Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden (8 page)

L/Cpl Alfred Vivian, 4th Middlesex Rgt

My sleeping companion, the ‘pigman’, sat on his haunches, his little pig perched on his knee, feeding it carefully with army biscuit laboriously brought to the required moisture and softness by the process of chewing. As each morsel became ready, he conveyed it on one of his fingers, to the mouth of the pig (which had been unanimously accorded the name of ‘Percy’) which eagerly awaited its arrival, and devoured it with avidity.

We all took Percy to our hearts, in spite of his funny little drawbacks, and were all most anxious to keep him with us, and most of us were prepared to increase our affection to the extent of taking him to our stomachs, in the event of certain emergencies arising. Fortunately for his peace of mind dear little Percy did not suspect our hungry love for him. Any attempt on the part of the remainder of us to pay some little attention to Percy was resentfully rebuffed by his nurse in no uncertain manner. This resulted in him being subjected to a great deal of ragging.

Anonymous soldier, 1st Gloucestershire Rgt

The next morning, about 5 a.m., the platoon ‘stood-to’. At once, as though he knew, the enemy began a very heavy bombardment. Things and men moved quickly, and the hindquarter of a pig was left swinging in the air. Very fortunately, before the enemy artillery barrage lifted and moved towards them, the men were able to occupy a bend in the sunken road about two hundred yards in the rear of their original support position. Soon bruised and battered men of the Guards began to trickle back. The enemy had broken the line. The Glosters were now heavily shelled, but the stolid West Countrymen pressed themselves flatter against the parapet, gripped their rifles, with right forefinger curled round the trigger, and looked keenly into the mist. Forms began to move out in front. The lines of singularly grotesque figures, with hunched backs, staring eyes, and stiff arms thrusting out their rifles, came through the mist towards the road. A peculiar lull; then the ‘mad minute’. The marksmanship of the old army was no myth. The German attack petered out.

At dusk the Glosters were once again moving back to reserve. In his imagination everyone in Sergeant Bray’s platoon could see the quarter of a pig swinging on a certain tree. Hope springs eternal even in the heart of an old soldier. They reached the end of the sunken road near a clump of trees. The quarter of the pig had gone!

A raucous voice from somewhere along the road started to sing: ‘Old Soldiers never die, never die . . . They simply fade away.’

L/Cpl Alfred Vivian, 4th Middlesex Rgt

The bombardment had become intense, when, above the din, arose a plaintive voice raised in a pitiful appeal. ‘Piggy! Piggy! Come back ’ere or you’ll get ’urt’, seconded by a stentorian chorus urging Percy to show good sense and return to his ‘father’.

This extra vocal uproar drew my attention to a spot where I perceived poor little Percy rushing to and fro in utmost bewilderment, scared out of his senses by the shells that burst around him, while his owner stood with his arms thrown out entreatingly, tearfully pleading with Percy to return to the comparative safety of the trench.

Finding that his appeals were unavailing, the owner suddenly sprang out into the open and ran forward to secure his charge from harm. After a short and exciting skirmish, he succeeded in catching him and, gathering him up, turned to regain shelter. Alas! That was poor little Percy’s swansong, for before the trench was regained, a splinter from a shell raked him through, and wrote finis to his young life.

The end of our potential mascot, which had every opportunity of becoming famous, cast gloom over all, and sad glances were bent on its erstwhile owner while he reverently placed the little corpse in the bottom of the trench.

Lance Corporal Vivian did not record whether they now ate their erstwhile companion. Percy, the ‘potential’ mascot, was one of the first of many such animals that would be taken to the hearts of soldiers throughout the war.

The BEF had helped to hold the German onslaught and in September the first trenches were dug as both sides stopped to catch breath. If neither side could beat the other front-on, then an outflanking manoeuvre would be needed. The race to the sea begat the Western Front and in October and November the fighting raged in the villages and fields of northern France and around a beautiful but slowly disintegrating Belgian city: the name of Ypres entered the British consciousness.

Elsewhere, in early October, an ill-advised attempt to halt the German advance on Antwerp saw the embarkation from England of the Royal Naval Division to Belgium. It was a short-lived and costly campaign. British Marines were forced into a hasty retreat and civilians were once more ousted from their homes, as one British nurse recalled.

Staff Nurse Clara Holland, Territorial Force Nursing Service

My heart bled at the pathetic sight of the many dogs and cats that refused to leave the piles of what had once been their homes. Many of them were mad with starvation and snarled when we approached them. It seemed so terrible that these faithful dumb pets of scattered families should also have to suffer in such an awful way.

The next day I returned, borrowed a rifle from a soldier, and another soldier and myself went around shooting these miserable, howling and starving things. We had very nearly finished our gruesome job, when we had to stop suddenly as the Germans began to answer our rifle shots from a wood beyond.

I saw a small kitten, frightened by our firing, rush out of the remains of a house, and I was just about to shoot it when it ran towards me and sat down at my feet. I hate cats, but this little poor wee thing looked so pathetic as it stared up at me with its little mouth open, that I stooped and picked it up, and it was then I saw that it had but three feet, one of its back ones having been shot off, and the stump was bleeding. I carried it to the hospital and dressed its wound, and that night it went back to Antwerp with me as the smallest and youngest ‘blessé’ and the mascot of our hospital.

Would you have believed that a cat would have eaten chocolate? No, no one would and yet this little starving thing eagerly ate chocolate, all that I had in the food line with me, and swore over it as if it had been the most delicious of ‘catty’ meals.

It was not just domestic pets and farm animals that became tangled up in the war. In towns and cities, public zoos and privately owned collections of exotic animals were overtaken by the fighting. Keepers were forced to leave and the animals were abandoned to their fate.

