Bonzo's War (22 page)

There was a triumphant rally of Animal Guards in Manchester on 13 January to mark the first anniversary of the North-western region. Captain T. C. Colthurst, general secretary of the Registration Branch, was introduced as
‘the original organiser of animal guards' and he told how just sixty guards had been registered in October 1939. Now there were three million nationwide, he boasted. It was an astonishing figure and entirely untrue.

‘Throughout the country, 5,000 animals a week are being returned to their owners,' Colthurst claimed. He told the story of ‘Dusty', a cat from Leigh-on-Sea in Essex found by a guard in Bloomsbury with a NARPAC collar and how within a few hours his delighted owner had learnt by telegram that his pet was safe. How the Essex cat had got to central London was inexplicable, but the registration system worked admirably.

There were complaints from the floor that in some areas police and ARP were obstructing rescue work for animals, but the Chief Constable of the city, Mr John Maxwell, was known to be sympathetic to pets (he was indeed a PDSA member). The number of cats still being destroyed was deplorable, said Captain Colthurst. Only recently he had ‘seen an advertisement saying that there was a big demand for cats'.

By now the urban Animal Guards were joined by their rural comrades, the Parish Animal Stewards. Was there really anything for them to do?

The
Yorkshire Evening News
told the stirring tale of how war ‘came viciously' to the East Riding when a 1,000-acre farm found itself in the firing line and sticks of incendiary bombs fell on stables and cattle-sheds.

Farm foreman Tom Swift, ‘un-tethered the horses one by one, and let them gallop to safety. With the help of other farm workers, he released 80 head of cattle, and then, twice thrown from his feet by terrific explosions, he ran to save the farmhouse,' recounted the story. ‘Tom Swift did no more than many a townsman has done since the Blitz came to England, but this is written so that posterity might
know of the equal heroism of country folk.'

An anonymous correspondent for the
Manchester Guardian
sent a graphic despatch from the Lincolnshire fens ‘where farmers have found that homeward-bound German bombers like to jettison any remains of their cargo before they reach the sea'.

A bomb dropped at Pyewipe Pasture had ‘killed two good plough horses, and the farmer's proper down about it'. The NARPAC vet had given gas and raid instructions to all the cowmen and stablemen of the neighbourhood. A farmer from Mintin's Ear was the Parish Animal Steward, ready with his team of local butchers ‘to proceed to any farm where badly injured beasts need to be destroyed'.

Pets had not been overlooked either. The village chemist had been ‘besieged for the powders recommended as a sedative for noise-frightened dogs and cats. The transformation of packing-cases into gas-proofed dog-boxes has become a favourite weekend job.'

The blacksmith's wife was a canary fancier. The couple's son had brought back three such birds from Belgium, ‘through the inferno of Dunkirk, ransacking abandoned shops for bird-seed to feed them.' Now, acting on instructions from the vet, a blanket soaked in hypochlorite stood ready in the parlour to shield the cage of ‘Blitz', ‘Gort'
²³
and ‘Victory' from gas attack.

‘In many kitchens you will find pinned to the wall one of the leaflets issued on war-time feeding for domestic pets, badly needed now that dog biscuit is a luxury and table scraps are consumed at table and no longer discarded,' wrote the anonymous correspondent.

‘The totemic NARPAC identity discs had been dispensed by the rector's daughter with instructions to ink them in with the animal's name and owner's address. The decoration is highly popular and is being worn by the postman's rooster and Mrs. Yeats's two nanny-goats as well as by the whole canine population and three babies.

‘We shall take good care of our animals, if only to prove the veracity of the Frenchman who said, “that in England it is lovely to be a dog”.'

Such bucolic harmony was not universal, however. When it was announced that rationing of livestock feed would start on 1 February 1941, the gloom had deepened. ‘Owners of urban horses including mules, asses, jennets, and donkeys,' it was announced, ‘must now use ration cards to get their nosebags replenished.'

Domestic animals were not to be included in the livestock scheme. There would be no ration books for pets. Sir Robert Gower, MP, the RSPCA Chairman, complained in Parliament. He was told with some logic that ‘A rationing scheme for dogs and other domestic animals would be impracticable owing to the great variety of breeds and the extent to which these requirements are usually met by purchased foods and by scraps respectively.'

