Bonzo's War (11 page)

8
  The evacuees would have plenty of choice because 1939 was a big year for dog films. They might have enjoyed
Peace on Earth
, an MGM cartoon parable released that year, in which the human race extinguishes itself in war and animals take over. Of UK productions,
Owd Bob
was still going the rounds, joined in July by
Border Collie
, a Cumberland-set semi-documentary, narrated by its hero ‘Jeff' and followed promptly by
Sheep Dog
, which took the formula to Wales and featured ‘Mr Tom Jones' the shepherd, his horse ‘Tufty' and dogs ‘Scott', ‘Guide' and ‘Chip'.

The big news from Hollywood was
The Wizard of Oz
, in which Dorothy Gale's dog, ‘Toto', was played by a brindle Cairn Terrier bitch (real name ‘Terry'). Alsatian star ‘Rin Tin Tin (III)' had outings that year in
Law of the Wolf
and
Fangs of the Wild
. Yorkshire author Eric Knight meanwhile was in the middle of writing the short story, ‘Lassie Come Home', that would be filmed in 1943 to establish the most famous dog movie franchise of all.

More urbane dogs in the Bolton audience would have enjoyed Myrna Loy and William Powell in the 1939 release,
Another Thin Man
, featuring the famous Wire Haired Fox Terrier ‘Skippy' as their pet ‘Asta'. Already his appearances in the series and in other films had created a huge interest in the breed in both the US and UK.

My own 1939 favourite would have been the peerless
Society Dog Show
, in which Mickey Mouse enters Pluto. While Mickey grooms his mutt, Pluto starts swooning over ‘Fifi' the Peke. Things get worse before they get better. In contrast, pre-war feline movie stars were thin on the ground.

9
  The equipment of a National Animal Guard comprises:
One armlet
One house poster
One registration book
100 identity discs and split rings
A number of NARPAC handbooks
Approved adjustable elastic cat collars
One official collecting box, numbered and sealed

All the concerns thus far had been about animals in cities. Of course there were plenty more in the countryside – where the nation's agricultural economy was being urgently mobilized for war. Food rationing was coming. What would that mean for animals? Petrol was rationed from the very start. A NARPAC badge was no guarantee of getting any. People must learn all over again how to get around by horse.

Very soon the return of horses to both town and country was generally noted – pulling tradesmen's vans while evacuated townies in the country had resorted to the pony and trap. It would be noted: ‘Governesses' carts were getting £40. They could not be given away before the war.'

Urban horses, like pets, were not going to be officially evacuated. Nor could they be taken into shelters. Detailed instructions on how to control horses during air raids were meanwhile put out by NARPAC. Garages and stabling were designated as street shelters plus emergency standing in parks and playing fields in London was scouted out by Captain Hope, the assistant editor of
Riding
magazine.

Colonel Stordy could report on 11 September that the many railway horses in the capital were in good protective
order and that the means of removal of maimed or dead animals was in place. ‘The King has permitted the use of the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace as an emergency horse standing, large enough for about 20 animals, and a first aid post,' he said. ‘A horse ambulance also is stationed in the mews.'

There was another aspect of equine activity far from the big city that enjoyed royal patronage: hunting. Foxhounds and hunters were not pets but they were civilian animals, inspiring deep sentiment among those who tended them and bitter divisions within the animal ‘welfare' world. And so horse and hound (and fox) have their places in this story.

Goaded by a small but vocal anti-hunting lobby, the Masters of Fox Hounds Association had made soundings in early 1939.What would war mean for hunting? Would there be rationing, or mass mobilization of horsepower for the Army? A public opinion-winning move would be a voluntary reduction in dog packs (expressed as ‘couples' – pairs of dogs) and oat-consuming hunters.

The MFHA circulated members on 29 August with instructions ‘in the event of war', while admitting, ‘cub-hunting [the season had begun on the 4th] may only be carried on under very great difficulties. But it would be prejudicial to the country to stop it altogether.'

They recommended that ‘Cubbing should take place where conditions allow, in order to kill as many foxes as possible, but it should not be looked on as a form of sport as long as the war lasts.' Meanwhile masters should, ‘consider reductions in their establishments generally.'

When war came,
Horse & Hound
magazine had no doubts. ‘Hunting must continue!' it proclaimed on 22 September.
With men being called up, the sporting paper insisted: ‘Women huntsmen will carry on so that, after the forces of evil have been run to ground, we can continue once again with the traditional sport of our fathers.' It was suggested that evacuee children should follow hunts and visit kennels to see for themselves the importance of hunting in country life. ‘War or no war,' reported
The Tatler
, ‘it is on record that the Quorn have been killing their fox a day.' A page of photographs depicted a special day's hunting organized for the officers of the Life Guards.

The Field
lamented, ‘War is upon us at the very commencement of cubbing.' The magazine's correspondent out with the Croome for its first austerity hunt of the season in November 1939, noted: ‘No brave scarlet and gleaming toppers, instead rat-catcher interspersed with khaki, unclipped horses and a sadly depleted field.' The writer however knew what mattered: ‘But let us forget the troubles of this mad world. Wars and rumours of wars retreat into insignificance when hounds are running.'

Hunting was also important in British military life. The place of the horse-borne pursuit of foxes in modern war was harder to define than in 1914 when it was both the cradle of valour and a source of cavalry mounts. Soon after the outbreak of this new war, the 1st Cavalry Division had been sent off to Palestine to do nobody knew quite what. The British Expeditionary Force had been shipped across the channel propelled entirely by internal combustion engines plus a number of mules. By late 1939 its men were coming home on leave. Would they bring back adopted foreign pets?

