Bonzo's War Read online

  Through the war, the Society’s annual reports and monthly magazine, The Animal World, were published unbroken. The Society had an ambitious foreign policy promoting animal welfare schemes in Poland, Finland (which were short-lived) and the Soviet Union.

  Our Dumb Friends’ League (founded in 1897) was not nearly so grand, and was less interested in prosecuting the cruel than the active promotion of kindness. The League had launched the ‘Blue Cross Fund’ to assist military horses during the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 and found support for its continuation in the Great War. It faced down a pre-war mutiny led by a countess over the alleged ‘disgraceful condition’ of the North London Dogs Home.

  The plight of ‘old war horses’ sold on post-1918 to beastly locals in France, Belgium and Egypt proved a big fund-raiser right up to the eve of a new war (an equivalent German campaign in 1938 to give old horses ‘war comrade medals’ and ‘free oats for poor farmers’ found nine British Army horses that had fallen into German hands, still alive).

  Money flowed in. Two years into the war, a former dustman willed a huge amount to the League to look after his cat, but it had inconveniently disappeared. However, the League promised to track it down and make it comfortable till the end of its days.

  The League had drifted uncertainly to the radical wing of animal rights – with a ‘political committee’ which campaigned among other things for a rise in the legal status of cats (‘currently the same as a weasel’) and for the National Trust to ban fox hunting on its land. One activist watched by Special Branch was a member of the British Union of Fascists.

  There was a big row in 1938 with a mass defection of aristocratic patrons when the secretary, a Mr E. Keith Robinson, said: ‘We feel that people would get just as much fun from a drag hunt as they would from chasing a wretched little fox across the country.’ The League published annual reports throughout the war.

  The People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals of the Poor, founded by Mrs Maria Dickin in the East End of London in 1917, was a relative newcomer – offering free medical care for lowlier pets and working animals. Its relationship with the veterinary profession was turbulent. However, its dispensaries, mobile ‘caravans’ and volunteers would be at the forefront of animal rescue when British cities were bombed.

  In a mid-war publicity masterstroke, the PDSA founded both the Services Mascot Club and endowed the ‘Dickin Medal’ for gallantry, named for its founder. But it was for ‘service’ animals only. In fact most of the recipients were carrier pigeons of the National Pigeon Service. Winners of the Our Dumb Friends’ League’s ‘Blue Cross’ and the RSPCA’s ‘For Valour’ medallion for animal bravery are less well known.

  At the war’s end Mrs Dickin wrote a prospectus for an ‘Allied Forces Animals’ War Memorial Fund’ to remember those ‘animals and birds who have suffered and died on active service in our time of terrible need’. She wanted a ‘practical memorial in the shape of ten mobile dispensaries’. But the charity’s founder furthermore included what she called ‘those civilian animals who shared with us the horrors of the raids’. As she said:

  The P.D.S.A. Rescue Squads were eye-witnesses of their misery, and know how they suffered. Like their comrades on active service, these animals frequently ignored their own danger to stand by and help their owners; often they struggled to find and help them in blazing buildings, when they themselves could so easily have escaped to safety alone. Truly they were faithful unto death.

  It would be ‘a tribute to the Unknown Animals who gave their lives in service for us, or were innocent victims in our war, not theirs’. She even made an analogy with the tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey. It was not to be.

  A year later, pets had vanished from the appeal. The memorial was to be for ‘the thousands of animals and birds [which] have helped our victory’. The Unknown Animals would remain just that. Only those who died on ‘active service’ would be remembered – by plaques on the side of the shiny new caravans.

  It was the same over fifty years on. In 1998 the PDSA’s Trustees rejected an appeal by the then just-starting Animals in War Memorial Fund (its primary charitable aim, to ‘promote the military efficiency of the armed forces of Her Majesty’s Government’) as being ‘too far removed from our objects’.

  But when approached again, a new Director General replied: ‘If you could offer a guarantee that the sculptor could include an animal wearing a Dickin medal, I am sure it would influence the decision of the Council of Management.’ It was duly so. £10,000 was given to the service-animals-only memorial.

