Bonzo's War (35 page)

Destroyed by shooting on 1 August and carcass cremated at local gas works. Three pups destroyed by gassing and similarly disposed of.

There were luckier D-Day dogs. ‘Fritz', a St Bernard, was captured by men of the Hampshire Regiment on D+1, 7 June, at Arromanches in Normandy. ‘Somehow or other he got aboard the landing craft while the prisoners were embarking for Southampton, where on his arrival he presented a knotty problem because of quarantine regulations,' said a near-contemporary account.

His Allied Mascot Club card (no. 439) reads: ‘Might have been condemned to death on arriving in this country had it not been for the kindness of Leading Wren Elgar who offered to pay his quarantine and also presented Fritz to the regiment that captured him. He appears at all the regimental parades and official records are kept of him like a soldier.'

Another D-Day dog was ‘Sailor', a St Bernard spotted running on the sands of Gold Beach at La Rivière on 6 June. According to an account in
Tail-Wagger Magazine
that summer, Able Seaman Curtis stayed on the beach for five days with the dog in a shelter, before taking him back to England on a warship. They were met at a ‘West Country port' (almost certainly Weymouth) and the dog's fate became a matter for the authorities. But Mr C. E. Dowdeswell, secretary of the local branch of the RSPCA, took him on and now ‘Sailor' was being offered to the public when his quarantine was complete by the ‘Dogs of Britain Red Cross Appeal', care of the Kennel Club. Lucky Sailor!

There was a second dog called ‘Fritz', an Irish Setter belonging to General Bernard-Hermann Ramcke, German commander of the besieged Brest fortress, captured on its surrender in September. The event was filmed by US Army combat cameramen. Glossy Fritz is on a lead and seems to obey every command of his combat-jacketed Teutonic master.

According to one source, General Ramcke had been promised by Gen Middleton, CO of the US 8th Infantry Division, that he and his dog would not be separated. But when master and hound were delivered to a certain Major Becker of the British Army at an airfield in southern England, Becker quite rightly announced, ‘Herr General, the dog has not been tested for rabies!'

Ramcke was outraged but Major Becker refused to be cowed. He interrupted the General's tirade with, ‘You are in England now!' Gesturing towards the dog, the Major ordered: ‘Take him away!' according to the memoirs of his US military police guard.
PDSA News
reported simply, ‘the dog has been flown to the UK and sold to an Englishman and taught to understand and obey commands in English'. Lucky Fritz!

42
  Telek's name was reportedly a combination of ‘Telegraph Cottage', a substantial suburban villa in Kingston, south-west London where he was quartered and Kay Summersby, the Supreme Commander's twenty-six-year-old driver, with whom he was having an affair.

43
  The Veterinary Corps ranking officer indicated to the MAFF at US Strategic Air Forces Europe, High Wycombe, was a Major Max G. Badger.

44
  They are buried in the Ranville War Cemetery in Normandy, France. Glen is the only animal to be buried in a Commonwealth War Grave. It bears an epitaph written by Pte Corteil's mother: ‘Had you known our boy you would have loved him too. “Glen”, his paratroop dog, was killed with him.'

A week after the D-Day landings, the
Luftwaffe
had opened the bombardment of London with flying bombs, soon to be popularly called ‘doodlebugs'. Although unheralded this time by Government announcement or by 1939-style panic, there was another wave of pet killing. One south London woman recorded standing in ‘a long, long line of white-faced women to have my pet destroyed because the kennels were blasted out'.

‘Ronnie', the pet cat of an Uxbridge family, ‘returned home the afternoon of the next day' after their house was shattered by a flying bomb. He was completely black. ‘We had been distressed at losing him, but we took him to the veterinary surgeon and he was put painlessly to sleep,' said Ronnie's owner. ‘After all, we were having to depend on friends for a night's shelter ourselves and Ronnie had led a very happy life,' she added.

The forewarned defenders achieved some success but enough missiles got through to make the doodlebug summer (9 June to 1 September 1944) extremely uncomfortable for London pets. Now the rituals of evacuating children and hastening to the Anderson shelter in the garden, or Morrison under the kitchen table (unused
for the past three years), were re-enacted. This time, many flying bombs fell in the suburbs, crashed, or were shot down in open fields in Kent and Sussex.

