1944 – Snowball the cat tries to take over a machine gun in Normandy so she can shoot some Nazis herself.
Blessed post. Good kitty
i want someone to read that headline in an old timey reporter voice
Okay fun fact: cats were actively deployed to trenches and ships to help deal with rodent infestations in both world wars, and they had the curb cutter effect of keeping the men’s spirits high.
One cat, Simon, was given the rank “Able Seacat Simon” after dutifully killing rats and mice that were destroying the HMS Amethyst’s food supplies. The ship had come under fire during the Chinese civil war and many of its crewmen had died. The cat had been gravely injured, too, but he picked out the shrapnel himself – seriously – and went straight to killing the rodents that were overrunning the ship. He unfortunately passed from his injuries two weeks before he was scheduled to receive the Dickin Medal. To this day, he is the only cat to receive this award.
Here’s another WW1 trenchcat, who would have been ratter, mouser, companion and gas warning – not AFAIK by dying, like a canary, but since cats reacted to the smell of gas long before it was strong enough for humans to notice, the troops had a bit more time to get their masks on, and the cats went into gasproof boxes.
Meanwhile, somewhere on the other side of No Man’s Land…
Meet Percy, mascot of HMLS (D20) “Daphne” with Lt Drader. Both survived the War, and Percy retired to live out his peacetime life in the Drader family home.
(Here’s a video clip; given how noisy, hot and smelly early tanks were, Percy seems remarkably unfazed.)
A US Army tank cat, Mustard of the 321st, with a Renault FT light tank and its driver Sgt Postal…
A Royal Artillery kitten (the battery mascot)…
Pincher of HMS Vindex on what looks like a Sopwith Pup scout…
Togo, ship’s cat of HMS Dreadnought (though I’ve also seen “HMS Irresistible”)…
Ship’s cat of HMS Queen Elizabeth atop 15″ main battery…
And speaking of big ships and big guns…
“Make nice all you like, Human. I despise you. I wanted a billet on a battleship, not this tinpot destroyer…” (Ching, of HMAS Swan.)
Oh! OH! I love cats, so much, and I love ship’s cats because it’s just such an adorable (but actually practical) idea! This is a good and wholesome post with much wonderful additions but I had to bring up my favourite;
Unsinkable Sam (aka Oskar)
So its 1941 and Sam is chilling out on his shiny new ship, a massive German battleship called Bismarck. If you recognise that name, or even just that this is a German ship in 1941, you know that is not a great place to be head of mousing.
May 1941, Bismarck conducts her one and only raiding mission, in the process destroying HMS Hood, a beloved and iconic cornerstone of the British Navy. The British make sinking the Bismarck A Major Priority, its part revenge, part propaganda, part morale drive. On the 27th of May they achieve their goal – Bismarck is lost, with a huge loss of life.
Of a crew of more than 2200, only 119 survived; 118 men and Sam/Oskar. The British destroyer HMS Cossack, which had been part of the convoy that sank his last ship, picked up survivors and found the cat clinging to a wooden board in the middle of the ocean. On his new ship he was given the nickname Oscar, which was often written as Oskar (he was German after all).
So Oskar does what he does best and starts mousing for HMS Cossack – a boys gotta eat, and this War thing was no business of his. He’s popular with the crew and stays with them for the next few months as they run convoys across the Mediterranean and Atlantic. All is well.
On the 24th of October they’re running a convoy from Gibraltar to the UK when HMS Cossack is attacked and hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat. This blows about a third of the ship to hell and kills 159 of the crew. Oskar survives, of course, and with the remaining crew is taken aboard HMS Legion, which attempts to tow what’s left of the Cossack back to Gibraltar – it sinks, so Oskar (and the others) head back to The Rock.
Someone obviously notices that Oskar is just Not Drowning so they rename him Unsinkable Sam at the Gibraltar shore establishment. Whoever this is, they apparantly don’t notice that surely this cat deserves an honourable discharge and retirement far away from The Sea That Wants To Kill It, because Sam is promptly reassigned. Now Chief Mouser on the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, Sam is probably already preparing for the worst.
Ark Royal, incidentally, was another veteran from the skirmish with Bismarck and played an important part in the sinking of Sam’s first ship. He probably wasn’t that surprised, then, when on 14th November 1941 HMS Ark Royal was torpedoed and began to sink. Sam was found clinging to a plank in the water and was described as “angry but quite unharmed”. Survivors were picked up by HMS Lightning and the same HMS Legion Sam had travelled back to Gibraltar on. Neither ship would survive the war.
Having presumably realised by now that Sam and ships did not tend to work out well, our Hero was sent back to Gibraltar where he was stationed at the offices of the Governor of Gibraltar. At some point he was released from active service and ended up retiring to Belfast, living out his days in a home for retired sailors. He lived another ten years after WW2 ended, making him at the very least 15 years old when he died – a decent age for any cat in the mid 20th Century, but an amazing span for a serving Sailor Cat who saw so much action. The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich holds a portrait of Sam, called Oscar, the Bismarck’s Cat.
(I wanted to attach a picture, but I’m on tumblr mobile so obviously that is impossible)
Thanks to the unexpected update to tumblr mobile, I can add the picture! This is is the painting of Oskar that hangs in the National Maritime Museum;
Oak1985 