Such Stuff: A Story-Maker's Inspiration
Animals in war
On the edge of Hyde Park, in London, is the Animals in War Memorial. Unveiled in 2004, it stands as a tribute to all the animals that served, suffered and died in the wars and conflicts of the twentieth century.
Not everyone agrees or supports the idea of a memorial or medals for animals. A Guardian reporter wrote: “It is a soppy parody of the medals handed out to actual human soldiers that says more about modern sentimentality than about anything a well-trained dog is capable of … there are no good dogs, just good owners. Animals have no vices or virtues.”
People who live closely and work respectfully with animals would dispute this. Maria Dickin, founder of the veterinary charity the PDSA, instituted the Dickin Medal in 1943. Its metal disc says: FOR GALLANTRY. WE ALSO SERVE. It recognizes “conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty while serving or associated with any branch of the Armed Forces or Civil Defence Units”.
Surprisingly, more pigeons have received this medal than dogs, cats or horses. This reflects their central role in war communications, often under bombardment. During the Second World War, the British used about 250,000 homing pigeons, working with agents behind enemy lines, and bringing back battle news from the Front. They served on aircraft, warships and even submarines, backing up other forms of communication. Another pigeon role was raising the alarm when an aircraft crashed or was forced to land.
A medal was given to American pigeon “G.I. Joe” after he saved the lives of a thousand soldiers and civilians in the village of Calvi Vecchia, Italy. American troops who were unaware that the village had been captured by the British 169th Infantry Brigade, radioed for the village to be bombed, but received the message delivered by G.I. Joe, just in time to prevent a major tragedy.
Only one cat has received the medal. In 1949, Simon was an effective rat-catcher (only doing, you might think, what came naturally) on the frigate HMS Amethyst, based in Hong Kong. The frigate was protecting British interests in the Yangtze river in China during the battles between the Chinese Communists and the Nationalists. Communist guns opened fire, causing many injuries and casualties. One of the first rounds tore through the Amethyst’s captain’s cabin, seriously wounding Simon. But he recovered and was credited with keeping up the crew’s morale. Following the ship’s escape from the Yangtze, Simon became an instant celebrity, lauded in the Allied press.
More recently, some of the dogs who received Dickin Medals were, like the dog in Shadow, army sniffer dogs in Afghanistan. As a puppy, Treo, a black Labrador, was badly behaved and difficult to control. But intensive army training turned him into a successful military dog. On his first patrol, he found a stash of weapons hidden in a hut at the back of a mud-walled compound. In 2008, he found a number of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). They were particularly dangerous “daisy chain” devices, two or more bombs wired together to maximize casualties. Within weeks of Treo’s arrival, the Royal Marines intercepted Taliban radio messages about “targeting the black dog”.
His handler, Sergeant Heyhoe, described his close relationship with Treo: “You have to understand each other, recognize the slightest change in each other. The trick is to channel your fear, knowing that this will make both you and the dog concentrate better. Although he was a black dog in 50˚C heat, I never doubted him.” Treo saved many soldiers and civilians from death or serious injury. After the death of his roommate, Heyhoe returned to Britain, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He believes Treo, who came with him, helped him through the dark days: “He’s a proper dog who never gives kisses, but the times when I needed him, he’d sit beside me. He knew when I was suffering.”
The first honorary Dickin Medal was announced in 2014, at the start of the centenary commemorations of the First World War. The horse was Warrior, who, like the fictional Joey in War Horse, served on the Western Front. He was chosen to represent the bravery and sacrifice that millions of animals displayed during the Great War. Warrior was subjected to machine gun attacks by air, survived falling shells at the Battle of the Somme, was buried under debris and got stuck in mud at Passchendaele, and was twice trapped under the burning beams of his stables. Warrior was dubbed “the horse they couldn’t kill”. The PDSA, at the award ceremony in the Imperial War Museum, said Warrior was a “true survivor” and his story “epitomizes the vital roles played by millions of animals”.
