Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden (42 page)

She was a horse that I never had to call. I would just clap my hands and she would race across the field, giving a sort of chuckle as she arrived. It was possible to ride her down the road without anything on her at all, not even a head collar, steering her with the pressure of my knees. At night, if we were in a barn, she would lie down and place her head on my legs and I’d put my arm round her neck.

Nancy had a remarkable temperament and, like most cavalry horses, stood up well to the noise of gunfire. She was killed at the end of the war when a shell burst almost underneath her, but, though it seems hard, I was glad. So many of the regiment’s horses were handed over to local farmers at the end of the war, and there was no knowing what might have happened to her.

Pte Christopher Massie, 76th Brigade, RAMC

The warhorse is honest, reliable, strong. He is a soldier. And I have written this eulogy of his merits as one soldier might write of another. I want someone to take his case up and see that he falls ‘cushy’ after the war. It is only fair. He is a mate of ours – one of us. A Tommy. Don’t ring a lot of bells and forget him. A field of clover, a bundle of hay, a Sussex meadow, a bushel of apples, a loaf of bread, a sack of carrots, sunshine and blue hills, clean stables, and trusses of straw, may they all be his, for he has earned them! It is only fair.

It might have been fair, but it is not what happened. Well over one million horses and mules were mobilised or purchased by the British Army in the Great War. An indication of the sheer logistical effort this required is in the War Office’s own published calculation that the total weight of oats and hay sent overseas to the Western Front to feed these animals exceeded the weight of ammunition of all types sent to feed the guns, 5.95 million tons and 5.27 million tons respectively. During the course of the fighting, 225,000 horses and mules were killed, and of the remainder only 62,000 of the fittest ever returned home.

Pte Fred Lloyd, Army Veterinary Corps

At the depot, we classified the horses to see what was coming home and what wasn’t. There were three grades, and peacetime vets were saying which ones were fit to go back to England, these went into quarantine; the next grade was to be sold to the farmers, and the others were for food. A terrific lot of the horses were blind, hundreds of them. They never found out why, perhaps it was exposure to gas. Some of the time, I was leading one awkward horse and three more that were totally blind. If they weren’t fit, we’d take them by train or, if they were, we’d take them by road. We used to go right up to Paris with horses, each man leading four to sell to the French for food. In the slaughterhouses, we led them on to scales four at a time and weighed them up. We sold them by weight. It was a bit upsetting.

Within eighteen months of the end of the war, nearly 200,000 horses had been sold and in the end 56,000 were killed. Only later, in the 1920s, did animal welfare organisations attempt to rescue some of those that had been sold. Our Dumb Friends’ League bought a number of overworked and emaciated horses that still bore the tell tale broad arrow branding of the British Army. Although not all were returned to Britain, all those found were allowed to live out their lives in comfort.

Until the peace treaty was signed at Versailles in June 1919, thousands of troops remained abroad, either stationed in France, clearing the battlefields, or as part of the Army of Occupation in the Rhineland. For those who signed to stay on in the army, a semblance of peacetime soldiering was restored, while in Britain the first battlefield pilgrimages were organised for grieving families to visit the graves of loved ones. Cemeteries were constructed, and soldiers took stock. For the first time they were free to survey the land in which, for so long, they had lived as worms.

Lt Harold Hemming, 84th Brigade, RFA

In Germany the horsey members of our army decided that they should start fox-hunting. Unfortunately there were no foxes, so they had to descend to a drag-hunt. However, everything else was done in style. They sent to England for their red coats and caps, and managed somehow to collect a pretty comic pack of hounds, appoint a Master of Hounds, etc.

I took part in one of the early hunts. I had acquired a sweet little mare who was pretty good at jumping fences. I only went to one meet and I put up a pretty poor show, and soon found myself all alone and ended up with a bunch of grooms with the ‘second’ horses. Anyway, I was particularly hostile to blood sports and I decided not to make an exhibition of myself again, even though there was no fox blood being spilt.

Lady Londonderry: visit to battlefields, 1–5 April 1919

Ypres

The shell-holes then, as now, were full of water in which our men had to live. It cannot be described. It must be seen, and even so, no one, fortunately for them, who was not there could imagine or picture for themselves such a hell as it must have been during the fight. We saw nothing alive the whole day except three wild ducks in flight and a grey crow perched upon a tree. Even the insect life seemed to have departed – and vegetation was in a moribund condition. No fresh green tufts of grass or bright-hued mossy patches, only dull blotches of grey weeds. There was no hum or whirr of insect wings or chirping of grasshoppers – just absolute silence and stagnation.

Somme

The village had always been a very unhealthy spot during the war and was commonly known by the name of ‘Funk’ Villers. It was not a pleasant habitation to take a siesta in or stroll about. We left the car and walked over to the Hun lines by Gommecourt Wood. They were still in splendid order and very deep. We investigated a very deep dugout with several rooms in it . . . These trenches gave one a far clearer idea than any others which I had seen of the life led below ground during the day when visits above ground could only be nocturnal. We wandered right through Gommecourt Wood past trees and shrubs which before the war would have been bursting forth in bud full of promise of coming spring but which in fact were lifeless, silent witnesses testifying to the tragedy that had been remorselessly going on around us for months . . . Nature itself seemed moribund and mutely reproachful of mankind who had made this terrific mess and muddle. I know I cannot adequately transplant my feelings into words. My last impression, as it was my first, of the battlefields, was the feeling of death pervading everything around us.

