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

by Richard van Emden

  This horror which had come down upon the world was, after all, but a transitory thing and would presently depart. That small bird stood for the eternal and changeless things that will emerge again . . .

  How can I describe the spell at Ploegsteert Wood, not the horrors of which I have just written, but the living impalpable beauty of the place? To the men of the 4th Division who captured it and held it in the winter it was doubtless a place of evil memory, but to us who were fortunate enough to occupy it in May when the earth was warm with spring and the enemy comparatively quiet, it was a peaceful spot. To turn one’s back to the parapet and watch the edge of the wood take on the pale golden glow of dawn, later to lie down amid the forget-me-nots in the warm sun or stand naked and bathe in a shell-hole filled with water, were experiences that aroused one’s aesthetic facilities to a high pitch. One realised how close one was living to nature, closer perhaps than ever before, and the thought that possibly each dawn might be the last accentuated the delight.

  The dawns at this time were particularly beautiful. Before any definite light appeared, the larks would soar up and a faint twittering in the wood grew to a buzz of noise as the birds stood-to with us.

  Lt Richard Talbot Kelly, 52nd Brigade, RFA

  To me, half the war is a memory of trees: fallen and tortured trees; trees untouched in summer moonlight, torn and shattered winter trees, trees green and brown, grey and white, living and dead. They gave names to roads and trenches, strongpoints and areas. Beneath their branches I found the best and the worst of war: heard nightingales and smelt primroses, heard the scream of endless shells and breathed gas; rested in their shade, spied from their branches, cowered in their roots. They carried our telephone lines, hid our horses, guided us to and from battle and formed the memorial to many efforts of our arms.

  For most men, interest in nature and wildlife was a passing pleasure, a transitory moment when a tree, a hedgerow, an animal or insect attracted their attention before more pressing concerns took over and the moment was forgotten. Not so Philip Gosse. In contrast, pressing concerns were interruptions to his love of animal life and, although he undertook his work as a medical officer with absolute professionalism, any opportunity to pursue his personal interests was taken. Indeed, it would be his passion for wildlife that would, in the end, lead to promotion and an end to trench life.

  In mid-1915 he had only recently arrived in France and was being led up to the front line to meet another medical officer, Charles McKerrow. McKerrow was in the act of skinning a vole when Gosse entered a dugout. Gosse, an amateur taxidermist, felt an immediate affinity with his superior officer, although he was a little taken aback to discover that McKerrow was in fact using the skin to make a muff to send home for his daughter’s doll.

  Lt Philip Gosse, RAMC attd. 10th Northumberland Fusiliers

  From that morning McKerrow and I became fast friends, and whenever we could we would meet and talk of all sorts of matters not connected with war or medicine, such as birds and flowers . . .

  It was the sight of McKerrow skinning a vole that prompted me to write to my old friend Oldfield Thomas, the Keeper of Mammals in the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road, to ask him if the Museum was well provided with specimens of the small mammals of Flanders, and if not, whether he would like me to procure some. Thomas, who was always ready to encourage amateurs to collect, wrote back to say that they were in great need of specimens from Western Europe, and he sent also some of the museum labels and some arsenical soap for preserving their skins. I then asked my mother to send me a dozen ‘break-back’ mousetraps, and as soon as they arrived I set about collecting and skinning mice and shrews.

  Collecting animals for the Natural History Museum was not an alternative full-time job, but to some it might have looked like one.

  Lt Philip Gosse, RAMC attd. 10th Northumberland Fusiliers

  In the evening I would go out with my haversack full of traps and a piece of ration cheese for bait. Creeping about in the wet ditches and hedgerows, I would look out for the tiny beaten tracks of my small jungle game: wood mice, voles or shrews. Setting traps for even such small game as this calls for a certain amount of skill, or at least, hedge-cunning, for a dozen traps placed anyhow and anywhere will catch nothing . . .

