Bonzo's War Read online

  Colonel Stordy insisted that unless he could give on the spot directions that would be complied with, he would find it impossible to continue, and tendered his resignation. It was not accepted. The Dumb Friends’ League’s inspectors, the Home Office noted meanwhile, ‘had in a short space of time acquired an extraordinary reputation for a complete lack of tact or discretion’.

  Some kind of order returned. The Metropolitan Police official on the Committee drily noted: ‘It is something that they [the animal charities] have survived the outbreak of European hostilities at all.’

  Was it even worth continuing? ‘It would be advantageous in many ways if we were to be out of their disputes,’ the Scotland Yard man noted, ‘[however] it would seem essential that we are continued to be represented on this committee.’

  Money was the immediate problem. The Home Office would advance a mere £1,000. The Dumb Friends’ and the PDSA proclaimed there was no need for public money as the charitable public had given enough already. They confessed to being replete with funds. A dedicated bank account would be opened with an overdraft facility, which the ODFL and PDSA would guarantee. The RPSCA and National Canine Defence League refused, as did the Dogs’ Home, Battersea because ‘we can only use our funds for the purposes for which they were given to us’. Charity began at home.

  But they had to have some future source of income. Edward Bridges Webb of the PDSA had an answer. The new organization would function like any other charity – with a money-raising Appeals Committee. He came up with a splendid wheeze, ‘registration’ of the nation’s domestic animals in a giant central directory with identity discs, distributed by local unpaid helpers, the ‘animal wardens’ idea, in return for voluntary donations. He calculated it would raise £10,000 in London alone. Whoever controlled the registry would control the nation’s pets.

  There was already something like it, the Tail-Waggers Club, a populist, dog-enthusiast organization founded in 1926, partly sponsored by Spratt’s Pet Products, which issued a name-engraved collar badge of its own bearing the Club motto ‘I Help My Pals’. It published an engaging magazine featuring articles, some of which were ostensibly written by pets. Its headquarters were in Barking. But although the royal Corgis were members, it did not seem quite serious enough for the Ministry of Home Security. Actually, as it would turn out, the Tail-Waggers might have done better than anyone else.

  The civil servants were delighted with the registration notion. It could all be paid for out of the British love of pets and there was no denying the strength of that particular passion. Even vets would work for free. It was noted for the minister that the People’s Dispensary had ‘always quarrelled’ with the veterinary profession – but last month an agreement had been reached (a drawn-out legal action for slander had been settled and the Dispensary agreed to call their unqualified staff ‘Technical Officers’).

  So let the Appeals Committee have what they wanted. They should be allowed to do door-to-door collections. NARPAC indeed should be the sole animal welfare fund-raiser. The RSPCA was incandescent.

  The message meanwhile that killing pets was wrong was at last starting to work. Pet lovers faced up to meeting the challenges ahead with their animals by their sides. Each did so in his own way. ‘Do nothing in a panic! We urge everyone not to destroy their studs, whether of rabbits, cavies, mice or cats,’ editorialized Fur and Feather magazine on 8 September. ‘Nobody knows how long the present emergency is going to last. We must have more rabbit breeders. Carry on!’

  The magazine’s exhortations were for readers to breed their pets so as to eat them. ‘Every breeder in the country should now be making plans to produce rabbit flesh,’ said the journal. ‘No matter whether his stud consists of purely fancy varieties, of fur, or of wool rabbits, he can utilise a part of it for food production.’

  ‘To keep rabbits is to perform a national service,’ said the editor of The Smallholder. ‘Soldiers are we now, every man and woman amongst us.’

  Mr C. H. Johnson, president of the National Mouse Club, declared: ‘This is not just a nod to those fanciers who have answered the national call and joined the services but also to those of our members who are left at home. I ask you to continue with mouse activities. Let us make a solemn resolve that we will always keep a few mice, however difficult it may be.’ And who could argue with that?

  Cats too dug in for a long campaign. Captain W. H. Powell, the writer of ‘Cats and Catdom’ (the feline spot in Fur and Feather) declared on 15 September: ‘We MUST strive to keep the Cat Fancy going through this infernal business. The cat fancy is not some useless luxury hobby. Do nothing irrevocable!’

