Cats bombed out seem to pick their way out of trouble, and wander more or less leisurely away midst the noise, dust and smoke, eventually returning to sit on the ruins of their former homes.
Horses too ‘have calmly carried on,’ said the Record. They had become used to random loud noises through mingling with motor traffic on the street. Even fire was no cause for concern: ‘In the East End of London, 54 horses were removed from a stable through an avenue of flame without injury. From the blazing stables of a brewery, 82 horses were evacuated without mishap.’
No cows had yet stampeded under Blitz conditions although milk yields might be down – ‘Cattle appear to take quite an inquisitive interest in incendiary bombs, and some have been observed nosing round the bombs as they burned.’
Pigs had ‘slept sonorously’ through an air raid ‘although the roof over them had been completely wrecked’ (in fact they had been in an abattoir awaiting slaughter). Every single pig from a devastated piggery in Scotland was rescued alive.
But sheep were nervous under bombing and ran ‘hither and thither over the pasture’. Some showed an acute nervous disturbance – possibly ‘shell shock’ or ‘vertigo’, according to The Veterinary Record – ‘One farmer reported that his sheep went round like dancing Dervishes.’
‘The herding instincts of farm animals accounted for many casualties,’ according to ARP News, in which the countryman author, Clifford W. Greatorex, told the story of a fox which ran into a house and sought sanctuary behind an easy chair in the sitting room in a Midlands village – ‘where he stayed until daybreak’.
The author of this yarn was also informed by a poultry farmer that, ‘at the sound of an aeroplane, his fowls, with one accord, ran for the shelter of the hen house’.
Pets keeping calm and carrying on was winning them a place in the tableau of national resistance – that and the devotion of their owners. A newspaper columnist in summer 1941 observed Londoners queuing for pet food, ‘ordinary men and women paying tribute to their friends,’ as he described them. ‘Such actions prevent one from losing faith in humanity. An isolated case of supposed overfeeding of animals should not be allowed to detract from [such] unselfish efforts.’
That summer, Mass-Observation noticed ‘increased pro-doggism’ in a London survey. It was, they said, ‘entirely emotional’ in that the feeling was based on pets being ‘part of the family’. This was a ‘predominantly female response’. What the Mass-Observers found was revealing all round.
By now dogs were getting over their fear of air raids, so people said. Mongrels ‘took it’ better than thoroughbreds, the strongest effects of air raids being noted by the owners of Dalmatians and Pekingese. Upper-and middle-class people had Alsatians, Spaniels, Retrievers, Setters and Terriers but very few mongrels. More affluent people worried more about their dogs than less well-off folk.
A woman living in a poorer district of the capital said: ‘When I leave him, he does kick up an awful row. I can hear him all the way down the street. I go to the tube [shelter] and I can’t do anything but leave him. He mopes for days afterwards.’ She thought ‘holiday homes for dogs’, some sort of communal provision to get them out of the cities, would be ideal.
Another London woman said: ‘I have been alone in the house since my husband went and the children were evacuated. That dog’s been wonderful company – I mean wonderful.’ She added: ‘I’ve no patience with these people who coddle their dog, feed them on chicken and champagne, and take them to bed with them.’
Mass-Observation tabulated the most popular names for dogs among poorer owners. They were in order: ‘Nip’, ‘Bill’, ‘Bonzo’, ‘Pluto’, ‘Spot’, ‘Jock’ and ‘Rover’. The survey found that the work of ‘NARPAC is not really known or understood’ – and concluded to increase the popularity of dogs (for which M-O seemed to be campaigning on a market research contract from the Bob Martin company) – ‘there should be more done to show the ways in which dogs are helping the war effort. There have been singularly few dog heroes in this war.’