The London Zoo was hit on 27–28 July. A flying bomb fell in Regent's Canal while another blew up in trees in the middle of the Zoological Gardens killing two sulphur-crested cockatoos, a Silver Pheasant and a Sonnerat's jungle fowl. Later a fatuous newspaper row would blow up over priority given to repair of the komodo dragons' den while houses in Prince Albert Road still needed the roofs to be repaired.

NARPAC barely functioned in this new emergency (it would wind itself up at the end of the year). In a report for the Minister, Mr Edward Snelling, the long-suffering Ministry of Home Security official, noted that for ‘some time past relations between the constituent members, the veterinary profession, Our Dumb Friends' League and the PDSA had been so strained that they had in effect been working independently'. He thought that Edward Bridges Webb deserved his ‘scoop' in grabbing the registration operation and outfoxing the veterinary profession, who still regarded the People's Dispensary as ‘quacks'.

It was the charities who were in the front line again, just as they had effectively been all along. The Canine Defence League's
The Dogs Bulletin
proudly announced:

None of our shelters were hit in 1940–1 but now three clinics have been destroyed by V1s. Londoners with their canine and feline friends will stand fast!

PDSA News
reported their efforts under the doodlebug assault in similar terms to the Blitz – with lots of putting to sleep of wounded animals in the ruins. In August 1944, ‘Spot' received the Dickin Medal (as a self-starting rescue
dog) for digging himself out of a blasted house and barking for rescuers to come. He himself scrabbled and dug at the ruins. ‘Their faithful little friend with four bloodied paws is being treated by the PDSA and is now almost recovered,' the journal reported in September.

The Dumb Friends' League shelter at Hammersmith was shattered by a flying bomb and the Wandsworth branch at 82 Garratt Lane (now under a giant Sainsbury's) was entirely demolished. ‘Fortunately the animals were mainly at the back of the building and suffered little hurt other than shock,' the 1944 report stated. It also recorded a swan injured by a flying bomb, which was taken to the master of the vintner's company – ‘The bird was put to sleep.'

The League's Blue Cross medal
⁴⁵
was awarded to ‘Pussy Wake', ‘who saved his family when a fire broke out in a downstairs room. He ran upstairs and awakened them by scratching at the door where they were sleeping.' ‘Rex' was another recipient, who, ‘when he heard a flying bomb approaching, dashed up the stairs to the room of nineteen year old Rosene Mason, warning her in time for her to reach safety before her room was wrecked'.

‘Ruff' received a B. C. ‘When a flying bomb wrecked his home, he attracted the attention of the rescue party to the debris, under which his mistress and her baby were lying trapped. He actually gripped the nightdress of the infant, pulling the child to safety.'

‘Rex', a Retriever, saved the life of women in East India Dock Road, trapped by the explosion of a flying bomb. Then there was ‘Whiskey', a cat who ‘saved Corporal
Witcomb's family when fire broke out in the house'. Heroes all!

In the original Blitz, animals had not been allowed into London County Council rest centres. By summer 1944 they were permitted to do so provided they ‘were under control and not a nuisance to others'. Meanwhile public air raid shelters remained barred to pets. A lot of Londoners chose to see it through in the backyard Anderson shelter or the indoor Morrison (a kind of steel cage that could serve as a kitchen table, named after the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison). The RSPCA offered sound advice ‘to make an improvised dog shelter in the home, and train them to go there on command'.

‘I have four such dog shelters in my narrow hall for my Charlies [King Charles Spaniels],' wrote a correspondent for
The Animal World
in late summer. ‘I find my dogs will go hurriedly in during the daytime when told to Shelter! Shelter! We throw our bed covers and overcoats over the dog boxes at night for extra protection.'

She also suggested, ‘taking in some stranger with an animal'. In a very humane account, the anonymous writer told how: ‘In my last home, Wardens used to send me solitary old women who had only the one dog in the world. They refused to be parted. They could not go to the shelter with the dog. I remember one who said would I take her dog for the night, and her face lit up with joy when I said – “I can take no dogs without their owners”.' She noted however that ‘only a miracle can save you and your creatures' from a direct hit by a flying bomb.

