Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1917 — Larks Sing As Big Guns Roar [ARTICLE]

Larks Sing As Big Guns Roar

Abundance of Songsters Where ~ Battles Rage Is Surprise to Newcomer.. SOLDIERS ARE FOND OF PETS •4 AttSorts of Mascots Abound in tfre Trenches —Many Also Are the Pests—Red Cross Dogs Are Valuable. With the Brttish Armies- In France. —One of the distinct surprises to the newcomer at the war is to.find larks singing over the front line trenches. One would think that birds of every soft had long ago been driven far from the war zone, but, instead, they lurk in and about it in great number. Very often the sudden flight of a covey from a secluded thicket or remnant of wood has given the first signal of a shrapnel attack. ■ The drumming of big guns, the “pat-pat-patter-patter-patter” of machine guns, the whirr and “bang” of “plum puddings” and sent over by the enemy trench mortars seem to have lost all terror to the feathered songsters. They chirp as gayly and loudly over the muddy “line” as if there were no such thing in all the world as war.

The British Tommy is very fond of pets. - When he can safely do so he throws crumbs over the parapet for the larks, and if he had his way would fill up every nook and corner , of the trench with some sort of animal mascot. As it Is. there ia a strange mixture of pets and pests in these deep cuttings ■in the earth—the outposts of battle —where the men themselves live a sort of animal life. It is a life no human being was ever Intended to live, and yet the health of the troops •a positively amazing. Rat the Leading Pest. Of all the trench pests the rat, of course, by reason of his size, takes precedence. He is everywhere. No amount of cleaning up has tended to exterminate him. In fact, he waxes fatter and fatter as the war goes on. Of the, pets the dogjs_by far the more numerous and popular. There are goats and cats and canaries and various species of mascot, but the dog oecomes more a part of the life than my (if the others. Many a subaltern or company commander has gone “over the top” into battle with his dog leaping and barkng happily beside him. Scores of dogs have been killed beside their masters ind hundreds wounded. In the fightng about Mainetz,during the great •push” on the Somme, a Red Cross searching party came upon a pathetic little group composed of a subaltern, his dog and four private soldiers, just is they had sprawled to their death in a burst of machine gun flte. -r The dogs in the trenches have great fun chasing the rats. They will even leap over the parapet after them into “No Man’s Land.” And sometimes old “Fritz” from the enemy trenches will snipe them. There is one old terrier now in the front line who has been wounded four times. If he survives the war the old veteran is going to have a xxfllar with four gold stripes on it. Red Cross Dogs Valuable. The Red Cross dogs of the French hardly come under the head of pets. dumb animals have played, and are playing, in the great world conflict. The dogs, however, render a service scarcely more notable than the little French donkeys that carry ammunition the front line trenches. These little burros are aswise as they are gray. Their long, straight ears, always poking forward,are attuned to the sounds of battle and* when the fir-

ing gets too heavy they dart for tbe shelter of shell holes and lie there with the drivers until danger temporarily la past. Some of the strangest animals of The war are the wild cats of Ypres. The old mother and father cats of Ypres were once domesticated. But when the frightened population fled- at the first bombardment the cats, true to all cat traditions, remained behind. . Now Ypres is a wilderness of ruins and all the cats born and living there have become like wild animals. A Canadian Sergeant major came marching out of the “line” a few days ago with a magpie sitting on his shoulder. A private In the same company had a kitten curled up on the top of his knapsack. All the overseas troops bring mascots with them. The South Africans started out with a great collection of springboks,’ baboons, duikers and a variety of queef animals, but the climate of northern France in winter mood is far from friendly and the warm weather pets have mostly been “done in.” Probably the most amazing of all war pets, however, was the Hon cub< adopted by the Americans in the French aviation service. They read in a Paris newspaper that a “perfect dear of a cub” was for sale and promptly sent emissaries tn to buy him. They said when he grew up they were going to drop him in the German lines, but he was spoiled Into being a pampered ‘pet instead of a maneater, and finally because his playful howls at night became a nuisance he was sent to the zoo.