Tommy's Ark: Soldiers And Their Animals In The Great War. Richard Van Emden - Plot & Excerpts
Farm implements lay unretrieved in the fields, while corn stooks and haystacks rotted in no-man’s-land. In many ways, were a soldier brave or daft enough to look over the top, the scene meeting his eyes would have been one of a countryside largely unblemished by war, where copses and woods remained in full growth, and dykes and ditches were largely unbroken. With the arrival of spring and then summer, this natural environment supported new life, as it always had done. As the grass grew and the weeds took hold, so the trenches became suffused with midges and butterflies, bees and spiders, much to the delight of the soldiers who basked in warm sunshine. Larger animals such as stoats and weasels visited the trenches, and the birds chirruped for all they were worth in bushes and trees. There were problems with all this activity: a rat, a stray cat or dog proceeding at night through the undergrowth could scare a sentry out of his wits; grass grew so high in front of the trench that it afforded the sniper a perfect hiding place or concealed a raiding party.
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