  The Cats Protection League announced stirringly: ‘There must be no truce in the war to help cats.’ Mr Albert A. Steward, writing in its fine journal, The Cat, recognized that it was ‘difficult in the present tragic days to write about the ordinary lives and needs of cats. The human tragedies, mental and physical, that are about to surround us will be uppermost in all minds and the little companions of our peaceful days will be forgotten by many.’

  It was not the Nazis who cats should fear but ‘indifferent, bad and nervy owners,’ said Mr Steward. He defined as such ‘those who, when rationing comes, will make no effort to feed their cats’ or ‘those who, when air raids are expected, will be too lazy to ensure that they are brought in at night’. Other owners ‘will be so scared that they will forget everything but their own fear,’ he predicted. The cats of such uncaring owners would, ‘find life unendurable and wander away’.

  It was not potential enemy action immediately endangering cats but changes in the ordinary routine for such a creature of habit. Evacuation and blackout were disturbing enough for humans. ‘The blackout has affected the town cat more than his country cousin,’ The Cat would record, ‘who, indeed, generally gets the best of it, always.’ But there was a distinct class order for wartime felines:

  If the plebeian city puss, whose playground is the street, is not in by blackout time he must stay out, and there we must leave him. Next in the social scale is the flat cat. He has had to forgo the pleasure of taking the air on the balcony or window ledge at dusk, a time of special interest to ancestrally nocturnal animals.

  The patrician cat, who lives in a house with a garden, has hardly felt the blackout after the first few weeks. The country cat has been affected by the blackout as little as the town aristocrat, except that motor cars in country lanes have taken a greater toll of life.

  As for evacuated cats: ‘Those who accompanied their owners into exile have only experienced that as might happen to them at any time,’ said The Cat. ‘The difficulty of settling in strange surroundings can all be surmounted by common sense – paw-buttering, extra fuss, familiar cushions or baskets and all the usual devices.’

  Cage birds too might find safety in the country. ARP Journal declared at the end of the year: ‘There is a list of animal lovers who will take birds or beasts in reception areas. Bird fanciers are opening their aviaries to town budgies and canaries and these kindly folk charge 2d per week for seed.’

  Dogs would have to tough it out wherever they were, those that had survived the September massacre at least. In the first few days, pedigree and mongrel alike had gone to the lethal chamber. There followed a deeply unpleasant interlude when the survival of the poshest seemed paramount. Lesser breeds had better watch out.

  A ‘world-renowned authority and judge’ wrote in The Dog World: ‘I should say that the present time offers an opportunity to wipe out all mongrels and cross-bred dogs, and if the authorities could or would carry that out, it would clear the streets of a lot of danger and filth as well.’

  ‘I do not want mongrels to multiply because they are ugly, ill-mannered curs, usually dirty and cross and have no value whatever, either to the senses or the pocket,’ wrote the uncharitable dog expert, Mr George Wallwork. But those Nazi-seeming sentiments were soon stifled.

  The Dog World canvassed pedigree breeders for their views in a round-up called ‘Dog
dom and the War’ on 22 September. They were a little kinder.

  Mrs J Campbell-Inglis, of the Mannerhead Poodles, Wimbledon Common, said: ‘I suppose I shall carry on but I find a lot of people are tired of dog shows, which cost a lot and are not always much fun.’

  Mrs E. M. Buckley of the Adel Chow Chows, Stratford-upon-Avon, said: ‘England breeds some of the best dogs in the world and we’ll need them when all this wretched business is over. By all means the weaklings should go to leave room for the best ones of the future.’ An unpleasant sentiment Herr Hitler himself might have seconded.

  On 29 September Mrs I. M. de Pledge of the Caversham Pekingese declared: ‘I am determined to hang on to my kennel of Pekingese at all costs, especially my best studs and bitches. I have an Anglo-Nubian goat, whose milk will be invaluable for mixing with their biscuits, rice and meat.’

  Mrs Ethel E. Smith of the Leodride Bulldogs said: ‘It is early days and it might not be wise to embark on a plan which might cause endless regrets if the war proved to be a short one.’ Meanwhile: ‘For feeding purposes, Mrs Smith recommends good raw lean beef, occasional eggs and a good biscuit meal.’ Such luxury was not going to last long.