  The organization published the PDSA News throughout.

  The National Canine Defence League (NCDL) was founded in 1891 during the first Crufts Dog Show ‘to protect dogs from ill-usage of every kind’. Throughout the war it published the lively The Dogs Bulletin, full of gossip and wheezes to boost the cause of dogs. It concerned itself greatly with refugee dogs, operated clinics and was very active in promoting Air Raid Precautions (ARP) for dogs, building dedicated canine air raid shelters in Kensington Gardens and Sutton Coldfield. Since the start, the League had been regarded as ‘the Opposition’ by the Dogs’ Home, Battersea. On the eve of war, it was said that their secretaries ‘could never work together’.

  The Cats Protection League (CPL) was founded at a meeting held at Caxton Hall in London in 1927, under the chairmanship of Miss Jessy Wade. The first secretary was Mr Albert A. Steward and the headquarters were established at Prestbury Lodge, a sizeable house in Slough, gifted (as so many were) in a legacy, where he lived on the first floor surrounded by cats. Early achievements included the introduction of an elasticated collar for cats and ‘the development of a simple cat door’. What a boon – and still flapping down the ages!

  Its magazine, The Cat, is the indispensable source for the British feline view of the Second World War and I am grateful to the current editor, Francesca Watson, for permitting me access to wartime copies kept at the National Cat Centre in Ashdown Forest. Long may its work continue.

  ii In 2013 the RPSCA said of its wartime record, ‘of the animals rescued from bombed sites during this year [1940], 10,100 pets sadly had to be put to sleep because of the extent of their injuries. But 5,940 animals survived and were successfully rehomed.’

  Its archived end-1940 reports say in contrast, ‘In one month alone last year [September] 10,100 household pets were humanely destroyed, 5,490 were rescued from bombed premises, fed for a time, boarded, or [432] provided with new homes.’ The 1941 report records its inspectors dealing with 42,095 animal ‘victims of the war’ of which ‘50 per cent [were given] a painless end’.

  The PDSA states in 2013 with justifiable pride that its brave ‘Animal Rescue squads helped to save and treat over a quarter of a million pets buried and injured by debris during the Blitz.’ Its 1947 history meanwhile accounts for the ‘treatment’ of almost 3.68 million animals in the six war years (‘including lethalling’), while this number excludes the mass panic-killing of 1939–40. Not all, of course, were due to enemy action or wartime circumstances and not all were destroyed.

  Battersea records ‘145,000 dogs [passing] through during the course of the war’, while the Metropolitan Police reports the destruction of 77,217 of them by its south London contractors and a further 9,236 by the ODFL North London Dogs Home in the period 1939–44. ‘There is no statutory requirement on the police as regards cats,’ it was noted, ‘no figures are therefore available.’

  A Note on the Sources

  Pets, on the whole, do not leave diaries, memoirs or letters. Fortunately for the author of this book, the British obsession with the domestic pet meant that there was an outpouring of words written by humans on the subject throughout the years of the Second World War.

  The principle animal welfare charities of the period mentioned above have largely survived and I am grateful to their archivists. They published their own magazines (The Cat, PDSA News, The Animal World, The Dogs Bulletin, The Animals’ Defender etc.) and annual reports, whil
e the turbulent affairs of the semi-official umbrella organization, the National Air Raid Precaution Animals Committee (NARPAC), are amply recorded at the UK National Archives.

  In spite of paper shortages, bombing, and evacuation, those splendid enthusiast publications such as Our Dogs, Cat World, The Dog World, Fur and Feather, Bee Craft, Cage Birds, The Goat, Kennel Gazette etc. kept going throughout the conflict with their own insightful reflections on total war. The Tail-Wagger Magazine, fabulously, featured articles contributed by pets.

  Horse & Hound, The Field, Farmers Weekly, Eggs, The Smallholder, The Veterinary Record etc. take the story of wartime animals into a pastoral context. And wartime newspapers, local and national, had a passion for hero animal stories that continues undiminished. The archives of the Zoological Society of London, the Imperial War Museum Department of Documents and Mass-Observation are all pet-friendly.

