Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden (34 page)
Read Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden Online
Authors: Richard van Emden
Pte Thomas Hope, 1/5th King’s Liverpool Rgt
Idly I watch the pigeon man and officer fix messages to the legs of two pigeons, then free them, and up they soar. One second they are there, thirty feet above the ground, the next they have gone, just disappeared. A feather or two floats down gently, and the pigeon man makes off for another pair of birds. He had only been gone three or four minutes when a lance corporal pokes his head round the traverse shouting, ‘Duggan’s hit, sir.’
‘Badly?’ inquires the officer.
‘Dead, sir, a shell got him.’
‘Had he the birds with him?’
‘Don’t think so, sir; didn’t see them.’
‘All right, corporal.’
Then turning to me. ‘See if you can get those pigeons and bring them here.’
‘Very good, sir’ – and off I go.
There’s very little semblance of trench left, and I have to crawl past the spots where the parapet has been blown down, over dead bodies, and past wounded who groan when I knock up against them. I step over Duggan’s body, he’s dead all right, and further along in a little niche cut out of the trench side I find the wooden cage with the two pigeons. I wait a little as three shells fall in quick succession on the trench just ahead, then make a bolt back to my own section.
One of the birds is taken out. Poor creature, it is cooing away as if it was in some quiet country loft, or at some village race meeting. The message is soon fixed and up the bird goes. I watch it until it is lost to sight, but the lieutenant keeps his glasses trained on it, then as he lowers them:
‘It’s down, we’ll have to send a runner.’
The battles of 1917 tested the British Army to an extraordinary degree, sapping men of much of their resilience. They had little left to live on except the comradeship that bound them to their friends and the love they had for their animals.
Lt Andrew McCormick, 182nd Labour Coy
I recall one of the things which pleased and cheered me most of anything I saw during the war. I happened to be on a railhead one day when wounded horses from the line were being entrained. I saw a man leading along a horse that was severely wounded in several places. He could not have shown more consideration for a human being than he did for that horse. After every few paces he succeeded in coaxing the animal along, he placed his shoulder under the animal’s jaw and allowed it to rest its head there. I was so much struck by that soldier’s humane conduct that I went forward to him and said, ‘Your kindly treatment of these animals is most praiseworthy and I have seen nothing finer in the war.’ He seemed pleased but excused himself for his tender heartedness by saying, ‘Well, sir, how would you feel if you was both deaf and dumb and could not make known the pain you feel?’
Further along the railhead I saw another officer standing, and I repeated what I had told the soldier. By slow degrees the soldier and his horse came right opposite where we were standing. To my surprise the soldier said to the officer, ‘This one is not quite so bad as the last one, sir’, and then I felt glad that I had not failed to praise that kind, thoughtful soldier to his own officer.
Cpl Robert Evans, 36th Div., Signal Coy, RE
I remember only too well working with several others for hours in the darkness in a desperate effort to save a pair of beautiful draught horses who were gradually sinking in the mud. As this was happening well within range of the German machine gunners, we had to work in darkness while their driver spoke quiet endearments to his horses, to encourage them.
It was a heartbreaking, horribly long-drawn-out, losing battle, and gradually we knew that they were doomed. Poor tragic driver! I have never forgotten you; you, who had looked after them for so long and loved them so much, now wept, heartbroken, and who shall wonder that you wept?
Lt Charles Bennet, 162nd Brigade, RFA
Just as I finished my last letter to Mary a shell fell in the middle of one of our teams wounding five mules, two of which had to be shot. The poor driver who had one of the mules was heartbroken at its death. By some merciful chance no one was wounded, except that driver whose ear was cut: he didn’t mind that because the death of his mule absorbed him: he kept on saying ‘and he was my donkey, my donkey’ poor fellow. They do love their animals.
Driver Herbert Doggett, RFA
Our ammunition wagon had got up and it had only been there a second or two when a shell killed the horse under the driver. We went over to him, tried to unharness the horse and cut the traces away. He just kneeled and watched this horse . . . A brigadier came along, a brass hat, he tapped this boy on the shoulder and said, ‘Never mind, sonny!’ This driver looked up at him, just for a second or two, and all of a sudden he said, ‘Bloody Germans!’ Then he pointed his finger and he stood there as though he was transfixed, stood there like stone. The Brass Hat said to his captain, ‘All right, take the boy down the line and see that he has two or three days’ rest.’
When an animal was so badly wounded that there was no possibility of it continuing in the team, it had to be abandoned to an uncertain future. Not knowing what would become of a treasured horse or mule was worse than knowing it was out of its misery.
Rifleman Aubrey Smith, 1/5th London Rgt (London Rifle Brigade)
Very early the next morning I went out on to the lines to see the old horse who had been my mainstay for over a year and a half. There he stood, with his mutilated leg swathed in the rough and ready bandages that had been applied by lamplight, his brown eyes looking sadly at me, as much as to say: ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ Chrisp had said that he would be of no further use and would probably have to be shot; did he instinctively know this as he rubbed his old nose against me?
I thought of his good points, not his jibbing qualities, in that moment; how he had taken me all through the mud and squalor of the Somme at the expense of the flesh he had put on in the blessed days at Third Army Headquarters at St-Pol, and how the third winter, the Battle of Arras and Ypres had all seen Jumbo ready at any time to pull his share even though it was sometimes such a bore to start off!
After I had handed over my pair I had watched them with a fatherly interest, even to the extent of putting down more than their fair share of hay while on picket! Now, I was really upset at the thought of parting with Jumbo.