  The Duchess of Newcastle told The Dog World that she had twelve evacuated boys staying with her, ‘luckily a very nice lot’. Her Grace was ‘keeping on as many Clumber Spaniels and Smooth Haired Fox Terriers as possible but is worried that as time goes on, both Smith, her kennel man, and her chauffeur will be called up. But she is determined to carry on by working herself with perhaps the help of a kennel-maid.’

  Chapter 6

  … And Carry a White Pekingese

  For an evacuated pet in 1939 you could not do much better than end up at the Duchess of Hamilton’s Wiltshire animal sanctuary. After the first frantic weeks of September the place was teeming. At least there was plenty of room. ‘A couple of hundred dogs are housed in the enormous coach house,’ wrote Mary Golightly. ‘Two hundred cats were housed in the private aerodrome,’ so it would be reported, ‘each one of which was as carefully looked after as the dogs [and] evacuee parrots.’

  The ‘aerodrome’ at Ferne had been cleared by Lord Clydesdale, heir to the dukedom and intrepid pre-war aviator. A similar field was created at Dungavel House, the ducal home in south Lanarkshire (a former hunting lodge, adopted when stately Hamilton Palace was demolished in 1919, and definitely no hunting there now), to keep the family in airborne contact. This would prove significant in the course of the wider war.

  ‘The secretary at Ferne is Miss Judy Mussprat-Williams, the fiancée of a flying officer somewhere in France, who is delighted with the more work she has to do as it takes her mind off her own affairs,’ so Miss Golightly reported. Special commendation was also made to ‘Miss Bunbury’ and ‘Miss Jacobs’, pet lovers who took in evacuee dogs on a slightly less ducal scale. And Mr Bernard Woolley, impresario and dog-loving owner of the Lido Cinema, Bolton, had offered homes to 100 dogs. Apparently they were driven north in yapping car-loads by the ‘head of cats’, Miss Molly Atherton, ‘in batches of 10 to 20, unloaded, given a run and taken into the cinema’. I wonder what was showing?8 Actually they were promptly introduced to prospective hosts and taken into the bosom of Lancashire dog-loving homes until the shortage of petrol made the flight from London much more difficult. Kind Mr Woolley!

  The Duchess described her own charges: ‘The evacuated cats were very numerous. Sometimes they would arrive with a dog friend.’ Mrs Freeman’s six cats, evacuee-veterans of Munich, were back, along with a long procession of ‘grey pussies, black pussies, tabby pussies, white pussies, orange pussies, tortoiseshell pussies, long-haired Persians and shorthaired cats’.

  ‘It became a very real problem as to how to distinguish each one,’ she wrote, ‘for cats have ways of slipping off collars. Many kind hosts came forward, but the greatest number of cats went to Ferne Sanctuary.’ That winter there was an outbreak of feline influenza brought in by an ‘evacuee kitten’ – but the usual eighty per cent fatality rate was brought down to ten by ‘the dedication of Miss Dukie and Miss Swallow who nursed the invalids day and night.’

  There was embarrassment when the Duchess was fined £10 for blackout offences. It was reported that she had ‘200 evacuee dogs at Ferne House and has twenty girls, acting as kennel maids’. Twenty windows were recorded as showing lights over a number of nights. Her solicitor said, ‘It is extremely difficult to control these strange young ladies.’ The chairman of the bench, sentencing, said: ‘It is a serious case. The fact that the Duchess has taken on a large number of dogs is not much of an excuse.’

  Blackout was more of an issue for town pets. Motor vehicles, even in their reduced numbers, were a mortal danger. And dogs must be ‘exercised’ in darkened streets. This could be vexatious in several ways. There were many slithering upsets as the nights lengthened.

  The Dog World reported at the end of September a new interest in ‘white dogs – such as Sealyhams and Bull Terriers, useful in avoiding pedestrian collisions’. ‘Carry a white Pekingese,’ an opportunist Peke breeder advertised. The Dumb Friends’ patron, Lady Hannon, devised a natty white saddle cloth for dogs while the Daily Mail promoted ‘a white coat for your dog to protect him from unseen feet on crowded pavements in a blackout’. Another such garment came with jingling bells.