Whatever you think of medals for animals, a fitting memorial stands in Port Elisabeth, South Africa. A kneeling soldier is giving water to his horse. The words inscribed below say: THE GREATNESS OF A NATION CONSISTS NOT SO MUCH IN THE NUMBER OF ITS PEOPLE OR THE EXTENT OF ITS TERRITORY AS IN THE EXTENT AND JUSTICE OF ITS COMPASSION.
Little Manfred
THE DREAM
Frequently, my stories have their earliest beginnings in things: objects, artefacts, ordinary everyday things, or some amazing discovery in a museum perhaps, or a wonderful sculpture I have come across, a gruesome, hideous object I would rather not look at twice, or a painting I cannot forget. Each has a secret story locked away inside it. All I have to do as a dream-maker, a story-maker, is to unlock it. I often feel that these strange meetings between me and these things are somehow meant to be – no different from meetings with people in this respect – that fate has brought us together. Silly, I know, but somehow this belief helps motivate me to dream on, to begin to make my story. Little Manfred began because of a meeting I had with a toy dog. But that meeting only happened in the first place because it was known I had been inspired in such ways to tell my stories before. I think I had better explain.
A few years ago, I came on holiday to Scilly (I’m actually writing this on Scilly, on the island of Bryher), and met the farmer and his wife who grow the vegetables here. In a very matter of fact way, they told me, “Thought you might be interested, Michael. We were ploughing the potato field a while ago, when the back wheel of the tractor got itself stuck down a hole. We managed to drive it out, then went back to have a look. It wasn’t just a little hole; it was a tomb. We peered inside, and there was a rusty old sword lying at the bottom. We lifted it out, brought it home. It’s in the greenhouse. You want to see it?”
There it was laid out on a newspaper in amongst the ripening tomatoes. “Experts had a look,” they told me. “They reckon it’s over two thousand years old. It’s going off to a museum to be dated accurately and restored.”
The Scilly islands are full of cists and tomb sites. I have seen dozens, hundreds, climbed down into many, but this was a newly discovered tomb, and discovered by a tractor wheel, and, until then, undisturbed for all this time! I gazed down at the sword, reached out and touched it. One word came into my mind: “Excalibur” – King Arthur’s sword. There’s a legend he is still out here on Scilly, probably under an island, one of the Eastern Isles, called “Little Arthur”, waiting to come back when he is needed. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the great poet, knew the legend. He came here before he wrote his Arthurian poems. It’s a legend you want to believe. A few months of dreamtime later, I was writing my story. I called it The Sleeping Sword.
Then there’s the ancient Irish torc, of twisted gold, that I found in a museum in Dublin, discovered by a boy in a bog in Galway, that in the end became the talisman for the children in Twist of Gold. There’s the key in Alone on a Wide Wide Sea, the only clue in a girl’s search for her long-lost family. And War Horse may owe in part its beginnings to the reminiscences of three old men in my village, but the original notion came from four pictures we had discovered in an old family tea chest, frames broken, glass broken, pictures in gouache of horses and soldiers in that war, of horses charging up a hill into wire, some already caught in it.
The Imperial War Museum used these pictures in an exhibition of children’s books about war. And, as a result, I think it later invited me to write a story about any exhibit in their museum. To be honest, I wasn’t at all sure at first that I wanted to do it. From what I remembered of this museum, there were a lot of missiles and planes and guns, and I
had already been to war often enough in my stories. I said as much to them. They were very helpful, explaining they had smaller, more domestic, perhaps more interesting and unusual things to show me if I would like to come up and visit the museum. I went with Michael Foreman, who I hoped would illustrate whatever story I might come up with. He had to be as enthusiastic about the idea of the story as me. That was very important.
I could hardly believe it when I saw it first on the table in front of us – a small toy dog, a dachshund, beautifully crafted, painted nut-brown with black paws. There were four red wheels and a string with which to pull it. Hardly a weapon of war, I thought. What on earth was a toy dog doing in this museum of warfare? Then they told me the story, which I will now tell you.