After an early breakfast, the other horses were taken off the lines and hooked in their limbers. Leaving Ben in someone’s charge I crossed over to my old friend again and stood by him until the last moment, a lump rising in my throat.
‘Goodbye, Jum! You’ve been a faithful old pal and I shan’t forget you. Yes, the old Grey’s leaving you. So am I. Let’s stroke your nose for the last time.’
‘Get mounted.’
‘Goodbye, Jum!’
He begins to fret and whimper. Gordon rides past. The Lewis gun limbers are moving off down the brick-laid slope into the road, brakesmen are ready waiting their opportunity to slip half their impediments on to the limbers. Taking a last look round, I see the other unit preparing to take possession of the deserted lines. I also see a solitary horse, head erect as far as his chain will permit, plunging against the rope and prancing to and fro – on three legs.
Six months after the United States entered the war, Russia under the new Bolshevik government sued for peace with the Germans. The Tsar’s regime had been overthrown and so, in a sense, had his war. Peace with Russia released a million Germans from the east to fight in the west – a piece of undoubtedly unpalatable news to the Allies in France and Belgium. If Germany could force a wedge between the Allies, throwing the British back on to the Channel ports, there was just a chance that the war could be won.
It was not until mid-March that Germany would be in a position to strike and, with the knowledge that an offensive was on the way, the Allies prepared in detail to meet the onslaught. When it came, helped by a fortunate spring morning mist, the German troops caused havoc among the British front-line soldiers. The speed and penetration of advance were so fast, so deep, that many British gun batteries miles in the rear were overwhelmed before they started firing.
Within three weeks, Douglas Haig, the Commander-in-Chief, issued his ‘backs to the wall’ address to the men. Such was the seriousness of the situation that every man was expected to fight it out with the enemy, and that included cooks and transport drivers. As the British retreated, so canteens and dumps of food and supplies were burnt to stop them falling into the hands of their enemy. However, not all canteens were destroyed. German soldiers, poorly fed and hungry, were astonished at the sight of the quantity and quality of the foodstuffs available to them. The food did a lot to stave off their immediate hunger but it helped to undermine morale, too.
The German forces were eventually held in front of Amiens, but, rather than battering away at the same position, the Germans switched their attack to the north, to Armentières and then Ypres. Once again their success, though startling at first, soon ground to a halt. The German forces simply did not have the military infrastructure and the necessary supply lines to maintain the momentum. Energy was dissipated and, when attacks were made elsewhere, it was clear that the failure of the German effort in the west was approaching.
By mid-1918, the Americans had already taken to the field in force and had suffered many casualties too, but there was an almost infinite number of fresh units to come. German morale began to crack. When the British and Empire troops launched a well-planned and well-executed counter-offensive in August, the great swathes of prisoners taken were testament to the enemy’s rapidly eroding will to resist. So many prisoners were boys, so many old men, far too many with poorer quality, worn-out equipment. Allied artillery was now predominant and barrages cripplingly heavy and sustained, while the assimilation of all arms into one combined operation was not only technically possible but could at last be implemented. Many Allied soldiers predicted that the end of the war was coming, fewer that it would in the end come so rapidly.
Most historians agree that, with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that German chances of delivering a knockout blow against the British and French in 1918 were in fact small.
Nevertheless, the ferocity of the German strike opened up the Western Front in a way not seen since the earliest days of the war. The tactics had moved on. Terms such as rapid infiltration, elastic defence and all-arms operations were all the rage and for good reason: they worked. Yet despite the advances on almost all fronts, in tactics, weaponry and communications, there was something unnervingly reminiscent of the fighting in 1918 compared to that of 1914. There was the rapid retreat, civilians thrown once more on to pavé roads, belongings and all, farm animals let loose, hungry soldiers, large tracts of battlefields that looked, on first viewing, untainted by war.
Armies were on the move, and, while modern weapons such as tanks were critical to the breaking of enemy defences such as the Hindenburg Line in September 1918, it was the cavalry that came to the fore, once more harassing the enemy. It was the horses, not the tanks, that ended the war, dragoons and hussars charging enemy positions close to Mons just as they had done in August 1914.
Unlike 1914, the advantage now lay with the Allies. The Germans were put to flight, not quite as relentlessly as the British Expeditionary Force four years before, but in a prolonged and exhausting retreat nevertheless.
Sandwiched between the German March Offensive and the Allied advance to victory, often known now as ‘the last 100 days’, was a time of stability, a brief period when both sides held a collective breath and took stock of the situation. It was the summer and once again nature flourished and men appreciated the beauty of butterflies and the flight of beetles in an attractive countryside. Yet when the decisive move came and the Germans fell back, there was a different mood. The old battlefields of the Somme that the Germans had fought so hard to capture just months before were relinquished quickly. The ground near Arras and in front of Ypres was given up too, taking the Allies to land not seen since 1914. But the men of 1914 had long gone and the war was now fought predominantly by young lads of eighteen and nineteen, led by officers not much older. Open warfare to them was a curious spectacle. It ran counter to anything they had ever read in the newspapers and to a degree it ran counter to what they themselves had seen. Soldiers found themselves in fields and barns, in ditches and lanes full of vegetation, deer crashing through the undergrowth in the Forest of Nieppe. The dead were now to be seen lying in a verdant countryside, in country gardens and châteaux grounds where bees hummed and birds sang. It seemed unnatural to many soldiers and a violation: the dead belonged to a war-torn battlefield, not here.