27 Speaking dogs were a wartime phenomenon. The Dog World of October 1939 had news of a talking dog in Scotland, a Springer Fox Terrier cross in Troon, Ayrshire, who said (in a Scottish dialect) ‘Ome’ when asked where he wanted to go, and ‘Mamma’ whenever he was asked who was going to take him there. Telepathic, mathematical, philosophical and talking dogs had been a feature of German ‘animal psychology’ research for decades. A Dachshund named ‘Kurwenal’, who ‘spoke’ by barking a certain number of times for each letter of the alphabet, became internationally famous prior to his death in 1937. An intelligent Fox Terrier – ‘Lumpi’ – was visited in Weimar by the Duchess of Hamilton and Louisa Lind-af-Hageby in 1937. Louisa gave a lecture on the subject in London on her return, with a list of 62 ‘speaking’ animals, most of them dogs, some horses, and ‘Daisy of Mannheim’, the educated cat, who was capable of doing simple sums and tapping out a word or two when she saw fit.
The Hundesprechschule (dog speech school) was founded in 1930 by Margarethe Schmidt in Leutenberg, Thuringia. Professor Max Müller, a Munich University zoologist, visited in 1942 and reported dogs making speech-like responses plus the presence of a cat, and that Hitler himself had accepted Schmidt’s offer for her dogs to entertain troops. In 1943 their food ration was cut off.
Chapter 20
Pets on the Offensive
There were few dog heroes, found Mass-Observation. That could change of course, and it would. Thus far courageous pets had got on with enduring the Blitz at home, along with everyone else.
The prospect of dogs actually doing something warlike had taken a knock early in 1941 when Army testers looking for four-legged guards concluded that a dog would bark at anyone, friend or foe, who was not his handler. ‘It would be impossible to train a dog to differentiate between a British soldier and a German parachutist,’ said the officer in charge of ‘vulnerable points’ policy. It was a case of one man, one dog, but individual handlers could not stand guard forever. With thousands of freezing soldiers doing guard duty against invaders, GHQ Home Forces were keen to keep trying. Trials of ‘patrol’ and ‘messenger’ dogs, which would have to move around a bit between several handlers, looked more promising. Where to get hold of suitable dogs? In May 1941 a stirring press and wireless appeal was made to the British public:
The War Office invites dog owners to lend their dogs to the Army. The breeds most suitable are Airedales, Collies (rough or smooth), Hill Collies, Crossbreds, Lurchers, and Retrievers (Labrador or Golden), although intelligence and natural ability will be the deciding factors in selection.
‘Rex’, the columnist for Tail-Wagger Magazine, would one day write of how it was for him:
Well, pals, here’s how it’s started...
My mistress was listening to the wireless one day, something about big dogs being needed. She got up all of a sudden and said: ‘Rex, you’ve got to go out and do your duty, you’re going to be a “sojer” dog.’
One feels sure that Rex had his paw on the button when he wrote that.
That August, the Leeds branch of the PDSA offered seven dogs. ‘Mick’, an Alsatian, did not know any special words of command, according to his auxiliary fireman owner, but ‘he’ll answer to Oi!’ he said. ‘Few of these dogs would have been transferred from being pets to the military but for the difficulty of getting dog food these days,’ it was observed. The owner of ‘Toby’, a Spaniel, was on ‘long hours and war work, and that’s the main reason little Toby goes into the Army’.
Dog lovers offering their family pets were assured that, ‘those not passing the test will be immediately returned. Selected dogs will be retained for the duration of the war.’ Owners were invited to ‘write to The War Dog Training School, Willems Barracks, Aldershot’ (the administrative address – the dogs were at Woolton House, Newbury). And it was not just large soldierly-looking dogs: Cocker Spaniels and Pekingese were also on parade. Within four days the War Office was ‘inundated’. That was enough do
gs, it was announced, for now.
So pets, or to be specific dogs, were going to go to war, even if they were only on ‘loan’ (‘lend-leash’, as one clever journalist described it). But rather than waiting for invasion, there was a cockpit of war where British forces were actually on the offensive. And already there were pets in abundance there.
Since September 1940 the British had been busy confounding the Italian Army’s attempt to invade Egypt. It did not get very far. The PDSA hospital in Cairo, so it was reported, was ‘full of dogs which had belonged to the Italians and had been stranded during the ebb and flow of the fighting. Some of them were very well bred, Belgian sheep-dogs, Italian Pointers and Setters, the majority however were pariahs.’ There were also numerous cats. In the way of things, they were very soon adopted as pets.
