Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden (40 page)

She was well known at the British hospitals and was friendly with everybody. Comments were often made to me about having so handsome a dog, and men would stop me in the street and ask me how much I wanted for her. I told them that no amount of money could buy her; she was simply not for sale. Some of our drivers had picked up stray dogs; there were quite a number that had been ‘lost’ by their owners. Peace seems to have reigned among these mongrels and mine only rarely picked up fleas from them.

It is more than likely that my life was saved by the fact of my having her with me during all this time. There was a raging ‘flu’ that many army men caught: some died of it, possibly from the bad conditions in the overcrowded hospitals. I had to take many such cases, and, not unnaturally, I found myself with a very high temperature; I shook all over and my eyes ached and I saw everything blurred. Hospital was obviously the right place for me, I would only have had to ‘report sick’, but – and it was a desperate ‘but’ – what would have become of her? I thought of the horrible wet marquees where men were put, and the poor attention they were getting; and I knew that I should not find her when I came out. I decided not to go sick.

That day and the next I managed somehow to keep out of the way of people who might notice my shaking and obvious illness. I had to drive very slowly because I had so little strength in my arms, and the high fever made me anxious lest I should have an accident. I managed those two awful days and then gradually recovered. My dog was saved . . .

There was a period when I was taken off my ambulance to be a dispatch rider. One has to obey orders, however unpleasant they may be. I obtained an extra large knapsack and carried her on my back wherever I had to go. She would sit in it with her head poking out and often resting on my shoulder, enjoying the rush of air: my back-seat driver. This experience of sitting in a sack helped very materially when we left for home [at the end of the war].

Pte Frederick Voigt, Labour Corps

Our new camp lay at the foot of a gloomy hill. A disused trench ran right across it. Rifles, bayonets, bandoliers, grenades, water bottles, packs, articles of clothing and bits of equipment lay scattered everywhere. Barbed wire rusted in coils or straggling lengths. Rusty tins and twisted, rusty sheets of shrapnel-riddled corrugated iron littered the sodden mud. Water, rust-stained or black and fetid, stagnated in pools and shell-holes. The sides of the trench were moist with iridescent slime. Dead soldiers lay everywhere with grey faces, grey hands and mouldering uniforms. Their pockets were turned inside out and mud-stained letters and postcards, and sometimes a mildewed pocketbook or a broken mirror, were dispersed round every rotting corpse. In front of my tent the white ribs of a horse projected from a heap of loose earth. Nearby, a boot with a human foot inside emerged from the black scummy water at the bottom of a shell-hole. An evil stench hovered in the air.

We buried all the dead that lay within the camp lines. Then darkness descended and we crept into our tents. We were lying on wet, oozy clay, thinly covered with wisps of soaked grass and decaying straw where had been a cornfield here a year ago. There were thirteen of us in one tent. We were wedged in tightly, shoulder to shoulder, our feet all in one bunch.

Candles were lit and some of the men sat up and searched their clothes. I was conscious of a slight irritation, but was so tired and depressed that I resolved to ignore it and postpone my usual search to the following day. But as I lay still, trying hard to fall asleep, the irritation increased. At last it became so maddening that I started up in bitter rage. I lit my candle and pulled off my shirt.

‘Chatty are yer?’ said someone in an amused tone.

‘I’ve got a big one crawling about somewhere,’ I answered. None of us ever admitted that we had more than one or two, even when we knew we had a great many. It was also considered less disreputable to have one ‘big one’ than two small ones.

‘It’s the Gink’s fault ’e swarms with ’em. I was standin be’ind ’im in the ranks the other day an’ I saw three of ’em crorlin out of ’is collar up ’is neck. ’E never washes and never changes ’is clothes, so what can yer expect?’

The ‘Gink’ flared up at once:

‘Yer god-damn son of a bitch it’s youss guys that never washes. I bet yer me borram dollar I ’ant got a god-damn chat on me’ . . .

A long wrangle ensued. Wild threats and foul insults were flung about. But the quarrel, like nearly all our quarrels, did not go beyond violent words. I began to search and soon found a big swollen louse. I crushed it with my thumbnail so that the blood spurted out. I heard several faint cracks coming from the opposite side of the tent and knew that others were also hunting for vermin. I examined the seams of my shirt and found two or three more. Then, to my dismay, I discovered several eggs. They are so minute that some are sure to escape the most careful scrutiny. The presence of eggs is always a warning that many nights of irritation will have to pass by before the young grow sufficiently big to be discovered easily. I thought I had looked at every square inch of my shirt, but I looked at it a second time in order to make sure. I soon found a whitish elongated body clinging tightly to the cloth. Then I found another wedged into the seam. Meanwhile, my neighbour, who had been tossing about restlessly and scratching himself and sighing with desperate vexation, lit his candle and began to search busily. The sound of an occasional crack showed how successful he was.

The night was warm and sultry. A storm threatened and it was necessary to close the tent flap. I blew out my candle and wrapped myself in my blankets. I was unable to stretch my legs because others were in the way. I was hemmed and pressed in on all sides. I felt an impulse to kick out savagely, but was able to control myself.

The stifling heat became unbearable, and at the same time the cold, clammy moisture from the soft, sodden mud underneath began to penetrate groundsheet and blankets. The irritation recommenced. A louse so big that I could feel it crawling along stopped and drew blood. I tried in vain to go to sleep. I heard my neighbour scratching himself steadily. Nor could he find a comfortable position to lie in and kept twisting and turning and moaning. The other men were snoring or fidgeting restlessly. At length a fitful slumber came upon me and a confusion of rotting bodies swarming with monstrous lice passed before my closed eyes. I was fully awake long before reveille, sleepy and unrefreshed, and when reveille came we received orders to move within two hours.

