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Rats were not rare in the trenches. In fact, millions of them invaded the trenches. Two types of rats dominated the trenches: brown and black rats (Duffy, 2009, para, 4). A pair of rats could produce around 900 offspring annually (Duffy, 2009). With ample amounts of food, these beasts flourished. One can use the term “beast” because many soldiers claimed that, in some cases, the rats grew as big as cats. While complaining about his dugout, Guy Chapman (1933) said, "Our dugout, a cellar at the trench corner, was not gas-proof nor had it much head cover. Rats, great beasts as big as kittens…ran to and fro over the parapets and squeaked behind the boards in the dugout shafts” (Simkin, 2012). The beasts ate the troop’s food and disgusted them. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque and Wheen (1929) describes the rats as “particularly repulsive, they are so fat--the kind we all call corpse-rats. They have shocking, evil, naked faces, and it is nauseating to see their long, nude tails. They seem to be mighty hungry. Almost every man has had his bread gnawed. Kropp wrapped his in his waterproof sheet and put it under his head, but he cannot sleep because they run over his face to get at it…. Detering meant to outwit them: he fastened a thin wire to the roof and suspended his bread from it. During the night when he switched on his pocket-torch he saw the wire swing to and fro. On the bread was riding a fat rat” (p. 38). In an attempt to keep the rats under control, soldiers at first would shoot. This did no good, so to save ammunition, officers forbade officers from shooting rats. Therefore, soldiers
had to turn to other methods to try to kill them. Chapman (1933) said that one of his solider comrades would “’lunge with his bayonet at a scurrying shadow. Not infrequently, he would turn back to me waving a struggling trophy, which torchlight revealed as the scrofulous and mangy progenitor of vast litters, now, gorged on French corpses and offal, too obese to move with the slippery agility of the young fry’" (Simkin, 2012). Other soldiers lured them into traps, as described by Remarque and Wheen (1929) in All Quiet on the Western Front: “We carefully cut off the bits of bread that the animals have gnawed. The slices we cut off are heaped together in the middle of the floor. Each man takes out his spade and lies down prepared to strike. Detering, Kropp, and Kat hold their pocket-torches ready. After a few minutes we hear the first shuffling and tugging. It grows, now it is the sound of many little feet. Then the torches switch on and every man strikes at the heap, which scatters with a rush. The result is good. We toss the bits of rat over the parapet and again lie in wait. Several times we repeat the process. At last the beasts get wise to it, or perhaps they have scented the blood. They return no more. Nevertheless, before morning the remainder of the bread on the floor has been carried off” (p. 38). The rats not only ate the soldiers’ food, but they also ate the rotting corpses. As quoted in Eye Deep in Hell, Ellis (1976) quoted a French soldier that once wrote, “’One evening whilst on patrol, Jacques saw some rats running from under the dead men’s greatcoats, enormous rats, fat with human flesh. His heart pounding, he edged towards one of the bodies. Displaying a grimacing face, stripped of flesh, skull bare, eyes devoured, and from the yawning mouth leaped an unspeakable foul beast’” (p. 55). Although the soldiers considered the rats to be nasty, disgusting, thieving vermin, their actions were not as detrimental as the diseases that they carried. Ellis (1976) explains that “there was one serious disease they carried known as Weil’s disease which became widespread during the last two years of the war” (p. 55). Weil syndrome, a rare infectious disorder, is a severe form of a bacterial infection known as leptospirosis (WebMD, CDC, NIH, WHO, GARD, Madisons Foundation, 2012). Kidney and liver dysfunction, as well as an abnormally enlarged liver, jaundice and/or loss of consciousness are symptoms of the infection (WebMD, 2012). According to medical professionals, “Weil syndrome occurs among individuals who are exposed to affected animals’ urine” (WebMD, 2012). This disease was such a problem because the rats would urinate in the trenches where the soldiers stayed. These infected rats would also swim in the water and run across soldiers’ faces. The sheer nature of the trenches was conducive to infection, and any soldier with an open sore could contract the disease. |