  On returning to the dugout, each specimen was carefully examined and measured. These measurements had to be written on the labels and recorded in millimetres, the length from point of nose to stump of tail, the length of tail, which must not include any hairs at the tip, and the length of the ears and paws. Then the place where the specimen was caught, the date, and its sex, had to be noted down . . .

  This hunting of small mammals was all very well in the back areas, miles away from the line, but in or just behind the trenches the risks were not only on the side of the small mammals. Sometimes the hunter became the hunted. Well-intentioned sentries and other armed patriots, seeing a suspicious person, dressed – more or less – in the uniform of a British officer, skulking in waste places, or creeping about in water-logged ditches, were apt to jump to the conclusion that he was an enemy spy. When challenged, I found that the simple truth that I was only setting traps for field mice failed, in most cases, to allay suspicion, and on one occasion I was hurried, under an armed guard, to explain my suspicious actions to higher authorities.

  Trapping and skinning so many small mammals left a surplus of flesh and bones. With so many larger carcasses around, most smelling to high heaven, Gosse’s search for a hygienic method of disposal was hardly worth bothering about. In fact he needed to look no further than a friendly cat known to all as Félicité.

  Lt Philip Gosse, RAMC attd. 10th Northumberland Fusiliers

  Up here in Flanders I was sorry to find cats were all too few, and those I did see were poor skulking specimens of a noble race. But there was one exception: Félicité. She was a small and rather scrubby white-and-tortoiseshell cat, but very intelligent and affectionate. She was the most confidential cat I ever knew, and was forever whispering something in my ear which I could never quite catch. While I was writing she would come and sit very close beside me and read what I wrote and purr loudly. Every night after I had gone to bed she would stroll in and leap up on to my bed and sleep curled up beside me. This adoration was, I fear, largely cupboard love, for each day after I had finished skinning a mouse or a vole I would give her the carcass, for I only wanted the skin and Félicité would oblige me by disposing of the corpse, and nobody was more concerned than she over the success of each night’s trapping.

  Most animals, at least those not considered edible, were no more than transient visitors to the trench system. However, one animal that was neither edible nor transient was the trench cat. Useful for catching rats and even small mice, she was also a reminder of home, a great companion and a focus for affection. Some cats had grown wild since losing their civilian masters, others had, as so many cats are prone to do, followed the line of least resistance and sought out a provider, then settled in to become part of the fixtures and fittings.

  2/Lt Alexander Gillespie, 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

  Writing is difficult, for Sonia, the trench cat, is paddling about on my knees, and making herself into a living sporran. She has come from the ruined farm behind, I suppose, but she takes the change very philosophically, and is a sort of permanent housekeeper, who never leaves company headquarters in this dugout, but is handed over to each relieving regiment along with other fixtures, appearing in the official indent after the ammunition, spades, fascines, RE material, etc as ‘Cat and box 1’. She has no real affections, but prefers kilts, because they give more accommodation in the lap than breeches; on the other hand, she has an unpleasant habit of using bare knees as a ladder to reach the desired spot.

  Cats such as Sonia were frequently valued out of all proportion to their actual worth, as front-line entertainment and morale boosters. Captain James Dunn recalled in his book, The War the Infantry Knew, that there were two ‘much-made-of-kit
tens’ in their Company HQ. He believed that when the poet Robert Graves managed to tread on one of the kittens, his eviction from the unit was not far behind. ‘Graves had reputedly the largest feet in the army, and a genius for putting both of them in everything. He put one on a kitten: it was enough. Not long afterwards he was transferred to the 1st Battalion.’

  Lt Philip Gosse, RAMC attd. 10th Northumberland Fusiliers

  It seemed that ever since the British took over this line of trenches from the French, the medical officer of each battalion had instructed the medical officer of the next to be careful to look after the Landlady, who proved to be a cat, and was the one and only remaining civilian of Givenchy.

