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

by Richard van Emden

  Men went to extraordinary lengths to save the lives of horses and mules, and not just for sentimental reasons. Every horse or mule was expensive to replace, many being imported from North America. The horse under Percival Glock may have been shot, but on another occasion Glock recalled trying for twelve hours to extricate a horse from the mud.

  In the effort to save equine lives, the Army Veterinary Corps (AVC) was greatly expanded from a strength of just 519 men in 1914 to around 18,000 on the Western Front by the end of the war. The best indication of the value of a horse or mule is given in prices paid by farmers to purchase them at the end of the war. Horses fetched on average £37, mules £36, equal to the basic wage paid to a private for two years’ service at the front.

  Lt Reginald Hancock, Veterinary Officer, 61st Howitzer Brigade, RFA

  Foot injuries, due for the most part to nails penetrating the sole of the foot, became a serious cause of loss. Only in the finest weather could one attempt to treat such cases under front-line conditions. If the unit was on the move or the ground muddy and wet, then base hospital was the only hope for the patient. Where did all the nails come from? One day, riding along a road past an infantry field kitchen – a contraption on wheels, rather like a gun limber, with an oven in full blast cooking the rations – I realised at least one major source. The usual fuel consisted of the cases, chopped up, in which the tinned foods reached us. Complete with nails, the wood was fed into the kitchen fires as they went along, the nails dropped out through the grates, and lying on the road, were a constant menace to every passing horse.

  Trp. Benjamin Clouting, 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards

  Any wounds or cuts suffered by the horses had to be cleaned with petrol, as water froze on the hair. Injuries were usually leg sores, or wounds to the horse’s heel. These injuries were common when the rope which held the horses in the lines became entangled in the animals’ fetlocks. The friction of the rope created a gall which was very difficult to heal. Only petrol could be used because it dried quickly and kept the dirt and mud out, although later that winter the veterinary officer gave us petroleum jelly to use instead.

  We tried as hard as possible to give the horses shelter, often behind the walls of partially destroyed houses, but they suffered very badly.

  Driver R.M. Luther, C Batt., 92nd Brigade, RFA

  In this cold and hunger, the horses now developed a new habit – they all started chewing – ropes, leather, or even our tunics. While you were attending to one horse, the other would be chewing at you. So we reverted to chains, a big steel chain for pinioning down, another from the horse’s nose band, just like a heavy dog chain. The bags from which they were fed oats and corn had become sodden with rain, and when a harness man was placing this on its head, the horse would swing it up and sideways. Many a driver was hit senseless with such a blow. No man could feed two horses like this, so it was again a case of one man per horse, otherwise the horse not being fed would rear up and plunge in all directions. The horses then turned to chewing at one another, and they soon became hairless, and a pitiful sight. This was war, however, and no Inspector from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals came that way.

  Chaplain David Railton, 1/19th London Rgt (St Pancras)

  I was coming back from a dressing station and I came through the transport lines. I had a flashlight and I turned it on some of the dear horses and patted them. I went on to the next. The light showed a great hole all stopped up with wadding. I thought, ‘This is one of the wounded horses.’ I went on and the next one had a hole in the head, the next in the legs and body, and so it went on. The flashlight showed up enough to tell me how terribly they had been wounded in taking food up to our men. Indeed, so bad were they that the transport officer said he might lose the lot. But all was silent. Only one was breathing a little heavily, that was all.

  Horses and mules always presented artillery with a substantial target out in the open. As crossroads, roads and tracks were targeted by the enemy, it was usually the guile of the transport drivers which gave the limber team a better than even chance of surviving a trip up the line. Even so, when the shells were bursting there was often no choice but to drive the horses on through the shower of steel. Too often the teams were killed and their carcasses dragged to the ditch.

