Transcription - The Problem of Rats

I have already briefly talked about the living conditions of trench warfare, but in this post I will talk about something which was a major problem for the soldiers whilst living amongst the trenches.

During the first world war, soldiers who were killed during the battle either lay dead amongst the battlefield or throughout the trenches. Most of the men who died in the trenches found themselves being buried nearly immediately as the fell in battle because of the weathered conditions of the trench.

These Decomposing bodies as well as other food scraps left by the men often littered the surfaces of the trench. This is what attracted the 'Rats'. A pair of rats can produce upto 880 offspring a year which, along with the dead bodies and food litter, was the cause of all of the rats.

"Rats cam up from the canal, fed on plentiful corpses and multiplied exceedingly. While I stayed here with the Welch, A new Officer joined the company and, in a token of welcome, was given a dug-out containing a spring bed. When he turned in that night he heard scuffling, shone this torch in the bed, and found two rats on his blanket tussling for the possession of a severed hand." - Robert Graves,Goodbye to all That.

"The outstanding feature of the trenches was the extraordinary number of rats. The area was infested with them. It was impossible to keep them out of the dugouts. They grew fat on the food that they pilfered from us, and anything they could pick up in or around the trenches; they were bloated and loathsome to look at. Some were nearly as big as cats. We were filled with an instinctive hatred of them, because however one tried to put the thought of one's mind, one could not help feeling that they fed on the dead." - Stuart Dolden, his account of the trenches. 

"Rats bred by the tens of thousands and lived on the fat of the land. When we were sleeping in funk holes the things ran over us, played about, copulated and fouled our scraps of food, their young squeaking incessantly. There was no proper system of waste disposal in trench life. Empty tins of all kinds were flung away over the top on both sides of the trench. Millions of tins were thus available for all the rats in France and Belgium in hundreds of miles of trenches. During brief moments of quiet at night, one could hear a continuous rattle of tins moving against each other. The rats were turning them over. What happened to the rats under heavy shell-fire was a mystery, but their powers of survival kept place with each new weapon, including poison gas." - Private George Coppard, With a Machine gun to Cambrai, 1969.

"We were soon back in the trenches after that action. Our living conditions there were lousy, dirty and unsanitary - no matter what the weather was, whether it was hot or cold, rain or fine, you were in there for four days, and three nights. There were rats as big as cats, and if you had any leather equipment the damn things would gnaw at it. We had leather equipment - and they'd chew it. If you stood still long enough they'd chew your bootlaces." - Harry Patch, Last Post, 2005.