Bonzo's War (31 page)

Back in Britain, the war between the animal charities was as bitter as ever. For months now there had been allegations of dirty tricks. ‘Do certain people want to sabotage our service?' asked the NARPAC zealot, Mr J. C. Beilby after some fund-raising skulduggery at a mayoral garden party in Blackpool. ‘If they [the RSPCA] want a scrap, they can have a scrap.'

The RSPCA was now openly referred to as the ‘enemy'. On 28 January 1943 the Animal Guards founder, Captain Colthurst, complained that the Society was conducting a vigorous campaign of misinformation against them, mostly by statements at meetings that the organisation was moribund and no longer had official support'.

He accused them of ‘trying to cash in, by persuading our helpers to transfer their activities'. The Captain wanted ‘official statements to the press and BBC [that] NARPAC is the responsible authority for the rescue and protection of animals as far as the Ministry is concerned'. This was very delicate. No excuse should be given to the ‘jealous' RSPCA to attack the Ministry itself, it was noted by Home Security officials.

Five days later the Axis forces in Stalingrad surrendered. Mourka, the gallant Red Army cat, was reportedly considered for a medal, but as a civilian, was deemed ineligible.

To commemorate his African visit, the London Zoo
presented the Prime Minister with ‘Rota', the Pinner lion, as a personal gift. On his return from Morocco, Mr and Mrs Churchill came to visit his new pet in Regent's Park. Rota meanwhile had fathered four cubs with his new mate, ‘Janet', to be named ‘Blood', ‘Toil', ‘Tunis' and ‘Bizerta'. But it was not the end. Not even the beginning of the end for Rota's offspring.

The war on the Eastern Front had turned, but not yet Whitehall's secret war on dogs. How-to-have-fewer-canines discussions had continued since the end of 1942 as the concern of the powerful ‘Lord President's Committee' chaired by Sir John Anderson, the War Cabinet's enforcer for home front social and economic policy. A supra-ministerial report was commissioned with an ostensible brief to prescribe a production figure for dog biscuits. It would end up looking for the political means for the state to kill pets.

On 19 February 1943, officials came back with a paper reporting that after the mass destruction of the first days of war, dog numbers were back to pre-war levels, four million of them, guzzling their way through 300,000 tons of food (a third of it fit for humans), which ‘might be diverted to a more useful purpose'.

‘With certain limited exceptions such as sheep dogs, a high percentage of the dog population makes no contribution to the war effort but is actually detrimental to it,' it was stated bluntly. All that Ministry of Food anti-dog propaganda of the year before had been in vain. The plain facts were that:

Large amounts of material that could be usefully fed to pigs and poultry [are] being consumed by dogs. There is no doubt that bread, oatmeal, milk and other sound human foods are being illegally fed. Most of
these products are heavily subsidised. The total amount including unrationed meat may exceed 100,000 tons, mostly bread.

The paper recommended renewed ‘persistent propaganda to explain the need for a large reduction in the dog population', and ‘appealing to everyone who can reasonably do so, to give up their dogs, especially in excess of one per household'. It noted however that, ‘all the important dog shows have been stopped', while conceding that banning, ‘small local shows [whippets] in the industrial districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire would have little effect'.

And this was new. Arrangements would be made
‘for free painless destruction of those given up'
. This was a proposal for Government-subsidized dog death.

But the Committee decided on 5 March, once again, that killing pets was bad politics. Nothing should be done that would lead to ‘unnecessary controversy'. There was nothing to stop a dog owner feeding his pet out of his own rations, even if it was illegal. Enforcement would need an army of snoopers. The whole thing was unworkable anyway if bread stayed unrationed. It was agreed however that the whole ‘dog question would be kept under review'.

But the law on wasting food by feeding it to animals must be enforced. A Mrs King of Leamington had ‘peeped into the bedroom' of her neighbours, Mr and Mrs George Fretwell of Bertle Terrace, and seen ‘ten saucers of milk arranged in a ring'. They were evidently for the couple's ‘fat and lazy cats', as they were described to a court.

The Fretwells had been prosecuted. The magistrate made an order for abatement of nuisance rather than ‘inquire into how the milk was obtained', but wished them well with their plan to ‘obtain a bungalow and large field where the cats could roam'.