There were plenty of sentimental tales of human-animal bonding to rival the dramas of four years before. One old man was seen by an RSPCA Inspector to go first into his garden and clear a space on the ground, then to enter the
wreckage of his home and bring out ‘two dead cats, one black, and one tabby'. The inspector approached the old man, who said: ‘I have lost everything. My two poor cats were killed outright, but the least I can do is give them a decent burial.'

Teenager Harry Atterbury recalled his pet adventure in a short memoir. Having returned from evacuation to the embattled capital, on a quiet Sunday morning, a V1 crashed at the corner of his home in a street in Islington, north London. ‘My parents' home was demolished with me underneath. I was pulled out,' he wrote.

Over the next few weeks, I returned to dig in the debris of our home although there was little left to recover. But two weeks later, when raising up the corner of our flattened kitchen table, I was startled when a lump of fur moved and I took into my hands our old pet cat, still alive. On the bus to Stoke Newington so many other passengers expressed sympathy for her, even in that filthy state. She lived with us for several years after.

And as in 1940–41, there were tale of cats returning to the ruins and benign interventions by strangers.
The Evening Standard
reported the story of Mrs A. Emery, a ‘daily help' and widow of a Royal Marine ‘who for five weeks has given her milk ration to over 20 cats left homeless by flying-bomb attacks'. She said:

I have been bombed out twice and lost my own cat, Timmie, who was 10 years old. Because he meant so much to my little household, I could not see other cats waiting near houses where people had been killed or evacuated, without feeding them.

Another woman was seen to take a saucer and a pint bottle of milk from a shopping bag, according to the same report. ‘She placed a saucer of milk before “Major”, a ginger cat, reputed by the police to have killed over fifty rats and mice in a week. Major's owner, a school teacher, was killed in a recent flying bomb attack, but the cat has since kept constant watch outside the ruins of her house.'

Thirty years after the doodlebug drama, the social historian Norman Longmate recorded first-hand (from owners) accounts of how their animals reacted. ‘Our dog soon realized that the sound [of an approaching V1] might well culminate in bang and appeared to listen anxiously,' found a woman living in Kent. ‘The cat appeared to take no notice whatever.'

‘Kim', a Bedlington Terrier of Shirley, Surrey ‘used to get most distressed,' her owner remembered, ‘when we just had to carry on with our lives and ignore the doodlebugs until the moment of cut-out.'

‘Mickie', a Shepherd's Bush Collie, ‘was usually first into the Anderson shelter [and] put on a great display of courage once the danger was past, dashing out the moment the all clear sounded and barking boastfully.' An unnamed Scottish Terrier in Neasden was ‘always first into the Morrison [shelter] and the last to leave until the dog got quite confused and started going into the shelter on the all clear'.

Just as in the Blitz, pets were alerted to incoming danger before human perception. ‘Dawn', an Eastbourne Elkhound, would ‘prick up her ears, emit a shrill bark' and then, ‘her duty done, make for safety under the stairs'. ‘Benjamin', a Springer Spaniel in Sevenoaks, ‘would suddenly wake, stand in the middle of the room and “point” – this gave his owners time to get to the shelter'.

The
Daily Mail
featured the ‘Achtung Chimps' of London Zoo, who could ‘hear the flying bombs miles away'. When the alert first sounded they carried on as normal, but – ‘then whimpered, let out a series of yelps and retreated to the furthest corner of their cages'. Once they had heard the engine cut out and the rumble of the explosion, the chimps returned to their usual antics.

Cats also gave warning of approaching danger. ‘Binkie', a Sussex cat, would dive for cover seconds before the oncoming V1's pulse-jet motor could be heard by humans. And there was ‘Sandy', the Eastbourne cat, who one day ‘refused to come out of the cupboard under the stairs after a V1 had passed'. Sandy's owner then looked outside, ‘only to see another doodlebug almost overhead'. Its engine had stopped and it was about to dive.

The Cat
told the story of ‘Ticky', a ‘timid cat' who found the courage to dash into danger and rescue her kitten, dragging it into a garden Anderson shelter as flying bombs droned overhead. Nervous Ticky thereafter would sit on the garden wall scanning the sky and, as her owner wrote, ‘it is pointless even to duck if Ticky has not moved from her observation post. She never mistakes the direction of the sound and her powers of perception are much better than mine.'