This volunteer army of domestic animals would henceforth accompany the British Army and Air Force in their epic desert campaign. Once selected and trained for war, the first pets from home would be heading out to join them.
In February 1941 the Commander-in-Chief, General Archibald Wavell, was ordered to halt his counter-attack from Egypt into Libya and send troops to Greece. The RSPCA launched a bid to intervene on behalf of Greek animals. Like the doomed missions to Poland and Finland, it did not get very far.
On 12 February an otherwise obscure German commander called Erwin Rommel arrived in Libya to stiffen Italian resistance and soon went on the attack. Commonwealth forces were trapped in the besieged port of Tobruk. Expelled disastrously from Greece meanwhile, British forces had to take refuge on the island of Crete, to be evicted again by German air landings and rescued by sea on 31 May. Adopted pet animals were with them all the way, according to the PDSA history; they were ‘smuggled out in boxes and kitbags’.
British troops fell back into Egypt and moved meanwhile into Iraq and Syria, lest the whole Middle East be lost. In Cairo, as the PDSA’s own history put it, ‘batches of dogs appeared and with them foxes found in the desert. It was a common sight in these dark days to see lorry loads of our soldiers coming in bearded and dusty with their new pets riding with them.’
The story was told of ‘one little dog which had been captured from the Italians, sent across to Greece, evacuated to Crete, from Crete to Cairo, then to Syria and Palestine and back to Cairo – where it arrived on a 15 cwt lorry with eight big infantrymen and a corporal’. This ‘rough-coated brown and white dog of unknown breed’ had had five puppies. The platoon had movement orders; their commanding officer had forbidden the little family to accompany them. One member of the platoon promised to return but the outcome did not look promising: ‘Instructions were left at the PDSA Hospital that should no one come and collect the dog and her family after one month, the puppies would be put to sleep and find the mother a new home. The platoon did not return,’ it was reported starkly. Another, homelier account has the ‘little dog finding a home with another soldier’ while her ‘babies were painlessly put to sleep’. A REME corporal in Cairo had a cat, which he kept in his stores. Twice it became ill and twice after treatment it recovered. Finally it died before the corporal could get it to hospital – ‘The grief-stricken owner cremated the body of his beloved cat. For weeks he was convinced that he had done wrong.’
There were two dogs ‘belonging to Tommies,’ Hans Bloom, director of the PDSA Clinic in Cairo wrote, which had been brought back from Dunkirk and had seen Wavell’s campaigns and the Syrian campaign – ‘They had changed hands many times.’
Superintendent Bloom painted a lyrical picture of kindly soldiers – British, Australian, Rhodesians – selflessly rescuing pets, easing the burden of abused pack animals, while ‘puppies for sale in the streets of Cairo by boys are bought out of sympathy for ten piastres each’. A Polish soldier had adopted a young desert fox. A wounded Greek soldier was adopted on the battlefield by a German police dog. He had woken from unconsciousness in a shell hole to find the dog licking his face. After that they were inseparable. With the ding-dong battle in the desert, there would be many more canine side-switchers.
The desert also had charms for homesick huntsmen. With not much to report from the English shires the sporting press printed lyrical letters from far-flung correspondents. An anonymous officer wrote from a camp in the Iraqi desert, inspired by the sound of ‘dogs circling in the darkness, their voices keening in song as they hunt the desert hares and jack[al]s’. His mind was taken off in reverie, ‘to summer days spent by the streams of Sussex with the Crowhurst Otterhounds’.
The presence of cats could also provide comfort. Three days after the Crete débâcle, Winston Churchill was at Chartwell, his house in Kent to which he made occasional wartime visits. For some years now it had been the home of ‘Tango’, described as a ‘beautiful marmalade neutered male cat’. Sir John Colville, his principal private secretary, was there for luncheon on 3 June as the Mediterranean disaster was still unfolding. He recorded:
I had lunch with the P.M. and the Yellow Cat, which sat in a chair on his right-hand side and attracted most of his attention. He was meditating deeply on the Middle East. While he brooded on these matters, he kept up a running conversation with the cat, cleaning its eyes with his napkin, offering it mutton and expressing regret that it could not have cream in war-time.