  The regimental doctor produced a tin of preserved milk and gave me precise instructions as to its proper dilution and the hours of the daily feeds, just as in peacetime he must have done to many a mother over her first baby’s bottle. He explained that the Landlady was out, that she went out at dusk every evening, but would return at dawn and expect to find her saucer of milk ready prepared and in its usual place.

  As to her other rations, it seemed she supplied herself with these by catching rats and field mice every night. These duties I gladly promised to perform and we said goodbye.

  Tired and wet after the long march, I was glad to get out of my damp clothes and curl up in the less damp blankets on the low bunk which had been made up by cutting away the chalk on one side of the dugout. I soon fell asleep and must have been so for some hours, when something heavy fell on me which woke me up with a start. At first I thought a shell had struck the roof and that I was buried in the debris. Then I became aware that the weight on my legs was moving as though alive and I lay quite still, afraid to stir.

  Whatever could it be? I dared not put down my hand to feel for fear it was a rat, but if it was it must have been one of those huge monsters an Irish soldier had told me of, ‘as big as a dog’. Meanwhile the movements of the heavy object had become rhythmical, a sort of prodding was going on, accompanied by an odd, deep, throbbing sound. Then all of a sudden, as sleep cleared away, it dawned on me that my waker could be no other than my Landlady; gingerly I reached in the direction of the object and felt the soft fur of a cat, busy at that exercise all cats enjoy, of kneading with alternate paws . . .

  During the whole day she slept curled up on my bunk and did not wake up until the evening. Then, a little while before sunset, she arose, tripped up the steps of the dugout and inspected the skies. From where she sat she had a good view of Notre Dame de Lorette behind our lines, and of the broken spire of the church of Ablain-St-Nazaire, beyond the crumpled village of Souchez.

  After a while she sauntered up the trench which led towards the front line, and at a respectful distance I followed her. Presently she reached the fire trench and without warning leaped up on the parapet, where she sat gazing across no-man’s-land, with all the tranquillity of a peacetime cat seated on the wall of its own backyard. No doubt from her point of vantage she could see the ruined mine shafts of Lens and even German soldiers moving about in their trenches.

  But I trembled for her. Only fifty yards separated our front line from that of the enemy. At that very moment, more than one German sniper must have been watching her; perhaps was then drawing a bead on her with his rifle. Down many a periscope her image was being thrown by artfully adjusted mirrors into the retina of bloodthirsty Boches. Each second I expected to hear the crack of a rifle and to see my Landlady leap into the air and then fall dead or mortally wounded into the bottom of the trench.

  But nothing of the sort happened, and I was led to suppose that all Germans were not as black as they were painted.

  Then, to add to her foolhardiness, the Landlady commenced her evening toilet, in full view of two vast contending armies, each armed to the teeth with every device invented by civilised man to destroy life and limb . . .

  It was strange, I thought, that the Landlady could sit up there for twenty minutes in perfect safety while if I, a non-combatant whose profession was to succour the sick and wounded, whether friend or foe, showed my head for but one moment above the same trench, I would receive a bullet through my brain. How incalculable are the ways of man.

  The Landlady, unperplexed by such reflections, having rested after her ablutions, rose, stretched herself, and then disappeared over the parapet into no-man’s-land – and not a sound, not a shot. What she did there until she came back to bed with me some eight hours later no one knows. Probably she hunted rats and mice in the long grass that grew so rankly amongst the coils of barbed wire out there. Those small mammals were her sport and her supper.

  But who can say if she had not friends in the German lines? Who knows but what she was a spy in German pay? But no, it would be treachery even to think such a thing.

  Did she, I used to wonder, leap up on the German parapet and make herself at home in the enemy’s line as in ours? That I can well believe, but what happened beyond our front line she kept to herself, a profound secret . . .

  When the time came for us to leave those trenches I said goodbye to the Landlady with real regret, and was punctilious to inform the relieving medical officer of her requirements and habits.