They must continue with what they could get, but strictly no human food and rely instead on the many diets being promoted by the charities and by NARPAC too. The observer of Fenland pets had further written: ‘I fancy these leaflets, with their excellent charts on the quantities of protein and carbohydrate for different breeds, will do something towards reducing the waist-line of those unlucky animals whose owners think of a dog as an ever-open mouth for titbits.' That might not be the general opinion of dogs.

On 1 January 1941 had come a new humiliation, an order
‘that all meat which is unsuitable for human consumption must be dyed green'. ‘The special dye is stated to have no harmful effect upon the animals to which it is fed and the colour cannot be boiled out of the meat,' it was reported. It was all deeply unappetizing.

Out in the countryside, the huntsmen of England faced deepening anguish. Some were realistic. A former Master of Fox Hounds declared that the food being eaten by hunters should indeed be given to cattle – ‘Five couple of hounds should be the maximum held by any hunt; these should be kept by farmers and fed on refuse. The rest ought to be put down.' But a diehard replied that the time to destroy hounds was when ‘all pet dogs had been made into glue'. That day might be closer than he thought.

Miss J. A. Boutcher, master of the Courtenay Tracey Otterhounds of Andover, Hants, admitted to the Ministry that her pack (now reduced from seventeen to ten couple) consumed the same as Foxhounds. Could she please have more food for them?

Major Cecil Pelham, the Hon. Sec. of the Masters of Fox Hounds Assocation, wrote to the Minister of Agriculture to say that: ‘Seven thousand eight hundred hounds have been put down since the start of war. Masters and hunts have done their best to play the game.' And, in the context of what had happened to urban dogs, they had.

Thus it was that much-diminished hunts carried on through a second wartime winter without giving up entirely. There were fewer cars in the countryside to spoil the scent but also fewer open fields over which to ride. Every scrap of land was being put under the plough. Fox coverts were being buried under aerodromes. Tenant farmers, emboldened to defy their hunting landlords, simply went out and shot foxes.

But it was the Government machine in Whitehall that
would decide the fate of hunters and hunted – as indeed of everything else. Farmers and landowners had lost their last few freedoms when Britain became a siege-socialist state after Dunkirk. The Ministry's County War Agricultural Executive Committees (‘County War Ags') had dictatorial powers to decide land use, issue ‘plough-up' orders, direct what livestock would get what to eat, to direct gangs of labour (including Land Girls) and to eradicate what (and how) it decided were ‘pests', all backed by emergency legislation.

On 6 February memos flew to and from the Ministry of Food exiled in Wales ready to brief the Civil Defence Committee meeting due to be held the next day in London on the question of animal feeding. The Principle Assistant Secretary teleprinted: ‘We suggest that hunting should be stopped, it is impossible to justify.' And furthermore what about racehorses? With U-boats
²⁴
slashing at the Atlantic lifeline, some big gesture was needed to let the public know just how serious things were. Officials asked how could the embattled island propaganda play in neutral America when horse racing merrily continued?

It was all about perception. Not much later it would be noted that, ‘The general public, who for very good reasons cannot be given the true figures [on dwindling food stocks], are not going to believe the seriousness of the situation if race meetings continued.'

It was recognized that pain must be felt by everyone. How could huntsmen have their sport and parrot lovers and urban pigeon fanciers be denied theirs? ‘I emphasise the political importance when all imports of bird seed have
been stopped and there will soon be no seed for caged birds in private ownership,' one official told the Minister.

Class resentment was raised in Parliament, when racing pigeons, ‘the sole source of the working man's recreation' cannot be fed, while the rich man could keep his racehorses happy. As well as pigeons, the working man liked race meetings. Fox hunts however were a different matter.

Munitions worker Mrs Elsie Barnes wrote to the new Food Minister, Lord Woolton, on 21 January from Meriden, Coventry: ‘Why is the hunt allowed to trample down a field of turnips and beans? Food for the plebeian people and don't farm animals need food too?

‘Communism is the answer,' she insisted. ‘It is certainly steadily growing in our factory, thanks to the hunting set and their kind.'

