[The following is in regards to the problems that soldiers in the trenches had with rats, which plagued them ceaselessly.]
Suart Dolden described their depredations in the Armentières sector in 1917.
[…]
These holes filled up with water, and at night one could see the snouts of rats as they pushed their way across. They grew fat on the food they pilfered from us, and anything they could pick up in and around the trenches; they were bloated and loathsome to look on. We were filled with an instinctive hatres of them, because however one tried to put the thought out of one’s mind, one could not help feeling that they fed on the dead. We waged ceaseless war on them and, indeed, they were very easy prey because owing to their nauseating plumpness they were slow of foot. We would wait and watch for them as they let the water and climbed awkwardly to the bottom of the trench. Then with a run we would catch them squarely with a mighty kick and there would be one less to batten on us.
The officers on their nightly rounds would fire on them with their revolvers and in the morning it would be a common sight to see disemboweled rats lying amongst our barbed wire.
Source:
Holmes, Richard. "Earth and Wire." Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914-1918. London: HarperCollins, 2004. 286-87. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 110.
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