the Second Army at Hazebrouck’, whereupon, without waiting for any further observations from me or bidding me farewell or even expressing any interest in my bad cold, he right-about turned and marched out of the room.

In peacetime every man’s hand had been against the rat: every farmer took some means or other to keep him in check, if not to exterminate him, while most houses had a cat or a dog which also helped. But when the armies came, most of the farmers left, and for some mysterious reason the dogs left as well – the French peasants said the English soldiers took them, and not without some justification, for almost every British battalion was accompanied by a small pack of mongrel mascots wherever it went. But probably the most important reason for the increase in rats was food. The British Army was supplied with a vast surplus of rations. Food, stale bread, biscuits and particularly cheese littered the ground. Some quartermasters, to save themselves trouble and to guard against any risk of being caught without enough, would indent for greater quantities of rations than they required or were entitled to.

While organising my rat campaign, I had to travel far and wide over the army area, interviewing all manner of officers from proud brigadier generals to suspicious quartermasters. The latter were by far the most difficult to deal with. Not only were they suspicious – there was nothing about rat-catchers or catching rats in King’s Regulations – but they particularly resented any assumption on my part that their stores might be better if they were protected from rats by wire netting. Considering that by this time almost every quartermaster’s store had become so swarming with vermin . . . it might have been thought that any suggestions to improve matters would be welcomed. But this was far from being the case.

I had to deliver lectures. These began in a quite small way at Hazebrouck, where a school of sanitation for officers had been started and where courses of lectures were delivered by various experts, each on his own special subject. Last but two on the syllabus of subjects came mine, rats; the two even lower on the list being flies and parasites, the experts on which were familiarly referred to as OC Maggots and OC Lice.

At first the lectures were given only to officers, but soon classes were formed for men as well. On a table were arranged specimens I had caught and stuffed of most of the small mammals to be met within or behind the trenches, as well as models and drawings of traps. To most of those who saw these, it came as a surprise to learn how many different animals there were in northern France, believing as they did that the brown or trench rat was the only beast but man to be found in Flanders. Amongst the exhibits were moles, hedgehogs, common shrews, garden shrews, weasels, stoats, polecats, bank voles, subterranean voles, orchard dormice, wood mice, harvest mice, rabbits and pipistrelle bats. My lecture came in time to be looked upon as a sort of drawing-room entertainment much in the way conjurers and ventriloquists are, who give refined entertainments at children’s Christmas parties.

It was a pleasant surprise to find how keen these soldiers were on natural history. At first, I feared they would be bored with anecdotes about birds and beasts, but the majority seemed very interested. After one of the lectures on rats a middle-aged man from a Yorkshire regiment told me how, quite recently, he had entered a wrecked church at Ypres in search of some wood to make a fire with. He found and pulled some down behind the ruined altar, and in doing so uncovered a large bat asleep. After carefully examining the bat he put it into a box, and afterwards laid the box near the fire he had made. After a while, the warmth of the fire – this happened during very cold weather – awakened the bat, which began to scramble about in the box, so the soldier let it out and it flew away.