  The files of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Food tell the alarming story of the dwindling food bowl – the issue, apart from the actions of their owners, which truly determined the fate of wartime animals. War Office and Air Ministry files contain the official story of Britain’s war dogs, while Home Office files recount the amazing tale of the 1944–45 London rescue dogs.

  A Note on the Naming of Pets

  All pet names, – ‘Dusty’, ‘Blackie’, ‘Little One’, ‘Teeny Weenie’, ‘Hitler’ etc. – are as originally reported.

  Bonzo was found by Mass-Observation to be one of the most popular dog names of 1941. It was still all the rage after the cartoon dog first drawn by Englishman George Studdy in 1922, which inspired a worldwide craze and the naming of a vast number of real-life Bonzos (including two pre-war winners of the Daily Mirror Brave Dog award). From 1929, there was a feline equivalent, ‘Ooloo’.

  Oo-Oo (sic) was a Maida Vale cat who came into Our Dumb Friends’ League hands in unusual circumstances on the eve of war. I would like to have met Oo-Oo – in fact I am sure I have done. These two will be our guide to certain wartime events.

  Abbreviations

  ADL Animal Defence League

  ARP Air Raid Precautions

  ATS Auxiliary Territorial Service

  AWDTS Army War Dog Training School

  BEF British Expeditionary Force

  BUF British Union of Fascists

  CD Civil Defence

  CMP Corps of Military Police

  CPL Cats Protection League

  LAPAVS London and Provincial Anti-Vivisection Society

  MAFF Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries

  MAP Ministry of Aircraft Production

  MFH Master of Fox Hounds

  MFHA Master of Fox Hounds Association

  M-O Mass-Observation

  NARPAC National ARP Animals Committee

  NCDL National Canine Defence League

  NVMA National Veterinary Medical Association

  ODFL Our Dumb Friends’ League

  PDSA People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals

  RAVC Royal Army Veterinary Corps

  RCVS Royal College of Veterinary Science

  RE Royal Engineers

  RSPCA Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

  USAAF United States Army Air Force

  VP Vulnerable Point

  ZSL Zoological Society of London

  Part One

  PAWS IN OUR TIME

  In Memoriam

  Happy memories of Iola TW. 695778. Sweet, faithful friend, given sleep September 4th, 1939, to be saved suffering during the war. A short but happy life – 2 years 12 weeks. ‘Forgive us, little Pal, you were too nervous to be sent away. Au revoir’ Terribly missed by all at 6, St. Ives Road, Birkenhead. S. 66

  Tail-Wagger Magazine, October 1939

  Chapter 1

  In Case of Emergency

  Nobody could say they had not been warned. When news came on 1 September 1939 that Poland had been invaded only the most obtuse British pet owner could believe that, this time, the long-heralded war with Germany could be averted.

  Look at the fuss there had been twelve months before. In the space of two frantic weeks, Mr Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, had flown to Germany three times to meet Herr Hitler and discuss the limits or otherwise of the Führer’s territorial demands in Europe. His last destination had been Munich.

  An animal-loving politician (and there were some such) wrote not long after the events: ‘On 28 September 1938, men and women awoke with the idea that this would be the last day of peace and within, maybe, 24 hours London would be drenched with poison gas or reduced to ruins with high explosive or both.’

  That was the day that Hitler’s ‘give-me-your-frontiers’ ultimatum to poor little Czechoslovakia was due to expire. It really looked like this was it.

  The night before, Chamberlain had made his ‘far away country of which we know nothing speech’ on the wireless, after which 150,000 better-off Londoners departed the bomb-menaced capital sharpish for Wales and the West Country in what was described as a ‘continuous rush of cars’. In the great exodus some took their pets with them to find refuge in animal-friendly boarding houses. Some heartlessly left them behind, while others took more extreme measures.

  The Our Dumb Friends’ League’s kennels at Shooters Hill, southeast London, reported plenty of panicky calls demanding a speedy solution to their pet problem. ‘We urged all these enquirers not to be stampeded into premature action, but often without success,’ stated the League’s end-of-1938 report.