Anonymous British officer, 1919

Yesterday I visited the battlefield of last year. The place was scarcely recognisable. Instead of a wilderness of ground torn up by shells, a perfect desolation of earth without a sign of vegetation, the ground was a garden of wild flowers and tall grasses. Nature had certainly hidden the ghastly scene under a veil of many colours. I was specially struck by a cross to an unknown British warrior which stood like a sentinel over the vast cemetery of the fallen in last year’s battle, now hidden under the dense vegetation. Most remarkable of all was the appearance of many thousands of white butterflies which fluttered round this solitary grave. You can have no conception of the strange sensation that this host of little fluttering creatures gave me. It was as if the souls of the dead soldiers had come to haunt the spot where so many fell. It was so eerie to see them – the only living things in that wilderness of flowers. And the silence! Not a sound, not even the rustling of a breeze through the grass. It was so still that it seemed as if one could almost hear the beat of the butterflies’ wings. Indeed, there was nothing to disturb the eternal slumber of this unknown who was sleeping his last sleep where he fell. A contrast indeed to the hideous crash of battle of a short year ago.

Anonymous member of the Wicks family [sister] visiting the grave of L/Cpl Christopher Wicks, 31st Motor Ambulance Convoy, 1921

The cemetery is beautifully kept, and an English gardener and two subordinates (both English ex-soldiers) attend to the graves. It is laid out with military precision . . . the graves are in a long row, with just room to walk before the crosses on well-kept newly planted turf. A little rectangular flowerbed is made in each long row, and hardy flowers are planted at the foot of every cross. Marigolds, daisies and Michaelmas daisies are in full bloom everywhere, and in the photograph of my brother’s grave daffodils are blooming.

This St Pierre cemetary is not so utterly military as those scattered everywhere in the open country – many we saw afterwards in the Valley of the Somme and on Vimy Ridge, and nearly to Ypres, were about two acres in extent, carefully fenced and a large notice board with the nationality and number prominently displayed and no habitation of any kind near for miles. At such places the countryside was laid waste, and the utter desolation and barren outlook can only be seen to be believed. Just a wilderness with many enclosures with little white crosses. It is terrible, and only three years’ weeds and rank grasses cover the landscape for miles.

Former Capt. Stephen Graham, 1st Scots Guards

From Albert to Bapaume, from Fricourt by Carnoy and Maricourt to Longueval and Ginchy and Le Transloy, a pleasant day’s walk now. There is the incomparable Somme silence, a silence achieved by the tremendous thunderous contrast in history, a silence from the stilled hearts of the dead, a deafness and a muteness. Then when the mist disperses, and the sun lifts his awful radiance o’er the scene, there are audible the lowly orchestras of flies and bees. The rags of horses’ skeletons lie on the roadway, and beside a ruined direction post a clean-picked horse’s skull has been placed on the stump of a tree. Lifting one’s eyes to the view, there rolls forth to the horizon vast moors empurpled here and there and with gashes of white on wan green wastes. An organised tour by car whirls past upon the road raising phantom hosts of white dust. It will do the whole Somme campaign in an hour and bring up safely at some French hotel where hot lunch and foaming beer persuade the living that life is still worthwhile.

Former Pte James Hudson, 8th Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Rgt)

It was 1923. A travel agency sent me a brochure about trips to the battlefields and, on the spur of the moment, I thought I would go. This was on the Monday and I travelled on Friday.

There was only one other old soldier on the coach. We got to know each other and together we walked into the cemetery at Passchendaele, Tyne Cot. It was a lovely summer day, quiet and peaceful, and at the back of the cemetery was a young Belgian fellow with a single plough drawn by a mule, one of ours, for it had an arrow stamped on its backside. The peace, the quiet, the scene had both of us damn nearly in tears. We parted and we were left alone for some time before we could pull ourselves together a bit. It brought back so much.

Looking back, many soldiers found it hard to see in their mind’s eye anything beyond the unmitigated horror of trench warfare, and that is entirely understandable. After all, if they ever spoke about their war, if they ever answered questions about their service, it rarely, if ever, involved flowers, beetles and butterflies. Yet there was beauty there, and in abundance; moments of true spiritual exhilaration and wonder that could have been overlooked only by the most unimaginative of men. Undoubtedly the presence of wildlife helped to save men from complete despair and gave them a scintilla of hope for the future that was, perhaps, all that was needed at that moment to keep them going. For a lucky few whose love of nature was a deep personal pursuit, its presence was a godsend. That some of these men recorded the natural world in the way they did, in letters, diaries and memoirs, has helped recall a side to life on the Western Front that was, in its own way, as life-saving to their souls as any phial of morphine, bandage or pill was to their bodies.

Former Pte Thomas Williams, 19th King’s Liverpool Rgt

Looking back on the varied experiences of trench life on the Western Front, it may seem strange to think that some of us still treasure one or two really pleasant associations with no-man’s-land. Who, for instance, can forget the red glow of early dawn over the enemy’s lines and the larks singing in the morning sunlight? Men in mud-stained uniforms of khaki, field-grey and horizon-blue listened with never-failing wonder to those sweet notes. In many places, to show one’s head above ground was a decidedly risky business, yet the skylarks soared fearlessly. So long as the larks sang, there always seemed to be hope.

Former Capt. Philip Gosse, RAMC

Some of my readers may find fault with me for having comparatively little to say about the ‘horrors’ of war and so much about the beasts and the birds. The title might well have been, ‘A Solace of Birds’, for without the birds I dare not think how I should have got through the war at all. One friend, after reading my manuscript, asked if I could not include ‘more horrors’, even at the expense of some of the birds, but I told him that in any case I could remember no more ‘horrors’, though of birds I remembered so much. The mangled corpse is forgotten, but the warbler with its nest and eggs is remembered. I think the reason for this is largely that at the time the ‘horrors’ were so beastly, so ugly, that one got into the habit of putting them aside by concentrating on the birds, so that now, after many years, the memory retains the birds and to a large extent has got rid of the rest.