Beasts in battle

‘Never such innocence again’ wrote Philip Larkin of an unquestioning British people on the eve of the first world war, and much has been made, not unreasonably, of the trusting frame of mind in which young men of that time accepted the arguments for war in 1914.

‘Never such innocence again’ wrote Philip Larkin of an unquestioning British people on the eve of the first world war, and much has been made, not unreasonably, of the trusting frame of mind in which young men of that time accepted the arguments for war in 1914. If they were innocents, even more so were the animals caught up in it all — the countless horses and mules in the transport and artillery service, the pets and livestock exiled from devastated French and Belgian farms, and the wild fauna disturbed from their natural habitats. As Richard Van Emden’s moving anthology of soldiers’ letters and memories shows, the fate of these hapless creatures amid the horrors of the Western Front also played an important part in the lives of many serving soldiers.