  Maj. Neil Fraser-Tytler, D Batt., 149th Brigade, RFA

  The first wagon successfully negotiated the 250-yard stretch of mud to our lines. But the second, also empty, despite all the efforts of its team of twelve mules, managed to stick after the first thirty yards, and when anything halts, it begins to sink at once. Much advice from onlookers was wafted across to our lines. At that moment a Hun plane loafed up . . . The area round is littered with observation balloons, and when they are sitting on the ground the Hun loves throwing things at them. The third bomb came near us by mistake and killed the cook and three of the above-mentioned team of mules, or rather two were actually killed and the third lay down and died out of sheer cussedness. The poor cook we laid to rest not far from the scene of his labours, and the mules were decently interred by the simple process of standing on them until they had sunk out of sight in the roadway.

  Rifleman Aubrey Smith, 1/5th London Rgt (London Rifle Brigade)

  The only incident worthy of record was the death of my late steed, Jack, owing to some internal trouble . . . It took several men a day or so to dig a pit for him and the dragging of his corpse to the burial spot by a blindfolded horse was a ticklish job. Over his grave we erected a wooden board bearing the following epitaph:

  Here lies a steed, a gallant steed, whose Christian name was Jack.

  How oft he lugged our limbers to the firing line and back.

  Although he’s loath to leave us, he is happy on this score –

  He won’t be in this — rotten Army any more.

  The next day Colonel Bates and some other officers happened to pass this way and we saw them laughing loud and long over the inscription. I wonder how long it remained there – firewood was at a premium!

  Pte David Polley, 189th Machine Gun Coy, MGC

  To me, one of the beastliest things of the whole war was the way animals had to suffer. It mattered not to them if the Kaiser ruled the whole world; and yet the poor beasts were dragged into hell to haul rations and gear over shell-swept roads and field paths full of holes to satisfy the needs of their lords and masters. Bah! many a gallant horse or mule who had his entrails torn out by a lump of shell was finer in every way than some of the human creatures he was serving. I believe I might normally be described as a peaceful, easy-going sort of chap, but the sight of a team of horses, hitched to a limber, on a road in the forward areas, screaming with fright at a shell burst in the ditch beside them, turned my mind in such a direction, and instilled a desire to wipe out those responsible for the poor brutes’ presence.

  The offensive ground to a halt in November, to everyone’s relief, although the sub-zero temperatures made simply holding the front line that Christmas as uncomfortable as it could possibly be. It was vital to wrap up in as many layers of clothing as possible, yet at the same time there was an inescapable itching below that was impossible to reach. Lice were giving men hell. You could laugh or cry, or both.

  Pte Frank Harris, 6th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry

  Despite the Arctic weather, we discover we are lousy! We crawl, in fact, head to foot with lice. Bert, I recall, wrote home for pomade some little time ago but did not suspect I was breeding too – maybe their variety are more voracious feeders. All we have had to date has been an odd bath and an odd change of clothes. We start purging them forthwith – a process we call chatting, but killing each louse is a slow and tedious task. Finger- and thumbnails very messy too! We resort to candle ends, the flame of which we run up and down the seams . . . It is said or rumoured that lice fight amongst themselves, which is rot! They fraternise in the course of which they breed and once you have admitted to yourself that you’ve really got these blood-sucking pests you
get no peace of mind, off comes the tunic, trousers, pants. Believe me, it’s a problem, yet in some ways I consider it a case of willpower and control. You can have them and endure it – see how long you can tough it out – once you give up, throw in the towel, so to speak, admit you’re not immune, henceforth you will know no peace. You succumb; you emulate flea-bitten dogs, subconsciously scratching until drawing blood. They always get their man.

  And so you learnt to hunt for lice

  In the lining of your shirt

  To crack ’em with your fingers

  And watch the bastards spurt.

  Pte Charles Heare, 1/2nd Monmouthshire Rgt

  Although the mud is bad and the rain, we get as lousy as ever. One fellow suggests we all take our shirts and trousers off, rub fat salt bacon on them, put them by some water and when the chats go off our clothes for a drink, run away with our clothes. That’s one way of getting rid of them but we don’t try it.

  Lt James McQueen, Sanitary Officer, 51st Div.