  The National Canine Defence League offered the ‘Lustre Lead’ – ‘glows with a beautiful fluorescent green colour in the dark – nothing to rub off or harm the dog – obviates risk of accident’. In the constant collisions and trampling dogs on leads proved as much of a menace in the gloom as those without them.

  ‘Humans must learn to be cats and walk in the dark,’ wrote ‘Lucio’, the Manchester Guardian columnist, a theme cheerfully picked up by The Cat. The editor pointed out:

  We should all know that while cats can see in dimmer light than we can, they cannot see in total darkness. I was troubled about my cat, a strong-sighted animal, when the lighting regulations came in. Not only was he nervous and worried about the pitch darkness, but he was quite unsighted and fumbled his way through the house.

  He specially disliked having to jump into a dark room from the window and I struggled with a torch and the black-out curtains in an attempt to help him without breaking the regulations. I then hit upon the simple device of a nightlight on the floor, where it cannot show outside. I commend it.

  Cats and dogs could adapt to the blackout – but what about rationing? It would be food, not enemy bombs, that would determine the fate of pets in the much more testing times to come.

  In those innocent, early months of conflict, ‘feeding dogs in wartime is no problem,’ the Bob Martin Company could say in a useful pamphlet. ‘Several breeders during the last war kept their kennels healthy on a diet which consisted mainly of potato peelings and meat offal. We are officially informed by the Ministry of Food that there is no present intention of restricting in any way the supply of cereal foodstuffs used in the making of dog-foods. There is no present shortage, but what may happen in the future it is of course impossible to forecast.’

  ‘In practice you will find that only one or two items of your dog’s regular diet will become unobtainable and substitutes can be easily found,’ said the Canine Defence League. ‘For instance, boiled offal or horse-flesh can be substituted for raw beef, and should meat become impossible to obtain, soya bean flour or other protein food can be used.’

  Dogs were already getting grumpy at the prospect. It was ‘all a bit Mother Hubbard,’ to purloin one journalist’s clever phrase. Housewives faced queuing for half a morning to get fish heads – or boiling lungs and windpipes (eight hours’ minimum) in noisome vats on the soon-to-be declared ‘Kitchen Front’. Love of pets in wartime would be true love. It would only get worse. The Cat revived a recipe from 1917 for ‘a good solid pudding’ made from table scraps mashed up with Marmite liquid and baked for an hour in a pie dish into a nutritious cake. It also warned that ‘most of the canned foods apart from Kit-e-Kat [made by Mess
rs Chappie of Slough] are likely to be withdrawn’.

  ‘What Is He Going To Eat Now?’ asked Doris Knight in the Daily Mail in early October to reassure readers about the prospect of a shortage of pet food. ‘Experts are of the opinion that many dogs suffer from overfeeding and that a period of sensible dieting will give most beneficial results,’ she wrote. ‘Cats will usually eat similar meals to dogs provided there is a moistening of gravy provided by stewing cods’ heads or kipper trimmings in water.’

  ‘There’s no need to start worrying about how to feed your dog or cat when food rationing comes into force,’ she continued. ‘The authorities have been giving plenty of attention to the matter for months past.’

  Actually they had had other things on their minds. As soon as war was declared, the Ministry of Food had come into being. It was headed by William Morrison, the pre-war Minister of Agriculture, once tipped as a future premier. He would announce on 1 November that rationing (for humans) was to be introduced in the near future – to general grumbling. What about rationing for animals? That was not yet on the agenda but it soon would be.

  Feeding pets and farm livestock was not the prime concern of NARPAC. After the catastrophe of the great pet slaughter, there seemed little for it to do. The Committee’s affairs were about to be re-energized by Edward Bridges Webb’s idea of a mass registration of the nation’s pets by ‘animal wardens on every street’. To begin with they were to be mustered by the ‘Distributing Organisation of the PDSA’s Jumble Dept’.

  For patriotic animal lovers keen to do their bit, this did not seem very exciting. But create an army of ‘Animal Guards’ to do the registering and distribute the collar tabs – two million of them – made by ICI out of celluloid, and you had something much more warlike-sounding. Special elastic collars were to be provided for cats.