All the evidence was there: the number of enemy prisoners, the inexorable retreat of the German army, the predominance of Allied firepower, yet only a few dared imagine that the war could be close to the finish. In the last weeks, the cavalry had once again asserted itself in open country; a last hurrah in which dragoons, lancers and hussars could harass the enemy, cutting lines of communication. For a few in the infantry, the appearance of the cavalry was a little late in the day as, one by one, village after village was liberated from four years of occupation.

Pte Thomas Hope, 1/5th King’s Liverpool Rgt

Seems like the end of the war to me; it’s a proper breakthrough at last. And then, most glorious sight of all, the cavalry. How we cheer them as they trot past. This is the first time I have seen mounted cavalrymen so near the front and in full warpaint, tin hat, spare bandoliers of ammunition round their horses’ necks, swords and rifles, everything complete. The creak of leather and the jingle of harnesses sound, to my ears, almost like the bells of peace. They canter over a rise in the ground and are lost to view, and I have an uncomfortable feeling that I won’t be in at the death after all. If this advance continues, with cavalry streaming through, the war will be over within a fortnight. It’s a great feeling chasing the Boche, even at a distance.

Pte Andrew Bowie, 5th Queens’ Own Cameron Highlanders

We had fallen out by the side of the road and suddenly we heard the patter of horses’ feet and round the corner came a squadron of cavalry. There they were, sitting on their horses, looking proud. And you should have heard the remarks. ‘Oh, they’ve come on their gee-gees to help us finish the war’, and ‘Oh, they haven’t brought their hobby horses with them.’

Pte Christopher Haworth, 14th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

Having crawled along for an hour we halt on the side of the road for a rest, which is not very satisfying, as we have to stand. On the side of the road are scores of carcasses of mutilated horses and mules. What a pitiable sight they make! I have always looked upon a horse as a noble animal, and to see them battered and mangled by shellfire sickens me.

‘I don’t think there’s a living creature under the sun which isn’t brought into the war,’ says one man.

‘It certainly looks like it,’ I reply.

Pte Frederick Voigt, Labour Corps

We came to a litter of wreckage that had once been a village and then we crossed the main road and entered a little wood, or rather an assembly of scarred tree trunks leaning at all angles, which was crossed by a zigzag trench and all the refuse of battle lay scattered about.

An Australian soldier lay on a low mound. His head had dropped off and rolled backwards down the slope. The lower jaw had parted from the skull. His hands had been devoured by rats and two little heaps of clean bones were all that remained of them. The body was fully clothed and the legs encased in boots and puttees. One thighbone projected through a rent in the trousers and the rats had gnawed white grooves along it. A mouldy pocketbook lay by his side and several postcards and a soiled photograph of a woman and a child. An attempt had been made to bury some of the dead, and several lay beneath heaps of loose earth with their boots projecting. But the rats had reached them all, and black, circular tunnels led down into the fetid depths of the rotting bodies. The stench that filled the air was so intolerable that we hastened to get out of this dreadful place.

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

The people were friendly and kind to us, but they seemed as yet too dazed to realise that the German occupation was actually a thing of the past. They were badly clad, looked sad and emaciated. What they craved was meat. They asked for the carcass of a horse that had been killed in our lines. It must have been a British horse, because all the German horses we came upon had been stripped of the best of their flesh. Seemingly every German on finding a dead horse took out his jackknife, cut himself a steak – preferably from the loin – and put it in his haversack for a future meal. The inhabitants stripped the bones; groups of old men, women and children could be seen round the carcasses.

Capt. Francis Hitchcock, 2nd Prince of Wales’ Leinster Rgt

At one point we came on a particularly revolting sight – half a dozen bare-footed women tearing off flesh from a mule, which had been killed some days previously in the advance. They had pulled the skin off the quarters, and with knives and forks were cutting off chunks, and putting them into handkerchiefs. They were ravenous with hunger.

Cpl Fred Hodges, 10th Lancashire Fusiliers

When I reached the back door of the farm, I found a small queue of men waiting, and saw an old Frenchman pumping up water from a well under an old stone sink; it was very primitive. Soon I moved into the stone-floored kitchen and, as I waited my turn, I studied his old wrinkled face, grey hair sprouting out from under a peaked cap. Outside, on the road, enemy shells were bursting, some quite near, but the old man was completely unconcerned as he pumped up water for the thirsty troops. His twinkling eyes and stolid peasant patience revealed an uncomplaining acceptance of the war on his farm; life must go on; British boys were thirsty, so he filled our water bottles.

Trp. Benjamin Clouting, 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards

Increasing numbers of German prisoners could be seen, trudging back to our makeshift prison cages. Many were ridiculously young and looked as if their world had fallen to pieces. They looked dishevelled, their equipment dilapidated, for their lines of supply were breaking down, and many had been left to scrounge their own food. At one farmhouse where I stopped right at the end of the war, I found the owners in tears: the Germans had passed through, the previous night, and had eaten their old guard dog, cooking it at the farm.

Pte Dick Trafford, 1/2nd Monmouthshire Rgt

We were capturing the enemy all the time. I wouldn’t say young boys, I’d say young men. They were glad that it was ending because from their point of view they would be right for meals, that’s what they tried to explain to us, they’d not seen a decent meal in a long time. The only thing they could do had been to kill their horses and use the meat for food.

Lt Col Rowland Fielding, 15th London Rgt (Civil Service Rifles)

On reaching the town, as I found no horse or wheeled traffic other than some belonging to our army, I sent my horses home and walked, so as to be in company with the inhabitants, every one of whom was on foot. No, not quite. I saw a hearse drawn by what could have been called a ‘skin’: indeed, it was less than a skin. It was a skeleton. That was the only horse or vehicle that I saw in Lille today, left behind by the Germans after their merciless occupation of the city.