It seems that after the Second World War was over, there were hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war here, who did not go home at once, but were kept on in Britain, in prisoner-of-war camps all over the country. They were used to help clear up war damage and often to work on farms. Many did not go home for over a year. Some found themselves living with farming families, in village communities. One such host family were the Dukes from Crockenhill in Kent. Just before their German guest/POW left for home, he made this little dachshund dog out of disused apple boxes, and a toy bear as well for the children of the family, as a parting gift to thank them for their kindness and hospitality. He was called Walter Klemenz. Once he got home, he sent them a fond letter. Clearly, he had been made to feel very much at home while he was with them. The family gave both the toys and the letter to the museum, because they felt it was important for us to know and understand that there could be goodwill and kindness between old enemies, even after such a terrible war.
Looking at the little dog on the table in front of us, reading Walter’s letter sent from Germany back to his “family” in England, both Michael Foreman and I knew we wanted to tell this story, a story of the beginnings of reconciliation. The little brown dog was a powerful symbol of hope for the future. I had grown up like most boys playing war games in the playground, in the bombsites. Michael had too. The enemy, the “baddies”, were always the Germans. The comics we read were full of British soldiers, who were the “goodies” and always handsome, and always won. It took a long while for all this anger and hatred and prejudice to die away. Time helped, as had that Duke family in Kent, as had Walter Klemenz, who had made the little dachshund toy. They were the pathfinders of peace.
Michael Foreman, who is a serious football fan, reminded me, as we were discussing how our story would go, that the first German the British people came to respect, admire and like after that war was a great footballer called Bert Trautmann. Everyone knew Bert Trautmann – even I did, and I was not a football fan. He had been a German paratrooper during the war, but later became a brave goalkeeper who played for Manchester City from 1949 to 1964. He had broken his neck in a cup final, but had gone on playing. He had won the admiration of everyone. There were good Germans, and they played football rather well too.
Michael also reminded me that in 1966, German supporters had come over in their thousands for the final of the World Cup at Wembley, and that, for the most part, there was great camaraderie between them. Yes, everyone wanted their own side to win. But this was a game between friendly peoples, not old enemies any more. Although it would have been the first time that many of those Germans had been to England, some of them, I thought, some must have fought in the war, and some must even have been prisoners of war. Write about one of those, maybe a fictional Walter Klemenz coming back for the first time, after all those years, to England. Maybe he would want to visit the farm where he had worked, the family that had been his family for a while, for whom he made the little dachshund dog.
So Michael drew the dog and I dreamt up the tale, growing the story of reconciliation out of the horror and tragedy of the sinking of two great battleships, HMS Hood of the Royal Navy and the Admiral Graf Spee of the German Navy, out of the lives of sailors from both sides, whose lives became woven together by war, and who, years later, because of that little toy dog, became the best of friends.
LITTLE MANFRED
“But it wasn’t long before they were treating us as if we were a part of the family. They let us eat with them at their table; we even went to church with them on Sundays. We worked with them, looking after the horses, ploughing, harvesting, spreading muck on the fields, fetching water, digging ditches, picking stones off the fields, whatever it was that needed doing. I was always a little slower than the others, because I had to walk with a stick, after my injury. But I was a hard worker. And on the days we were not needed on the farm, we were sent to work with the other prisoners down on the beaches, clearing the wire and the mines. There were mines all round the coast, you see. They had been put there, years before, to stop an invasion from the sea. But of course in the end there never was an invasion. Then after the war was over, we prisoners of war, we had to help clear it all away, to make the beaches safe again.
“In the evenings, Manfred would often sit and read a story to Grace – I remember this very well. I did it sometimes myself, if Manfred was still out feeding the animals after dark. But I knew always that Grace liked it better when Manfred was there. His English was much better than mine, although after two years of living there, I could speak it quite well.