All this excitement in the Balkans and the Mediterranean meant that the air attacks on Britain were winding down. The Luftwaffe turned east to prepare for the titanic assault on the Soviet Union. It began on 22 June 1941.
The fantasy world of NARPAC had relocated meanwhile to Mr Edward Bridges Webb’s own home in Golders Green in the north London suburbs, where the registration scheme was now headquartered. The bizarre task continued. Three days after German troops had crashed through the Soviet frontier defences, he boasted to the Ministry of Home Security that ‘with no statutory funding, the registration branch has enrolled some 47,000 voluntary workers, the National Animal Guard, who have raised £35,000, registered three million animals, and are now a part of urban life’.
He proposed turning the debt-laden registration branch into a limited company. But following the withdrawal of the Government’s representatives, ‘serious doubts have been thrown on its authenticity and indeed its honesty is now in question,’ said Mr Bridges Webb. The members of his council feared a ‘grave scandal’. At least the veterinary profession had stayed loyal.
So should the Government disclaim all responsibility? ‘Although we could still have lots of trouble [and] in spite of these people’s difficulties, they have, in fact, looked after pets,’ so the Minister was informed by his officials. From the animal lovers’ point of view, it was noted ‘an unfortunate impression’ might be created by disbanding the organization.
Mr Bridges Webb had a new wheeze: metal collar badges costing a shilling each to ‘cover the cost of free veterinary attention and insurance’. The People’s Dispensary’s dream of a welfare state for pets might yet come true.
Mass-Observation’s attitude-to-dogs survey could not have been more timely. Researchers asked: ‘Do you find your dog has been affected by the war? Does he mind you leaving him when you have to take shelter?’
‘I think it’s made him rather nervous, but he’s forgotten all about the raids now,’ said one woman in north London. ‘I give him a couple of aspirins, but he’s got a lot older and doesn’t like games anymore. Funny, isn’t it?’
Another owner’s pet was not so calm. ‘He kicks up an awful row – I can hear him barking all down the street,’ she said. One woman bent the rules for her pet:
Well, I have a little shelter I go to nearby so I’m allowed to take him with me. He’s so small no one makes a fuss. He curls up under the eiderdown to get away from the noise, but he never makes any noise himself, he just shivers all the time.
There was a lady with a Pekingese called ‘Tinker Bell’, who was ‘so well mannered, I take her everywhere with me, and she’s so small nobody notices her. I take her into restaurants, she loves that.’
Not all
stories were so happy. ‘I used to have a dog, a Bull Terrier. He was so sweet I called him “Sugar”,’ said an interviewee.
I adored him. He loved me so much. He didn’t really like anyone but me, but the trouble was he couldn’t bear to be alone and when the war started I became an [ARP] warden. Well, I couldn’t have him with me at the post and he started to mope.
I felt he was so miserable, so I made up my mind to have him put away. I nearly died myself. I took him for a little walk, he was so happy. But it was the only thing I could do. He would have gone mad in an air raid. Poor Sugar.
But a non-pet owner in Cricklewood felt that: ‘When a country is in great danger it’s ridiculous to clutter up the place with dogs. They should be looked after by the Government or destroyed. Food is so short for ordinary people it isn’t right to give it to animals who are for the most part useless.’
The interviewer concluded there was ‘no really strong feeling that dog-keeping is unpatriotic’. The majority of people interviewed however, dog owners or not, felt the Government’s attitude was anti-dog. But there was a strong feeling that whether or not people kept dogs in wartime, it was none of the politicians’ business.
The food issue was the big one. Profiteering was rife. An anonymous female M-O diarist recorded: ‘Rush to shop to get fish for cats. I’m offered cod’s head for 2s 4d a pound, which I decline on principle (although I need it). It would have been 4d before the war or given away for nothing.’
At a pet shop in Neasden, north London, researchers found an expectant queue. There was plenty of horseflesh but no dog biscuits. One woman said: ‘There’s that notice up saying the green colouring [dyed so by law since the start of 1941 as not for human consumption] is perfectly harmless though people are very sceptical. They just wouldn’t believe it isn’t poisonous.’
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