Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden (33 page)

Lt Col. Cecil Lyne, 119th Brigade, RFA

Had I a descriptive pen I could picture to you the squalor and wretchedness of it all and through it the wonder of the men who carry on. Figure to yourself a desolate wilderness of water filled with shell craters, and crater after crater whose lips form narrow peninsulas along which one can at best pick but a slow and precarious way. Here a shattered tree trunk, there a wrecked ‘pillbox’, sole remaining evidence that this was once a human and inhabited land. Dante would never have condemned lost souls to wander in so terrible a purgatory. Here a shattered wagon, there a gun mired to the muzzle in mud which grips like glue; even the birds and rats have forsaken so unnatural a spot. Mile after mile of the same unending dreariness; landmarks are gone, whole villages where hardly a pile of bricks amongst the mud marks the site. You see it at its best under a leaden sky with a chill drizzle falling, each hour an eternity, each dragging step a nightmare. How weirdly it recalls some half-formed horror of childish nightmare, one would flee, but whither? – one would cry aloud but there comes no blessed awakening. Surely the God of Battles has deserted a spot where only devils can reign.

Think what it means, weeks of it, weeks which are eternities, when the days are terrible but the nights beyond belief. Through it all the horror of continual shellfire, rain and mud. Gas is one of the most potent components of this particular inferno. Nights are absolutely without rest, and gas at night is the crowning limit of horrors. The battery that occupied the position before we came was practically wiped out by it, and had to be relieved at short notice, and the battery that relieved them lost 37 men on the way in. You can imagine how bucked I was when they handed me out these spicey bits of gossip on the way up. I daren’t risk more than three men per gun up here at the same time and only two officers besides myself; at the moment they are rather sorry for themselves after last night’s gas stunt, and doing unhelpful things to their eyes with various drops and washes. I’ve got a throat like raw beef and a voice like a crow.

Pte Hugh Quigley, 12th Royal Scots

The landscape has no salient features of its own; everything blasted to mud – railway embankments, woods, roads confused in shell-holes and mine craters. Trees are only skeletons, and masses of obscene ruins mark farms or houses. You look in vain for a wood where such is marked on the map. The only way at night is to bend down close to the ground and gaze at the skyline for black shadows of pillboxes; by those shadows you find your way. Or, to remember a road once shown, the oddest details must be noted – a solitary length of rail or wire, a dud shell, three stakes together, a fragmentary hedge, a deserted waterlogged trench, dead men lying at various angles, and the position of pillboxes in relation to the track followed. The most exciting time I spent was in hunting B Company Headquarters across this monotony of mud and water. I think I must have visited the whole Division before finding it, artillery as well as infantry.

Long gone were the wandering farm animals of 1915 and 1916, gone were the weasels and stoats parting the long grass, gone were the feral dogs and cats; insects survived, but they went unnoticed. If, as Lieutenant Colonel Lyne suggested, even the rats had ‘forsaken’ the land, then it was indeed desolate. Only the fearful creatures forced up to the line to work were regularly seen: horses and mules.

Pte Thomas Hope, 1/5th King’s Liverpool Rgt

We become conscious of a sound totally different to that of shrieking bursting shells. We listen more intently and can pick it out quite easily from the general babel of noise. It has a rhythm about it which at first I cannot place, then suddenly it dawns on me: it is the thudding of hoofs.

‘What the hell’s that, Jock?’ shouts Webster. ‘Do you hear it?’

‘It’s the horses, Webby. Look, there’s two of them.’

Rearing and plunging, the terror-stricken beasts come out of the hell of shells and smoke. With necks outstretched they gallop on, making straight for the trench and the barbed wire in front of it.

‘The wire, Webby, they’ll be on it in a minute.’ . . .

We wave our arms and shout, but our voices can’t be heard above the noise of shelling, and there is a tanging of wire as the half-crazed animals gallop into the tangle of cruel barbs. They rear and kick and plunge deeper into its depths, making every movement a torture to them, and very soon they are a mass of lacerations right up past the flanks. One viciously snaps at its tormentors only to toss up its head with a cry almost human, its mouth dripping with blood.

Hopelessly we try and get at them, but have become so entangled ourselves that at each movement the wire tears our flesh, yet the piteous cries urge us forward, until we get to within four yards of them, but can get no further. We are close enough to see the mess they are in. Both are bleeding freely from dozens of ragged tears, while one has a huge slice out of its hindquarters.

‘What the hell do we do now, Jock?’ Webster inquires. ‘We’ll never get them clear of this lot, they’re too well anchored.’

‘We’ll have to try, we can’t shoot them without an officer.’

‘Officer be damned, Jock. I’m going back for my “Bondook” [rifle].’

As Webster struggles back to the trench for his rifle I speak gently to the two animals and try to stop their frantic struggles, but they are beyond control of human voice. Foam appears at their mouths, while steam rises from the blood that trickles from dozens of places on their torn bodies.

At last Webster is laboriously working his way back.

‘Try and quieten them, Jock,’ he urges. ‘Get hold of that one’s head and give me a chance.’

‘I can’t, damn you,’ I reply irritably, as my foot becomes entangled and I trip over sideways on to the ragged wire.

‘Well, look out,’ yells Webster.

Only four yards separate him from the beasts, but as if they know what is about to happen, they rear and plunge more violently, as Webster tries to take aim.

It takes three shots before the first sinks limply down on to its couch of barbed wire, and by now the second animal is struggling desperately in its terror, but by good luck Webster’s second shot gets it between the eyes. It flops instantly and it’s all over – poor, hard-working, uncomplaining friends of man.