  In the depth of the winter it would appear that the activity of lice was in no way inhibited, and I can remember seeing soldiers in a battalion in the front line stripped naked to the waists with their kilts laid across their knees hunting for lice in the folds of their kilts. It had become generally accepted that trench fever was propagated by lice; consequently, renewed efforts were made to tackle the problem by the diminishing of that pest.

  I went to a conference of Sanitary Section OCs in Péronne . . . [where I] listened for about an hour and a quarter to a whole host of fantastic schemes which seemed to resolve themselves into a great intensive sterilisation of soldiers’ clothing by the using of home-made apparatus that would never be worth a tinker’s cuss . . . I said that the only thing that could be done was to appoint official ironers, five men per battalion, with a proper allowance of charcoal for the heating of the irons, and that it would be the duty of these ironers to systematically iron the folds of the soldiers’ uniforms, and that a dugout be set apart for the purpose and that there could be going on day by day, even in the line itself, a steady killing off of the lice and of the eggs by the application of the hot irons . . . [A] major said that the army would never agree to the withdrawal of five bayonets from the line, and I said, ‘Very well then, the army had better make up its mind to the loss of fifty to sixty men per day per battalion with trench fever from lice.’ It was purely a matter for the military, and involved nothing more or less than elementary arithmetic.

  If nothing else, there was Christmas to look forward to. There was a strict order, after the widely publicised meetings in 1914, that fraternisation with the enemy was forbidden. Nevertheless, Christmas Day would see a curtailment of offensive action by both sides and a chance to enjoy a better than normal meal. Vast numbers of parcels were sent from home with presents of clothing and food. For officers, there was a chance to stock up on some spirits, with perhaps the odd bottle of vintage whisky.

  Capt. Charles Rose, RFA, 2nd Army

  As Christmas approached, active preparations were made to exceed anything we had ever had before in the way of festivities, and this was possible now that we were out of action. Quarter Master Sergeants, puffed out with importance, were to be seen strutting hither and thither, returning with mysterious sacks and parcels, presumably filled with good cheer.

  Plucked geese and turkeys appeared in large numbers, suspended from the ceilings of billets, and several large barrels arrived on the scene and were duly placed under lock and key in the canteen, awaiting the auspicious day. Much competition took place between batteries for the possession of the only two live pigs in the village, which eventually went to the highest bidders, while the remainder procured their joints in the form of pork from Doullens. One of the batteries meanwhile grew so attached to its prospective Christmas fare that it was almost decided to spare his life and adopt him as a mascot. His fate was sealed, however, when one day it was discovered that he had disposed of several parcels of food which had, inadvertently, been placed within his reach by some of the men.

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

  A very funny thing happened yesterday. One of our transport mules turned up in the transport lines of another battalion, covered with mud. It appears that this mule was affected with colic, right up near the line, three days ago. Llewelyn went out from our HQ and gave it a bottle of whisky. With tears in his eyes he returned to the others and said that the mule had drunk the whisky, given a groan (presumably of satisfaction) and died. He described very graphically how its eyes glazed and it shuddered. A burial party was sent out, but, as it was very dark, could not find it. They went out next night and again missed it. Meanwhile, the mule recovered and went home. Probably, being tight, it thought it had better go to some other transport lines. We are all roaring with laughter at the story.

  Two days after writing this letter, Charles McKerrow was critically wounded by a shell burst. His great friend Lieutenant Gosse went to see him and neither man was under any illusion as to the severity of the injury. ‘It had been the sight of McKerrow skinning a vole for his little daughter in the trenches by Armentières in 1915 that put it into my head to collect small mammals for the British Museum,’ recalled Gosse later. ‘Whenever McKerrow and I met, which we did as often as we could, we used to talk about animals and birds, and there was no one in the whole division I liked better or admired more.’

  Captain McKerrow died on 20 December and was buried the same day.