Staff Nurse Clara Holland, Territorial Force Nursing Service

All the beautiful animals in the zoological gardens were shot. Lions, tigers, elephants, monkeys, in fact every animal in the building was killed in case they got out and added to the terrors.

Not all animals ended up dead, however. In time, a few elephants were used by the German army in northern France for ploughing, pulling and heavy lifting, while the odd lemur and a few lion cubs ended up as mascots on both sides of the line.

As for farm animals, the outlook remained almost uniformly bleak. From 1914 until the end of the conflict, the total number of farm livestock within the war zone would fall by nearly 95 per cent.

Staff Nurse Clara Holland, Territorial Force Nursing Service

On a quiet day, of which there were a few, when no vigorous fighting was going on, we went on a hunting expedition to a village to replenish the larder of the hospital. It was a big bag consisting of a fine fat pig, a sheep and many fowls. We had great fun and a good run, for the pig’s squeals outdid the scream of shells. The fowls gave us a lot of trouble; some of them got on to the top of some haystacks and it was a hot job getting them, but we caught them all in time and put them, pig and all, into a motor. It seemed such a pity to leave them for German consumption when we were in need of these so badly at Malines Hospital and they were only roaming about amongst the ruined farmyards.

At Ypres the fighting was the fiercest of the war to date. The Germans, sensing that they could force the issue in the west, launched attack after attack on the beleaguered British infantry. Hand-to-hand fighting often resulted as last-ditch efforts were made to hold a trench line. In the midst of the fighting, bemused animals roamed free while, further back, civilians who had bolted occasionally returned to pick up any remaining possessions that might still be at home.

Pte Frederick Bolwell, 1st Loyal North Lancashire Rgt

Just in front of the King’s Royal Rifles’ trenches was a huge German officer waving with one hand to the retiring Rifles to surrender and with the other waving his troops on. It did not seem much good for us to attempt to fight that dense mass of Germans, but we did. Out of the thousand [men in the battalion], or thereabouts, that we lined up with a couple of nights before very few got away, the enemy taking about four hundred of my regiment prisoners and our casualties being about the same number.

I had a run for my life that day. A chum of mine who was with us had a cock-fowl in his valise that morning from the farm; he had wrung its neck but he had not quite succeeded in killing him; and, as we ran, this bird began to crow. As for myself, I had no equipment; I had run having left it in the bottom of the trench. It is quite funny as I come to think of it now, the old cock crowing as we ran; but it was really terrible at the time. We were absolutely overwhelmed, not only in our particular spot but all along the line, and had to concede nearly one thousand yards to the enemy.

L/Cpl Arthur Cook, 1st Somerset Light Infantry

There was a terrific rattle of musketry as we advanced into the village, but we were not wanted so we retired about two miles where we remained till 5 p.m. We have been greatly praised for yesterday’s work. The Germans have set fire to many houses and ricks in the vicinity by shellfire. Most of the houses have been hit, places that had been vacated only a few hours previously by peaceful inhabitants. Birds were singing in their cages as if nothing unusual was going on; pigs were grunting for food in their sties; horses were neighing for fodder; remains of a hasty meal are left on the table and hot embers are still burning in the grate. The furniture is still orderly except where a hostile shell has penetrated the room and disturbed it. The houses have the appearance of being hastily abandoned with the hope of returning again in a few hours. God only knows if they will ever see their homes again, or what is left of them.

Pte Frank Richards, 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers

There were plenty of ducks and chickens about, pigeons in the toilet of the house we were staying in, and vegetables in the gardens. We also scrounged a lot of bottles of champagne and other wines and made up for the starvation diet we had been on for some time. Our usual rations were also more plentiful now and we were getting a bread ration. One morning a man came up with a permit. He had formerly occupied the house we were staying in and he told us he wanted to take two pigeons away. We had killed some pigeons the day before and only that morning I had killed another four which were boiling merrily away with a couple of chickens in a dixie. He went up to the toilet and came down crying. He made us understand, by pointing to the photographs of two pigeons hanging up on the wall, that they were the two finest pigeons in the whole of northern France and that they had pedigrees as long as ships’ cables. But we also made him understand by pointing to our bellies that they were as empty as drums.

Pte Frederick Bolwell, 1st Loyal North Lancashire Rgt

Most of my regiment being gone and the remainder mixed up with other brigades which had formed another line, two chums and myself went to a farmhouse fifty yards behind this newly made line. There we had a field battery; and, after getting a little rest, we started out to find the remnants of the regiment. The enemy was still shelling, and the battle was still going on; but by nightfall, not finding any of them, we came back to the old house and found the battery gone. That night we slept on beds in the farmhouse, and next morning, 1 November, after a hurried breakfast of biscuits and beef, we all set out to join our respective regiments; but, after wandering about for an hour and seeing no signs of any of ours, my two chums decided to go back to the farmhouse and make a dinner.

There were plenty of vegetables in the garden and an outhouse full of potatoes; and we found a spirit-lamp and a pot; so we commenced to prepare our meal. In a short time it was all in the pot, when alas!, the Germans began to shell our house, sending over incendiary shells. They let us have it battery fire. The first lot took off the foreleg of a cow, which along with some others was grazing at the back of the house; the poor thing hopped around on three legs for a second or two and then dropped, the other cows running up to lick the blood from its wound. The next lot hit the top of the house, one shell taking away the roof of the scullery, behind which one of my chums was standing; the other had already run into the trenches fifty yards away. I was the last to go, the other two having thought that I had been hit. I did not leave the place until the house was well alight; and three hours after, when the enemy’s guns had died down and the fire had burnt out the house, I went over to see how the dinner had got on, and found it done to a turn, cooked by the heat from the burning house. Needless to say, we did full justice to that dinner, all three of us.