Bonzo's War (16 page)

There were questions in Parliament. The Secretary of State for War had been asked in May ‘whether he was aware that the Germans had something like 100,000 dogs', all seemingly ready to pounce. Mr Anthony Eden referred to ‘training experiments now in progress' with the British Army. At the time, although he did not admit it, there were just four official war dogs.

Clearly there should be many more for there was no shortage of talent, human or canine. A search began for dog handlers already serving with HM Armed Forces.

The Dog World
picked up the doggy rumours, referring to the ‘experimental work being done by Mr H. S. Lloyd'. ‘One can easily imagine an Alsatian dashing forwards and attacking a parachutist,' said the ever-eager journal. Just look how clever dogs had been in pre-war dog show intelligence tests. ‘One could surely coach one of these intelligent little fellows to spot one of these “hell's angels” in whatever guise they might appear.'

A correspondent for
Our Dogs
would comment: ‘In my opinion, the people best suited to guard us against the possibility of surprise landings are those men and women who know the country well [and] can ride across it. Shoot straight and command a following of powerful well trained and loyal dogs.'

The Times
that summer visited Yorkshire ‘hunting country' to find the ‘last remaining remount depot' for British Army cavalry horses. It all seemed a bit archaic. ‘There are still several hundred horses in the establishment,' their correspondent noted. ‘There must be many areas where local hunts might form the nucleus of a mounted Home Guard. There will probably be little fox hunting this
year, the hunt for parachutists could be a substitute.' Fox hunting might yet find a patriotic role.

Animals generally had a place in the invasion defences. A veteran wildfowler pointed out in
Country Life:
‘The green plover for many months of the year will give away the presence of any intruder in the marshes.' Raucous herring gulls would apparently do the same in rocks and dunes.

‘Dogs and the Invader,' an NCDL pamphlet advised. ‘Guard dogs should be kept inside to give early warning of the approach of a parachutist, kept outside on a leash they will be easy target for enemy tommy guns.'

On 20 June the first German air operations began over Britain. The still-voluntary flight of women and children from invasion corner turned into a flood. Just as in the panic-stricken late summer before, planning went ahead on the basis that ‘no cats or dogs may accompany owners [should they be] compulsorily evacuated'. It was clear that a tide of refugee pets would not be welcome at ‘the reception end'. ‘Poultry and rabbits should be disposed of by their owners before evacuation,' the Ministry of Agriculture advised. Actually, a nice rabbit for the pot might be quite welcome.

Three days later the PDSA held its annual Animal Lovers' Parade and service at St Martin's in the Fields, Trafalgar Square. Bowler-hatted, tweed-jacketed, riding-breeched Technical Officers marched in formation behind their banner with a strong female contingent and plenty of pets. The Dispensary's motor ambulances rolled through the streets, polished and gleaming. They had yet to see action under fire; it would not be long.

On 29 June the War Cabinet Home Policy Committee approved draft legislation as an Order in Council – ‘for animal control in the event of hostile attack' – delegating
slaughter powers to NARPAC ‘mobile units' in the evacuation zones. It could be their finest hour. The Committee would devise a provisional service for the humane destruction of cats and dogs in the towns concerned with a fleet of small ambulances specially equipped to do so.

It was all terribly thorough: railways were consulted about their staff taking over animals brought to the stations by evacuees. They would not be allowed on trains chuffing to safety. ‘A room for cats and a yard for dogs should be provided until they can be disposed of,' Sir William Wood, vice president of the LMS Railway, was informed. ‘It would be most helpful if some empty boxes or baskets with lids could be produced for the temporary reception of cats.'

In the face of this new crisis, the supposed solidarity of the animal welfare charities was already breaking down. Mr Frederick Donne, a vet from Westcliff-on-Sea, told the
Veterinary Record
that summer that he had been an enthusiastic organizer for NARPAC since its inception, ‘personally enlisting 255 Animal Guards, registering many thousands of animals and collecting £85
s
. 11
d
'.

Now with the prospect of evacuation: ‘Notices are repeatedly being posted up with reference to same. The latest poster is the RSPCA's adorned with the pictures of the head of a dog and of a cat. This poster has caused much alarm and distress to owners of pets.' It had the chief constable's name appended so looked terribly official and read thus:

PLEASE CONSIDER THIS. If evacuation of this town is ordered, it may not be possible for you to take your pet animals in the train.

Animals will be painlessly destroyed by competent persons at the following addresses …

It mentioned two animal societies, two corporation depots and a vet in Southend, but not Donne. ‘I have put up a huge notice on my door,' he wrote. ‘Notwithstanding the poster, this veterinary surgery is remaining open.'

The poster had been put up on display by a Mr Stephens, the RSPCA's Inspector in Southend. He could inform his headquarters meanwhile that there was no danger of wild animals prowling the promenade as he personally had destroyed the lions of Bostock's Menagerie at the Kursaal funfair on the outbreak of war.

Superintendent F. C. Rogers, a PDSA Technical Officer in Southend, later wrote: ‘The worst time was after the Dunkirk evacuation. The scenes I witnessed were beyond imagination, please God they will never be witnessed by anyone again. That morning a notice had gone up that the enemy were about to invade with a panic evacuation as a result. To the PDSA fell the sad but merciful task of putting the animals to sleep. It was heartbreaking – all of them, the animals, had been enjoying life to the full and so jolly too.'

The slow-footed NARPAC had let the charities go in and act on their own. The Committee must fight back. On 30 July Colonel Stordy told the Ministry of Home Security that he had written to ‘veterinary officers, chief constables and town clerks of all the towns in the coastal defence district from Northumberland to the Dorset border and ten miles inland' to tell them to expect the wide-scale destruction of cats and dogs. NARPAC would undertake the humane destruction of pets but the digging of trenches for the carcasses should be the responsibility of local authorities.

