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

usual rations were also more plentiful now and we were getting a bread ration. One morning a man came up with a permit. He had formerly occupied the house we were staying in and he told us he wanted to take two pigeons away. We had killed some pigeons the day before and only that morning I had killed another four which were boiling merrily away with a couple of chickens in a dixie. He went up to the toilet and came down crying. He made us understand, by pointing to the photographs of two pigeons hanging up on the wall, that they were the two finest pigeons in the whole of northern France and that they had pedigrees as long as ships’ cables. But we also made him understand by pointing to our bellies that they were as empty as drums.
    Pte Frederick Bolwell, 1st Loyal North Lancashire Rgt
    Most of my regiment being gone and the remainder mixed up with other brigades which had formed another line, two chums and myself went to a farmhouse fifty yards behind this newly made line. There we had a field battery; and, after getting a little rest, we started out to find the remnants of the regiment. The enemy was still shelling, and the battle was still going on; but by nightfall, not finding any of them, we came back to the old house and found the battery gone. That night we slept on beds in the farmhouse, and next morning, 1 November, after a hurried breakfast of biscuits and beef, we all set out to join our respective regiments; but, after wandering about for an hour and seeing no signs of any of ours, my two chums decided to go back to the farmhouse and make a dinner.
    There were plenty of vegetables in the garden and an outhouse full of potatoes; and we found a spirit-lamp and a pot; so we commenced to prepare our meal. In a short time it was all in the pot, when alas!, the Germans began to shell our house, sending over incendiary shells. They let us have it battery fire. The first lot took off the foreleg of a cow, which along with some others was grazing at the back of the house; the poor thing hopped around on three legs for a second or two and then dropped, the other cows running up to lick the blood from its wound. The next lot hit the top of the house, one shell taking away the roof of the scullery, behind which one of my chums was standing; the other had already run into the trenches fifty yards away. I was the last to go, the other two having thought that I had been hit. I did not leave the place until the house was well alight; and three hours after, when the enemy’s guns had died down and the fire had burnt out the house, I went over to see how the dinner had got on, and found it done to a turn, cooked by the heat from the burning house. Needless to say, we did full justice to that dinner, all three of us.
    Pte Frank Richards, 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers
    There was a decent orchard in the farm at the back of our trench, and Stevens and I used to slip over in the night and fill his pack full of apples. We had to fill our bellies with something . There was one cow and one pig left in the farm. Buffalo Bill [nickname of A Company’s CO, Major Clifton Stockwell] had the pig killed and sent back to the company cooks with instructions to melt a lot of the fat down and cook the remainder; the pork came up the following night and we enjoyed it greatly although we had no bread to eat it with. The fat that was melted down we used for greasing our rifles with . . .
    One morning the officers were about to have breakfast at the end of the trench leading to their bay, from where it was possible by stooping low in a ditch to get into the farm by daylight. One of the officers’ servants, whose duty it was to milk the cow so that the officers could have milk in their tea, reported that the cow had broken loose and that they would have to do without milk that morning. Buffalo Bill jumped to his feet, revolver out, and roared at the man: ‘My God, you’ll catch that cow and milk her or I’ll blow your ruddy brains out!’ The cow was