If hunting pink was a red rag in Coventry, the continuation of horse and greyhound racing outraged others even more, especially poultry keepers. Dogs generally annoyed a correspondent of
Farmers Weekly
concerned with sheep worrying. ‘There are far too many dogs hanging round villages,' he wrote in January. They had to hang around somewhere.

But back in the city, Bonzo and Oo-Oo still had no official ration. All the Ministry of Food had come up with was a statement: ‘Dogs and cats must subsist on the limited supplies available eked out by inedible offal, horsemeat and the like.' Ugh!

But then the Food Minister confused things greatly by saying blithely at a press conference on 18 February 1941: ‘I think I am right, that if a kindly disposed person, instead of eating their meat ration gives it to a favourite dog, that is not illegal.' His civil servants fumed. Angry memos flew. The Waste of Food Order of the previous summer had not been tested by prosecutions, it was noted. But it
could be. What about ‘food not fit for human consumption that could be given to livestock but which instead goes to seagulls, city pigeons etc?' one asked. That should be regulated for. There must be more rigour all round.

Dogs were the problem. Not seagulls or ducks, nor racehorses even. The canine population was estimated at three million licensed and half a million more outlaws. They consumed 5 oz per day of biscuits and 3 oz of protein. How to get rid of them? Raising the dog licence perhaps, as had been suggested before, or reducing the grace period for strays on police hands. That was not nearly strong enough.

The Canine Defence League was in poor shape to do much defending. That February a Mass-Observation interviewer found their Victoria Station House headquarters down to a staff of two men and a secretary, doing what they could. The rest had left to go into the services. The clinics were busy but ‘it's mostly cats …'

‘An increasing number of the public regard dogs as unnecessary,' said the canine defenders, ‘because of the food question. That's what's uppermost in the mind of the dog owners and we're in constant touch with Government departments.'

Running away was no escape, especially for a London dog. The police were very keen on clearing the streets and pretty soon the van from Battersea would arrive at the station to collect the overnight strays (north London dogs went to the ODFL home at Willesden). Destruction at Battersea had peaked in 1940, with 17,347 dogs destroyed under police contract. The 1941 figure would be 11,446.

It was all too much for Edward Healey Tutt, the Home's secretary, who was found ‘living in the paraffin shed' on the site, eating out of tins and was invalided out. The work continued. On 28 May his deputy appealed for deferment
of call-up for military service of Herbert Alexander Collet, the home's ‘expert electrocutionist'. ‘We should find it extremely difficult to replace him … and Mr. Tutt is recuperating in Norfolk,' she told Scotland Yard.

Cats were also being measured up for the chop. ‘There appear to be no statistics on the number of cats in the country. It may be assumed however that it is greater than the number of dogs, 7–8 million,' so said Mr T. C. Williams of the Ministry of Food in a report on ‘non-essential animals' made on 21 March.

He had calculated that if consumption per cat was 3 oz protein material per day, it meant an annual consumption of 215,000 tons. Each cat might additionally drink 1 oz of milk a day, making 18 million gallons of milk a year. ‘The figure is probably on the low side,' he added. But would the destruction done by rodents eating foodstuffs in the absence of ‘a cat equilibrium' as he put it, ‘really be more costly than the existing cost of maintaining the cats?' He conceded that the experience of cats on protective work in warehouses, factories, etc. showed that, ‘they are worthy of their keep'. But lazy lap-cats had better watch out.

Meanwhile the Cats Protection League had chosen its time well in launching the ‘Tailwavers Appeal' to aid ‘homeless and evacuee cats' – with half the funds raised supposedly going to pay for a ‘Cats of Britain' presentation Spitfire for the RAF. They had better hurry up. The Spitfire Mk V, dubbed ‘The Dogfighter', sponsored by the Kennel Club and announced in
Our Dogs
magazine the year before, was about to go into squadron service.

Cat lovers sensed danger. ‘It seems possible that an attempt may be made to introduce a rationing scheme for household animals,' noted
The Cat
in February. ‘Knowledge of the prevailing ignorance about cats
rouses a fear that this will be unjust to them.' The danger was that the ‘cats-can-fend-for-themselves' superstition would gain ground – especially that farm cats expected to catch mice could live on a saucer of milk day (which was now illegal anyway). ‘We appeal to all our readers to be prepared to avert a possible danger to cats,' implored the editor.