Chaplain Thomas Tiplady, Army Chaplains’ Dept

On two miles of road I have counted a dozen dead mules and burial parties are sent out to put them out of sight. One night, alone, I got three dying mules shot. The road was crowded with traffic, yet it was difficult to find either an officer with a revolver or a transport driver with a rifle. I had to approach scores before I could find a man who had the means to put a mule out of its misery; and we were within two miles of our front. So rigid is our line of defence that those behind it do not trouble to take arms. Even when I found a rifleman, he hesitated to shoot a mule. There is a rule that no horse or mule must be shot without proper authority, and when you consider the enormous cost of one, the necessity for the rule is obvious. I had therefore to assure a rifleman that I would take full responsibility for his action. He then loaded up, put the nozzle against the mule’s forehead and pulled the trigger. A tremor passed through the poor thing’s body and its troubles were over. It had come all the way from South America to wear itself out carrying food to fighting men, and it died by the road when its last ounce of strength was spent.

Pte Christopher Massie, 76th Brigade, RAMC

The mule is not so mysteriously beautiful as the horse. When he is wounded he walks away from the battlefield in the direction of the field hospital. The humour of this situation is crowded out by its simple pathos. Men and mules, broken in battle, dragging themselves back down the awful road to Ypres. Often the mules are bandaged with the men’s first field dressings. There is the same ‘fed-up’ expression in their sad eyes, the same selfless humility – a humility which gives one the impression that men and mules are rather ashamed of their wounds.

The warhorse will stand wounded at his post. I remember coming down from Messines one misty dawn and finding a horse standing by the body of his dead mate. He stood quite motionless as I patted his strong neck. ‘All right, old chap?’ I asked. He looked at me with those mysterious eyes of sorrow, like a mother’s, and turned his head away. I looked over him and found a long gaping wound in his stomach. And then, when I had found it, he ventured to glance at me once more, as if he would say quite simply, ‘You see, my friend, it is all over.’

Pte Thomas Hope, 1/5th King’s Liverpool Rgt

We come across many wounded and dying horses. They are scattered all over in shell-holes, and at our approach attempt to get up and off, as if they mistrusted the very presence of a human being. One poor beast with back broken tries to haul its useless hindquarters along, while others just lie where they have fallen, colouring the sodden earth with their lifeblood. A few are still galloping aimlessly about, foam-flecked and wild-eyed – victims of man’s ruthlessness.

. . . Dawn at last, and we plod wearily back for our spell of uncertain off-duty.

Standing near the debris of guns and limbers is a solitary horse gently cropping leaves from a low-lying hedge. At our friendly words it trots towards us as if pleased to have our company, but not sure of its welcome – poor faithful beast, how ill you are repaid for your staunchness.

I have long since become accustomed to wounded humanity. Their plight evokes pity and the desire to help, but a wounded animal leaves me with a feeling of loathing, loathing towards myself and the civilised humanity which I represent. Too often have I seen reproach in the eyes of a dying horse, and outraged frailty in the flutterings of a wounded carrier pigeon.

We may understand; they never can.

The fighting at Ypres was so awful, the conditions so evil, that few men mentioned wildlife; there was no beauty in the Salient in 1917. Entire battalions sent into attack floundered in mud as the unremitting and unseasonal rain flooded the low-lying ground. Men struggled and they died. If messages were sent back, it was pure luck if they arrived. Sometimes, if the situation were not so tragic, it could almost have been funny.

2/Lt Alan Goring, 6th Yorkshire Rgt (Green Howards)

We had a very busy time, for naturally there were snipers all around us and bullets zinging about all over the place. I was left with just a handful of men, all that was left out of those three platoons, so I wanted to send a message back to see if we could get a bit of help from the artillery. We had two pigeons in a basket, but the trouble was that the wretched birds had got soaked when the platoon floundered into the flooded ground. We tried to dry one of them off as best we could and I wrote a message, attached it to its leg and sent it off. To our absolute horror, the bird was so wet that it just flapped into the air and then came straight down again, and started actually walking towards the German line about a hundred yards away. Well, if that message had got into the Germans’ hands, they would have known that we were on our own and we’d have been in real trouble. So we had to try to shoot the pigeon before he got there. A revolver was no good. We had to use rifles and there we were, all of us, rifles trained over the edge of this muddy breastwork trying to shoot this bird scrambling about in the mud. It hardly presented a target at all.

Well, we did manage it but that still left the problem of trying to get the message back. We did everything to dry off that other bird. We had one man called Shuttleworth, a well-meaning chap, but very awkward. If there was a piece of barbed wire that everyone else had avoided, Shuttleworth fell over it. If there was a shell-hole that everybody had skirted, Shuttleworth fell into it. Shuttleworth, anyway, was the one who suggested that if we had a cooker with us we could have toasted the bird over that a bit until he dried off. Eventually, we did something nearly as ridiculous. We huddled round this bird and blew on its feathers. As a matter of fact we did get it dried off, but we made jolly sure it
was
dry before we sent it off with the message.

Lt Norman Dillon, 20th Tank Bttn, Tank Corps

Each tank had two pigeons, and often they carried news of vital importance. During an attack in the Salient, one of my friends, Wagstaff, reached his objective, and, taking pity on his pigeons, fed them on seedy-cake and whisky. Soon after, his tank got stuck on a tree stump and although the tracks went round, it was immobile. So he tried to send off a pigeon to report his predicament. Opening a port over a track, he pushed the pigeon out but it sat on the track and refused to move. So they started the track, thinking that it would carry the bird forward and it would then fall off and fly when the track doubled under. But the pigeon was having none of this, and, no doubt hoping for more whisky, started keeping station by marching against the flow of the track.