  ‘Many were hastening into the comparative safety of the country in cars piled high with their belongings and only stopped long enough to hand over their dogs or cats to be kept until either the situation improved or the worst happened, in which case they were to be destroyed forthwith,’ it continued.

  There was a less drastic but expensive alternative. Some better-off, stick-it-out city dwellers responded to such press announcements as this, made on the 28th by the Bellmead Kennels at Haslemere in Surrey: ‘Ensure the safety of your pets. They will be safe and happy in the quiet depths of the country – away from the horror of noise.’

  How reassuring. As war clouds gathered over the Home Counties, there were kindly folk who were there to help. Mrs Barnes of Suntop Kennels, Tonbridge in Kent announced: ‘Send your dogs to happiness and safety. Reduced charges during emergency. Train met.’

  I would have gone to stay there myself.

  And on the following day, when Hitler invited Mr Chamberlain for a final showdown at Munich, the patrician Mayfair Dogs Ltd of Curzon Street, London W1, wished ‘to inform owners who would prefer to have their dogs and cats out of the way during the present emergency that they can accommodate them in suitable kennels in the country’.

  The drama was not restricted to domestic pets. Other animals were in the firing line. The London Zoological Society added to the gloom by announcing on the 28th: ‘In the event of war all poisonous snakes and spiders will be immediately killed. Should any large animals escape as a result of damage to their cages they will be shot. Men have been detailed for this eventuality.’ The aquarium director, Mr E. G. Boulenger, would confide later that as the crisis deepened, he turned off the heat in the reptile house to induce death.

  Crowds watching the comings and goings in Downing Street cheered every time a mysterious black cat strode across from the Old Treasury Building (see p.34) and sat on the doorstep. Was it good luck? A German tourist told a reporter that in her country the appearance of a black cat signified very bad tidings indeed.

  When on the 30th Mr Chamberlain flew back to London with his piece of paper, there was general rejoicing. The ministerial feline was sent a parcel addressed to the ‘Black Cat No. 10 Downing Street’. It contained two Dover soles sent by an anonymous well-wisher. The heat in the Regent’s Park reptile house was turned on again, just in time. For the nation’s pets it was ‘Paws in Our Time’.

  What happened during ‘Munich’ is important towards understanding the enormity of events a year
later. That modern war meant the targeting of civilians had long been clear. The bomber aeroplane could apparently bring carnage to anyone’s front door, as had recently been made evident in China and Spain.

  For months animal welfare groups had already been planning for such a catastrophe descending on Britain. Sir Robert Gower, Tory MP and chairman of the RSPCA, told a newspaper in May 1938: ‘The experience of Spain [the attack on the Basque city of Guernica] sadly shows the lethality of air attack and many animals would have to be put out of their suffering. Cats, as in many other matters [what did he mean?], are a particularly difficult problem.’

  A ‘special, humane cat catcher is being devised,’ he announced.

  The resulting ‘Cat Grasper’ (price 4s. 6d. including postage) was featured in its advice pamphlet Animals in Air Raids published that summer, a horrible contraption like a fishing rod with a running noose, along with an illustration of how to use it – ‘to secure and shoot a cat that has been contaminated with mustard gas’. The use of clumsy gloves with a Webley & Scott captive-bolt pistol and a struggling animal was impractical – far better to use the grasper, it said. Readers were assured that the ‘gas-contaminated’ cat in the accompanying grisly photograph was already dead. It is hard to imagine that anyone could seriously regard such a medieval instrument of torture as in any way humane.

  ‘Air Raid Precautions’, as it came to be soothingly called, was all anyone would talk about that summer. And the prospect of mass evacuation from endangered cities. What will you do? Where will you go? What about the children? Do you have pets? Better think ahead.

  In July 1938, the civil-servant-turned-MP Sir John Anderson, a ‘po-faced rightwing bureaucrat’, as he would later be described, had delivered a comprehensive report on what could or could not be done. The pre-fab, family-size air raid shelter, devised in 1938 to be sunk in the garden, was named after him. Officials at the Home Office set out to try and turn the recommendations into practical plans – but what about pets? A tiny ‘departmental committee’ began to study the issue.