  When cats became part of the trench fabric, it was likely that, in due course, some would have kittens, and a generation of kittens was destined to be born and raised in or close to the front line.

  2/Lt Alexander Gillespie, 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

  We are back again in the old trenches which we used to hold at the end of March, when the weather first began to get fine. There is a great difference since then: the grass has grown so long everywhere that we can hardly see the German parapet, and the trees hide a great deal of the front too, now that they are in full leaf . . . These trenches are much deeper than the others I have been in, for somehow or other they never flooded so badly, so they still hold the original line of last October, through the middle of a wheat field which was never harvested. Now the wheat has sown itself, and is growing up everywhere in tall bunches on the parapet; in fact, it is in the ear already. Sonia, the cat, is now the happy mother of three kittens, very pretty little kittens too. Never having known any home except this trench, I suppose they would be most indignant if our line went forward and left them. In the meantime, they and their mother and three servants live in one dugout, when they are not sprawling in the sun.

  Capt. Charles McKerrow, RAMC attd. 10th Northumberland Fusiliers

  I have just returned from having tea at the mess. I was suspicious of little pussy, so made a thorough examination of my bed. I found that she had decided to produce her family on my pyjamas and that the event was not far distant. I hastily removed her to a box, but at present she is under my bed. I have just had a look and one has arrived. She seems to understand all about the business herself and I see no reason to help. The ungrateful beast refuses to look at a sandbag I offered in place of the white tiles. I daresay she knows best. My future efforts will be required to prevent her insinuating her infants into my sleeping bag.

  2/Lt Alexander Gillespie, 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

  All is quiet today on the front held by the 93rd, except that fierce engagements go on night and day between the three kittens, and also between Sonia, a proud mother, and a small black terrier pup, called Satan Macpherson, who belongs to the machine-gun officer. Satan has the best intentions in the world, and is only anxious to do his best for the new army by paying a friendly call; but as soon as he attempts to advance, he is met with high explosive and driven from his position at the point of the bayonet. Fighting still continues.

  In late April the Germans introduced a new horror to the fighting in Belgium: chlorine gas. The first soldiers affected had no protection and suffered terribly as a consequence. In the days and weeks that followed, some basic protection was rushed up to the front line and, in time, increasingly effective gas helmets were manufactured and distributed.

  Lt Denis Barnett, 2nd Prince of Wales’ Leinste
r Rgt

  Young had to go off this morning to a village a few miles back to be gassed. He (and a lot of staff men) were put in a trench and given a dose, with respirators on, of course. They found the respirators worked admirably, though there were two unhappy frogs in the bottom of the trench who curled up and died at the first whiff.

  2/Lt John Gamble, 14th Durham Light Infantry

  One thing I must tell you, before I stop, and that is about a little bit of diversion during the gas attack.

  I had just been bandaging up a couple of wounded, when one of them called my attention to a couple of big rats which were staggering about on their hind legs as if drunk. It really was one of the funniest sights imaginable. One usually only gets glimpses of rats as they scuttle rapidly by (during the day), but these two were right out in the open, and their antics were too quaint. They were half-gassed of course, but strangely enough it was one of the things I remembered best after the show was over. One good thing the gas did was to kill a lot of the little beasts.

  Capt. James Dunn, RAMC attd. 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers

  Gas drifted through the village at five and again at 7.30 this morning. The Germans put it over at Hulloch, a couple of miles to our right, and entered 300 yards of front and support trenches. Here, the gas crept along the ground in thin dilution, at a fair pace, well below the height of a man standing . . . Horses and tethered cattle were startled, and tugged at their head ropes. A little dog on a heavy chain, unable to scramble on to his kennel, ran about frantically; hens flew on to walls and outhouses clucking loudly; little chickens stood on tiptoe, craning to raise their gaping beaks above the vapour; mice came out of their holes; one climbed the gable of a barn only to fall back when near the top. Seedling peas and other vegetables were bleached and wilted.