  1917

  The War in 1917

  Throughout 1917 the Germans fought only a defensive war in the west. It was a considered policy but dictated by necessity. In Germany, economic mismanagement and an Allied blockade caused industry to falter through a lack of raw materials. Civilians, too, were becoming heartily sick of the war as food shortages caused widespread hunger and little good news arrived home from the front. The Allies were also tiring of the war. The unrestricted U-boat campaign was causing shortages in Britain as well, and meat rationing was introduced in April 1917. However, Britain’s capacity to wage war was still sound, and troop levels on the Western Front were reaching their zenith.

  April 1917 was a significant month. On the 6th, America officially joined the war against Germany, a boost to Allied morale. Three days later an Anglo-French offensive against the enemy met with mixed results. The British attack, as with so many previous offensives, saw initial success but slowly lost momentum as German resistance stiffened. The French offensive was a dismal failure, leading to a mutiny in French ranks and a near-fatal collapse of morale among its forces. For the rest of the year it would be British and Empire troops who would carry the war to the enemy, first at Messines where the Allies had remarkable success in a battle of strictly limited objectives. Then, at the end of July, an offensive was launched at Ypres, but in rapidly deteriorating weather it quickly became bogged down. The scope of this battle was far larger than that at Messines, but such grandiose schemes had so far failed to bring the results expected and once again a monumental battle of attrition ensued, in which losses on both sides were broadly comparable.

  The final offensive of the year, in November at Cambrai, saw the British deploy almost five hundred tanks in the initial assault. The Germans were thrown back and church bells pealed in England in celebration. It was somewhat premature. After ten days a German counter-attack threw the British back to their start lines and beyond. The fighting ended, as did the year. It had been the most difficult one of the war for everyone.

  The Natural World in 1917

  Any notion that the war could be won in one great strike had been scotched for good on the Somme. The high hopes and ideals with which Kitchener’s Army had embraced the opening of the battle had suffered their own form of agonising attrition. The war would be won by grit, determination and grim endurance. And with that awareness there was nurtured a dull hatred of those species that made profit out of man’s loss, a loathing of all the creatures that made life a misery fo
r men already in torment. The bloated rats and lice, the disgusting maggots and bluebottles, all tugged relentlessly at the soldiers’ morale. Rats that stripped the carcasses of man and beast alike; lice that goaded soldiers into a frenzy of bloody scratching; maggots that wormed their way out from the eye sockets of the dead; and the flies that settled in a great blue cloud on any dead flesh – the same flies that also thrived on faeces and food. It was enough to revolt any man. The maggots would have their way, but the flies were exterminated with flypaper or a rolled-up newspaper, lice by the pressure of two thumbs or a candle run up the seam of a shirt, and rats bayoneted, shot, clubbed and kicked. Not that any of these schemes brought anything but the mildest relief, but it gave soldiers enormous satisfaction to get their own back; even enemy gas shells might almost be welcomed if only to see the rats slowly stagger and die, eliminated for at least a few hours.

  In contrast to the soldiers’ loathing of these creatures came a love and pity for their own animals. Many men marvelled at their own indifference to the suffering of fellow soldiers, but they could not abide the inevitable yet grotesque cruelty meted out to animals press-ganged into service. Despite the work of the Army Veterinary Corps and a number of animal welfare charities working on the Western Front, 1917 was by far the worst year for ‘wastage’ among both horses and mules. Losses among these animals had been a little over 14 per cent in 1916. This figure jumped to 28.5 per cent in 1917, with the suffering greatest during the fighting at Arras, when unseasonably cold weather continued well into April. As one anonymous officer of the artillery wrote of that battle, ‘Horses perished like flies. You could count them nearly by the score on the road – fanciful word! – and the battery to which I was attached lost seventy fine horses from exposure alone, apart altogether from shellfire. One bitter morning, eleven were reported stone-dead in the lines.’ It is a sobering statistic that only a quarter of all horses lost in the war died from enemy action. The biggest killer was ‘debility’, which in the majority of cases meant exposure, exacerbated by hunger and disease. In April alone ‘debility’ was the prime reason why 20,319 animals were evacuated to veterinary hospitals.