Another, even more useful press report went to the Minister for attention:

A woman at Reading was fined £2 for giving milk to a cat. The chairman of the bench asked how much milk one may give a cat. The reply was ‘none whatever'.

Mr Keith Robinson of Our Dumb Friends' League was asked to comment. ‘The ruling means what it says. Our animals must starve if we can't find them non-human food,' he said, ‘and it is impossible to feed them properly without giving them human food. There are long queues at the horsemeat shops and usually they are sold out.' In another move, Mr Robinson accused the Ministry of Food of secretly planning ‘to starve out the animal population', despite assurances from the Ministry of Home security that this was not ‘desired nor intended'.

At least British housewives had something to queue for. On 25 February the author and journalist Charles Graves (brother of the poet, Robert), accompanied by his Dachshund, ‘Schnitzel', went to see Arthur Croxton Smith in the Kennel Club's Mayfair headquarters to research an article on wartime dogs. He was informed that the dog population had fallen from 3.5 to 2.5 million, ‘partly because owners were alarmed that dogs would go mad in air raids and bite them', and partly because the Club had restricted breeding.

Frenchmen meanwhile, so the canine grandee told him, were ‘feeding their dogs on figs and powdered acorns'.

Dog food in cans and glass jars, already on points rationing, was about to be put beyond reach altogether. In the slide-rule mind of officials looking for maximum efficiency in the cause of national survival, seventy per cent of Chappie was water. What was the point of sending
that all round the country? The Chappie factory at Slough could be better used for war work and the knackers' meat in it just be given direct to dogs. The company invoked the RSPCA and NCDL in their fight, without success. From April 1943, British dogs would have to go without Chappie.

Straitened dog lovers had an alternative – offer their pets to the military. While one Ministry was investigating how to get rid of dogs, the War Office still wanted pets on loan from the public while the Ministry of Aircraft Production was actually breeding them. In November the Ministry of Aircraft Production guard dog school had moved from Staverton aerodrome to Woodfold, an agreeable country house a few miles away. It was time to let the public have a glimpse. The cover of
Tail-Wagger Magazine
featured a Gloucester-bred litter of agreeable-looking Alsatian puppies, their RAF handlers, plus a goat, which presumably represented a legal source of milk.

Flt-Lt Lieutenant Hugh Bathurst-Brown, the former adjutant at Staverton, was in command with ‘eight civilian trainers, the best known men and women in the country'. They included (according to
Dog World
magazine) ‘Mrs. Margaret Griffin, Miss. Homan, Mr. Marshall, Mr. Dearman and Mr. Charles.' Between them, this doggy crew would one day achieve something amazing.

After visiting the top-secret training base somewhere in England,
The Dog World
could report, ‘after four weeks they are far above the standard of the average pre-war dog'. And further:

The diet is liberal and the best that could be devised. Their condition is excellent and they are as hard as iron. The dogs we saw are a hundred per cent happier than those in the average civilian home of today. The services are entirely dependent on the goodwill of the
public in donating their dogs (on loan for the duration.) Any decent size of dog will do.

Mrs Hilda Babcock Cleaver of Allerton, Liverpool had several ideal candidates. In 1940 she had bought her first Alsatian, ‘Sadie', who had had five pups. There was an advert in the paper about dogs wanted for the war effort. Colonel Baldwin liked the sound of Sadie's puppies. He was able to authorize extra rations and got authority for ‘visits to local swill bins' to get the pups into shape before they left home for training at nine months old.

In April 1943 they were ready to be sent to Gloucestershire. They travelled by rail third class on an RAF travel warrant. One of them, ‘Jet', would become a very famous dog indeed.

In Loughborough, in Leicestershire, at ‘Glyndr', No. 6 Edelin Road, an agreeable Alsatian/Collie cross called ‘Brian', bought as a pet for Miss Betty Fetch as a present from her parents, was now a bouncy full-grown dog and getting difficult to find food for. There was this appeal in the papers for dogs. With much sadness, two-year-old Brian was offered to the Army War Dog School. It was all for the best. Betty was listed as the owner from whom Brian was on loan. Brian too was set for canine fame.