“At Christmas, Manfred and I sang to them some German carols – that was Mrs Williams’s idea. Manfred taught Grace to sing ‘Stille Nacht’, ‘Silent Night’, in German. And, in the end, the villagers were kind – for most of the time, anyway. There were one or two who crossed the street to the other side, so they did not have to speak to us, but we had to expect that. In this war many had suffered greatly, had great griefs and sadnesses to bear; and where there is sadness, there is often anger. I think perhaps that the anger lasts longer even than the sadness. For Manfred, Grace became almost like a daughter, the daughter he was parted from. I never saw him happier than when he was with her.
“Then at last came the good news that Manfred and I were soon to be going home. This was when Manfred decided he would make something special for Grace, a gift from us both to leave behind. Manfred loved to make things, out of wood usually. He had always been clever with his hands. Anyway, he found some bits of wood in the barn – this wood, I remember, came from apple crates in the barn – and out of this wood he carved a little dog, a dachshund like the one he and Jutta and little Inga had at home. He made wheels for it too. I painted it – a brown body, of course, with a little black nose, eyes, ears, and a green chassis too. And the wheels, I painted bright red.”
“Little Manfred!” said Alex. “You painted Little Manfred?”
“Manfred made him, and I painted him,” Walter told him proudly. “We made Little Manfred together. I tied on a piece of string too, so Grace could pull him along. This was all done in secret, in the bedroom we shared together, because we wanted it to be a surprise for her. Manfred said it would be like a ‘dog of peace’. I have always remembered those words. We were very pleased with him, and hid him away under my bed so that we could give him to Grace on the day we left.”
Prisoners of war
In February 1939, the largest battleship afloat was launched: the Bismarck. Weighing in at more than 50,000 tonnes fully loaded, she was the pride of the German fleet.
On 19 May 1941, along with other ships and U-boats (German submarines), the Bismarck set out from the Baltic Sea for the Atlantic Ocean. Their mission was to intercept and destroy Allied ships carrying food and essential raw materials. The Bismarck was spotted between Greenland and Iceland by HMS Norfolk, Britain’s newest battleship. Together with HMS Hood, HMS Norfolk altered course to intercept her. On 24 May, in a brief action, HMS Hood was blown up and sunk. Out of her crew of 1,418, only three men survived.
The Bismarck had been damaged in the battle, but managed to get away, and made for German-occupied France for repairs. She was tracked down and attacked by Swordfish aircraft, an outdated and slow bip
lane torpedo bomber. A torpedo jammed her rudder and steering gear, leaving her unable to manoeuvre. Pounded by British battleships and destroyers, she was finally sunk on the morning of 27 May.
Her end is still a matter of dispute. Was she deliberately sunk by her crew, as survivors claimed? Or was she sunk by torpedoes from HMS Dorsetshire? Either way, in the words of Admiral Tovey, who had led the hunt against her: “Bismarck had put up a most gallant fight against impossible odds, worthy of the old days of the Imperial German Navy, and she went down with her colours flying.”
Of her 2,200 crew, only 116 survived. Some were picked up by HMS Dorsetshire, but a warning went out that there were U-boats in the area, and the British ships left, abandoning the rest of the survivors to the sea.
Those rescued, like Walter in Little Manfred, were brought to the United Kingdom as prisoners of war. Some prisoners of war were held in Britain, though many were sent to Canada, to reduce the cost of feeding them and because a German invasion was thought to be imminent. The last thing Britain wanted was prisoners helping the invading Germans. At the beginning of the war, there were only two prisoner-of-war camps but by the end there were 600 camps, housing nearly 500,000 prisoners.
The camps varied greatly from site to site. Some were in existing premises, such as disused factories, hotels, colleges or stately homes. Most, though, were constructed from corrugated tin and wood. These structures were known as Nissen huts and some can still be seen today in rural parts of Scotland and Wales.
The first major influx of prisoners of war, in July 1941, were Italians captured in the Middle East. German prisoners flooded into Britain from the summer of 1944 following the D-Day landings in France. These prisoners were interrogated to assess their loyalty to the Nazi regime. They would be graded by a colour patch of white, grey or black. Those considered “hardcore” Nazis wore a black patch. For Nazis this would sometimes mean a camp in the wilds of Scotland, where they would be put to agricultural work on farms.