It was a bureaucratic disaster. Except in the original
designated nineteen coastal towns in the southeast and East Anglia, the population of everywhere else was supposed to stay put. NARPAC had gone completely against policy and caused an almighty flap. The circular must be withdrawn and a shamefaced Stordy duly did so.

The general panic about evacuation, invasion and pets was heightened by the tragedy unfolding in the Channel Islands. In the weeks between Dunkirk and the arrival of the Germans on 2 July, there was a mass scramble to get out. Prize cattle herds were put on boats for England. Evacuees could only take what they were able to carry. Domestic animals were simply abandoned. Parish constables rounded up pets from empty houses to be put down. ‘As there was no room on the boats for pets, the dogs and cats were shot and so great was the run on the vet's services that the owners had to line up while their dumb friends were dispatched,' said a press report.

Betty Hervey was a six-year-old child on Guernsey. Sixty years later she recalled:

All our animals had been turned loose to fend for themselves – my black lab, some cats, chickens and rabbits. At the harbour everyone was weeping. Older children were leaving without their parents. We crossed the channel in a cargo boat, and there were cattle in the hold.

The ‘down-with-all-dogs' clamour got louder. A branch of the National Farmers Union passed a resolution that the canine population be reduced ‘except for useful working dogs'. On 5 July in
Our Dogs
doggy author M. Douglas Gordon raised the standard against ‘the squealings of the anti-doggites' and their attacks on ‘hounds, pigeons, rabbits etc. as useless consumers of valuable food'.

‘We must bestir ourselves to contradict such stuff,' declared Gordon. And on the alleged Nazi canine holocaust, he wrote: ‘It is by no means certain that Germany has destroyed all her dogs. Later reports suggest it is only pet dogs that have been slaughtered, which puts a very different complexion on the matter.' The Canine Defence League also roared back mightily:

Fears are expressed that our dogs may have to be sacrificed in order to help us win the war and we find that the dog haters are trying to take advantage of the national danger to see our friends exterminated.

The monomaniacs who detest dogs are anxious to seize any chance that our extremity may present in order to gratify their splenetic and venomous desires. It is folly to imagine that such people do not exist and that there is no clash of interest in the food supply or the [shipping] tonnage question.

It was ‘isolationist folly,' said the League, for pedigree dog breeders to call for mongrels to be eliminated and only show-dogs allowed to live. Dog lovers unite!

By now the ‘three million-dogs-to-die' story had reached America. Was this propaganda yarn going to rebound?
Popular Dogs
magazine made inquiries, to receive at last a reply from the Doberman Pinscher Club of Germany: ‘We rejoice that American Doberman friends take such kindly attitude towards our breed but most of our dogs are at present with the Army,' its chairman had said, ‘[but] as long as this war, forced upon us, remains undecided, even the best dogs should and must be called into service.'

Nazi dogs were top dogs indeed.

16
  In his 1938–39 experiments for the Home Office, the famed Cocker Spaniel breeder had defined the difference between a ‘dog', which ‘worked for the sheer love of pleasing his handler', and a ‘hound', which worked ‘only to please himself'. A hound ‘would give up if distracted,' he said, whereas there was ‘no limit to a dog's intelligence and desire to please.' According to him the most ‘pliable and humanised dogs' were Labradors.

Summer 1940 was a tough time to be a beast of England. Hundreds of seaside pets were going into the lethal chamber. Urban dogs were biscuit-less, cats were the enemy within. The Germans were busily making their invasion plans (which included the employment of 60,000 horses) and black-crossed aircraft prowled the Channel, testing the mettle of RAF Fighter Command.

Newspapers broke the truly awful news on 6 August: ‘Penal Offence to Waste Food: Warning as to Meat for Dogs' ran the headlines. It could not have been more ominous:

The Ministry of Food to-day made an order coming into force next Monday for preventing waste of food and carrying with it penalties against offenders. It will be an offence to waste food, which is described as everything used by man for food or drink other than water.

It was further explained: ‘Under the order it is not forbidden to give meat to dogs, but anyone giving an excessive amount would be liable to prosecution.'

But who might judge what that meant? The announcement was personified in Mr Robert Boothby, MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food, who reassured pet owners that ‘it was more in the nature of a warning', and he did not expect a lot of prosecutions. The penalty was two years' imprisonment or a £500 fine, or both. Boothby played down the prospect that ‘inspectors would be sent to houses to see if the regulations were being carried out'.

The result was utter confusion. He had declared at a press conference that it was indeed an offence to give food to an animal that could be consumed by a human being. What about giving stale bread to a pet dog or a saucer of milk to a cat? The Ministry was besieged with questions.

There was more controversy when the editor of
Cage Birds
gave a talk on the BBC which seemed to recommend the feeding of foods suitable for human consumption to poultry. If they could not get birdseed, then it was bread or oatmeal he had recommended cheerfully but doing so was now illegal. The RSPCA advised on seed-producing plants that could be grown in ‘sheltered sunny positions' including linseed, millet, sunflower and hemp –
Cannabis sativa
.

Evidently there were other ways to keep the family budgie fed. A Nottingham housewife confessed to the social historian Norman Longmate after a gap of thirty years having falsely declared to a shopkeeper that she had two birds to get her budgie, ‘Mickey', a bit more. Such birdseed as was available was often sold without millet, its most useful ingredient. A Lancashire housewife remembered millet costing £1 per pound on the black market. A Rotherham woman recalled even ordinary birdseed reached this price but was so un-nutritious that the family budgie simply starved to death.