They [the rats] scuttled along trenches and down dugout steps, crouched expectantly on timbers and rifled men’s kit like the most experienced and persistent of looters. Their familiarity with human beings produced contempt. In a billet, Lieutenant Roe discovered:
Corporal Arthur Major [who had been asleep] was sitting up in the straw with a fully grown rat swinging from his nose with his teeth in the cartilage. We had already experienced rats nibbling away at the back of our hair… The lighting was elementary, a couple of hurricane ‘butties’ and a torch or two and I was momentarily taken aback. Clearly I could not shoot the rat with my 0.45 inch revolver in such a confined space and equally clearly I could only open the teeth and free them from the cartilage if the rat was first killed. There was only one solution, so I borrowed [Sergeant] Appleford’s bayonet and got on with the job.
Source:
Holmes, Richard. "Earth and Wire." Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914-1918. London: HarperCollins, 2004. 286. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 87.
Those soldiers were so worn down and used to sleeping in such shit conditions that a rat literally eating their face did not wake them.
That's literally the most wtf I have ever seen in my life.