The Ministry of Agriculture reminded everyone how smuggled dogs had caused serious rabies outbreaks at the end of the First World War and there should especially be no regimental pets belonging to ‘colonial or
dominion troops, which had been the source of so much trouble in 1914'.

It posted a stern notice: ‘Soldiers and airmen are reminded of the dangers of allowing stray dogs and cats to attach themselves to them. They must be handed over to military police for disposal.' And early in 1940 there was an Air Ministry order amending King's Regulations, ‘to prevent the movement or importing into this country by air of dogs and cats'. There must be no flying pets.

In the same British Expeditionary Force however, now in France, there were reportedly officers keen to keep up the old traditions by importing packs of hunting dogs from Britain, as Wellington's officers had done. The French Minister of the Interior refused to make any of the countryside available. He told them, a little coolly, that the French treated the war seriously.

The Royal Artillery Foxhounds, with the exception of seven couples, were destroyed soon after the outbreak of war, but one hunting historian states: ‘Major Montacute Selby-Lowndes took a pack of beagles to France with the British Expeditionary Force,' while the whipper-in of the Royal Artillery Hunt, Captain Frederick Burnaby Edmeades, ‘managed to smuggle a couple of harriers with them to France and enjoyed several weeks hunting until apprehended by the Gendarmerie and hauled before the Army Commander.' All very dashing but it was not modern warfare.

When an MP asked in Parliament on 2 October whether the Minister of Agriculture ‘should take advantage of the present situation and bring this savage and destructive sport to a complete close?' it was a marker of the way things were going politically. The chairman of the British Field Sports Society wrote the next day to the agriculture minister, Major Sir R. H. Dorman Smith, to say: ‘Where would the
eighteen or so mounted yeomanry regiments found today get their horses were it not for hunting? Mounted regiments may yet come into their own in this war.'

Lord Burghley, Master of the East Sussex Hounds (then a junior minister at the Ministry of Supply), wrote to the Minister on the 4th: ‘What I hear from fellow masters is that they are making large reductions on their packs to keep the show going until the end of the war so that one of the greatest and happiest facets of our country life may not be lost and centuries of careful breeding destroyed in a moment.'

The story of field sports and war was to be a tortuous one. Lord Burghley would have a special place in it.

Of course the countryside was much more than a sporting playground. It was where food came from to feed the nation – or at least some of it. Half of the bulk feedstuff for Britain's cattle was imported. It had long been cheaper than home grown. The sea lanes were not yet contested, but they surely would be, as they had been by German submarines in 1917–18, when greedy dogs were blamed for eating all the food. A prominent Tory MP had declared if he had his way, he would have ‘every Pekingese dog in the country killed and made into meat pies'.

This time round planners knew that, should war come, importing killed meat in refrigerated ships was a more efficient means of getting protein into the country than importing grain to fatten British herds. Sheep meanwhile ate British upland grass.

To survive the siege there would have to be fewer cattle in the nation's fields, but eating more home-grown feedstuff coming from more land, which had yet to be put under the plough. There was nothing to spare – not even chickenfeed.

Every source of protein was vulnerable. Eggs came from Poland, even China. ‘It is too early yet to frame a definite
policy in respect of pigs, poultry or eggs, in view of the large amount of cereals [maize and barley], required for these forms of production, a large proportion of which has in the past been imported,' the Agriculture Minister Reginald Dorman-Smith announced on 19 October 1939.

But there had to be some sort of action. There were sudden local shortages. Foodless pigs and chickens were being slaughtered wholesale. By the winter of 1939–40 there was generalized panic that the larder was emptying. Anything with a mouth or beak that could not itself be eaten, even those that could be, seemed to be an enemy within. Animal-loving Louise Lind-af-Hageby despaired at the ‘stupidity' of it all when she wrote a little later:

Those clamouring for the killing of animals knew already that the number of cattle had been severely reduced, that hens had been killed on an enormous scale, there had been a clamour for the trapping of ten million moles, that the pigeons of cathedrals and Trafalgar Square had been threatened with extinction. In some people's minds, the idea of winning the war had become associated with exterminating every nonhuman creature.

Crows, jackdaws, sparrows, starlings, pigeons and rooks were being trapped or shot in their thousands. For the lowlier rural orders, according to one authority, ‘the war seemed a splendid excuse for the legalisation of poaching'.

When partridge and pheasant shoots became unviable (beaters had been called up),
The Field
magazine suggested hunting grey squirrels, which had been declared a pest under 1939 emergency legislation. But not necessarily to eat:

Shooting men can get a deal of fun in dealing with him. And in helping to rid the country of an animal in whose favour it is difficult to say anything, they will be doing work of national importance.

The war might be sundering urban humans from their pets, but it was filling the cities with different sorts of animals. There was the return of the town horse. Now it was animals you could eat. Soon after the outbreak of war, the Minister of Agriculture had appealed for an army of backyard poultry keepers to be raised. As
Eggs
, the magazine of the Scientific Poultry Breeders Association, declared on 6 September: ‘We appeal to every reader of
Eggs
to be of good heart and confident in the future,' while admitting, ‘the interference with grain supplies is likely to cause us much trouble.'

The writer George Orwell was a keen reader of
Eggs
, as a smallholder at his tiny country cottage in Wallington, Hertfordshire, some twenty miles north of London. His winter 1939 diary recorded plans for springtime poultry breeding and ‘maybe going in for rabbits & bees'.

‘Rabbits are not to be rationed,' he wrote. ‘The butcher says that people will not as a rule buy tame rabbits for eating but their ideas change when meat gets short.'