In a south coast seaside town lived ‘Michael', a jolly Golden Retriever, beloved of five-year-old Elizabeth Burnell. Feeding two dogs and a cat had become ‘too difficult' for her doctor father. And so one day in December 1943 Michael was sent away in answer to the war dog appeal. Many years later, Elizabeth would remember saying goodbye. ‘We did not know exactly what he would be doing and we did not hear much about him from then on,' she wrote. A year later there would be an extraordinary encounter:

Quite by chance, my father was travelling to Eastbourne to visit a patient and had to change trains. As he stood waiting, a group of twelve dogs appeared on the opposite platform with their handlers and amongst the twelve, Daddy recognised Michael and quickly went over to speak to the group.

The handlers said: ‘You cannot talk to these dogs. They are in transit with the Army.' Daddy said: ‘Yes, but that Golden Retriever happens to be mine, where are they going?' To his surprise he was told they were en route for France to search for mines.

Their lovable pet was at the sharp end of war. Would they ever meet again?

37
  Fish was not rationed, partly because the Ministry of Food could not find an effective way to do so, given the underlying principle that rationed items were those of which constant supply could be guaranteed. Fish availability was governed by how many fishermen were willing to put out to sea. Queues outside fishmongers were always long.

38
  ‘Smoky' seems to have been another grey cat, like Nelson. His entrance is not noted in Cabinet Office files. I suspect it was Mrs Churchill's name for the Admiralty adoptee, ‘Nelson'. She was ‘cat' or ‘darling pussy cat' in their intimate letters, so confusion might be expected. ‘Smokey' (sic) is still around in April 1955, referred to as the ‘Churchill' cat in ongoing correspondence with the Treasury about a 5s. a week cat allowance for No. 10, but it was noted on the 18th that ‘the new PM [Anthony Eden] does not like cats much and has a poodle'.

 

 

 

WE REGRET YOUR DOG HAS DIED IN ACTION

It is with deep regret that I have to inform you that (number, name, breed) was killed in action while serving with the British armed forces.

I hope that the knowledge that this brave dog was killed in the service of our country may in some sense mitigate the regret occasioned by the news of his death.

I am directed to express our appreciation of your generosity and patriotism and our whole-hearted sympathy in your sad loss.

War Office Casualty Notice, 1944

By 1943 Great Britain was girding itself to take the war back to the enemy on Continental Europe. There were ‘foreign' soldiers everywhere. Just as East Anglia was filling with American airmen, so too the Yorkshire Wolds and the West Country would turn into vast battle-training areas. And young men far from home liked pets.

In some country areas meanwhile dogs had started mysteriously disappearing, as
The Dogs Bulletin
reported in spring 1943. Was it to make fur coats for ladies or men's gloves? Were they perhaps victims of the vivisectors? Did the Government want them for some secret purpose?

But the Canine Defenders did not have to look far. ‘Dogs are found in large numbers at some camps and almost all posts have a dog or several dogs,' they discovered. ‘In some camps we hear of fifty dogs as general hangers on.' Even the smallest military installation was a canine magnet with packs of playful dogs accompanying soldiers on route marches and cross-country runs.

In many cases, distressed owners never saw their missing pets again. Some were tracked down miles from home. How did they travel so far? It turned out, so the
Canine Defence League discovered, that dogs were being snatched by opportunistic dog-pedlars and being sold to soldiers from the roadside along routes taken by army trucks.

The RSPCA waded in with a plea to the Army Council that the Society should be informed beforehand when a unit got movement orders so that it might bring some humane solution to the mass of excitable pets whose playful masters had suddenly climbed into trucks and disappeared along with their cookhouse. The Duchess of Hamilton offered renewed refuge at Ferne recording the arrival of various ex-Army cats.

As well as eating all that food, there was now another reason for farmers to be grumpy about dogs. At the beginning of the war, dogs belonging to townie evacuees had been blamed (along with their owners) for general bad manners in the British countryside, rooting up crops, chasing livestock and so on. Now a huge plague of sheep worrying was being pinned on the canine camp-followers. Under pressure from the Farmers Union and the RSPCA, the Army Council posted a standing order: ‘Dogs and cats in army camps must be kept within reasonable limits, dogs must be licensed and the owner have the CO's permission to keep it.'