About the Book
Pigeons carrying vital messages to and from the beleaguered city during the Siege of Paris; horses and mules struggling through miles of fetid mud to bring ammunition to the front in the Great War; dogs sniffing out mines for the British invasion force in the Second World War countless brave animals have played their part in the long, cruel history of war. Some have won medals for gallantry - like G.I. Joe, the American pigeon who saved 100 British lives in Italy, and Rob, the black and white mongrel who made over twenty parachute jumps with the SAS. Too many others have died abandoned, in agony and alone, after serving their country with distinction.
Jilly Cooper has here written a tribute to the role of animals in wartime. It is a tragic and horrifying story - yet it has its lighter moments too: a hilarious game of musical chairs played on camels during the Desert Campaign; and the budgie who remarked, when carried from a bombed-out East End tenement, This is my night out.
Animals in War is a vivid and unforgettable record of mans inhumanity to animals, but also an astonishing story of courage, intelligence, devotion and resilience.
Jilly Cooper
ANIMALS IN WAR
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Epub ISBN: 9781409031901
Version 1.0
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ANIMALS IN WAR
A CORGI BOOK : 9780552990912
Originally published in Great Britain by William Heinemann Ltd
PRINTING HISTORY
William Heinemann edition published 1983
Corgi edition published 1984
Corgi edition reissued 2000
7 9 10 8 6
Copyright Jilly Cooper 1983, 2000
The right of Jilly Cooper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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C ONTENTS
About the Author
Jilly Cooper is a journalist, writer and media superstar. The author of many number one bestselling novels, she lives in Gloucestershire with her husband Leo, her rescue greyhound Feather and her black cat Feral.
She was appointed OBE in 2004 for services to literature, and in 2009 was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Gloucestershire for her contribution to literature and services to the County.
Find out more about Jilly Cooper at her website www.jillycooper.co.uk
By Jilly Cooper
FICTION
RIDERS
RIVALS
POLO
THE MAN WHO MADE HUSBANDS JEALOUS
APPASSIONATA
SCORE!
PANDORA
WICKED!
JUMP!
NON-FICTION
ANIMALS IN WAR
CLASS
HOW TO SURVIVE CHRISTMAS
HOTFOOT TO ZABRISKIE POINT (with Patrick Lichfield)
INTELLIGENT AND LOYAL
JOLLY MARSUPIAL
JOLLY SUPER
JOLLY SUPERLATIVE
JOLLY SUPER TOO
SUPER COOPER
SUPER JILLY
SUPER MEN AND SUPER WOMEN
THE COMMON YEARS
TURN RIGHT AT THE SPOTTED DOG
WORK AND WEDLOCK
ANGELS RUSH IN
ARAMINTAS WEDDING
CHILDRENS BOOKS
LITTLE MABEL
LITTLE MABELS GREAT ESCAPE
LITTLE MABEL SAVES THE DAY
LITTLE MABEL WINS
ROMANCE
BELLA
EMILY
HARRIET
IMOGEN
LISA & CO
OCTAVIA
PRUDENCE
ANTHOLOGIES
THE BRITISH IN LOVE
VIOLETS AND VINEGAR
To Leo
A UTHORS N OTE
I am extremely grateful to the people who have helped me with this book. Heading the list must be the staff of the Imperial War Museum, including Dr Christopher Dowling and Angela Godwin, the Keeper and Deputy Keeper of the Department of Education and Publications, who thought up the idea in the first place, and were continually kind, encouraging and unstinting with their time and ideas; and secondly Dr Gwyn Bayliss, Keeper of the Department of Printed Books, who fell over backwards to let me have access to his books at all times. I would also like to thank the staff of Dr Dowlings department who spent so much time laboriously photostatting documents, and digging out photographs marked IWM where they appear and to the museum warders who so cheerfully guided me round the museum on the numerous occasions when I got lost. (In the case of photographs with no attribution, the copyright holder is unknown though prints may be in the archives of the Imperial War Museum.)
I also owe a particular debt of gratitude to J.M. Brereton, whose touching and beautifully written book, The Horse in War , was a constant inspiration to me when I wrote the two chapters about the horse; and to Henry Harris, who drew my attention to that wonderfully funny volume, Mascots and Pets of the Regiments by Major T.J. Edwards. I am also grateful to Lt.-Col. C.H.T. MacFetridge and Major J. P. Warren for their permission to quote from two stories in their book, Tales of the Mountain Gunners , and to the authors of those stories, General B. Daunt and Major J. Nettlefield. Nor would this book have been written without help from the various histories of the PDSA and the RSPCA, and the official histories in both wars of the RAVC.
I should like to offer a tremendous thanks to Lt.-Col. Keith Morgan Jones of the RAVC who not only entertained me most splendidly at their headquarters at Melton Mowbray, but also lent me every help while I was writing the book. My particular thanks also go to Jane Tebb and Olive Martyn of the RSPCA and Clarissa Baldwin of the Canine Defence League who all provided me with excellent material, as did Mrs L.V. Travis, editor of that splendidly august journal: The British Mule Society Magazine .
May I also express my gratitude to all those readers of The Times and the Daily Telegraph who so promptly and generously answered my advertisement for stories of animals in war, and to Tonie and Valmai Holt for giving me the run of their magnificent postcard collection. I must thank Beryl Hill too for impeccably typing the manuscript, and David Godwin and Louise Bloomfield for editing it.
Above all, however, I am grateful to my own household: Claudia Wolfers, who dealt with the correspondence, and who with Stanley and Vivian Hicks, looked after me, and made it possible, just after we moved to Gloucestershire, for me to isolate myself from the packing chests and the burst pipes, and to finish the book.
