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The Fish-eating U-boat Hunter
The First World War was a desperate conflict, but how desperate? Grab a bucket of trout and find out.
At the eastern end of London’s Hyde Park, between Speaker’s Corner and the Mayfair Aston Martin showroom stands a memorial. Bearing the inscription They Had No Choice, it is dedicated to the numberless animals that suffered and died in service of Britain and her allies throughout history. The monument is formed from a bowed length of Portland stone measuring 55 feet by 58 feet with a carved mural outlining a stone march of beasts in a sort of Noah’s Ark-meets-Guernica, intended to acknowledge the sacrifice of beings that had no idea they were even making one.
The image is of those animals familiarly employed in conflict, most prominently the quadrupeds: horses and donkeys, dogs and elephants. What the mural doesn’t show are the creatures who refused the call, the ones whose nascent military careers ended before they had even begun. Animals such as the sea lion. For these semi-aquatic lads, warfare was none of their business; human beings started it. Human beings could finish it too.
And what a war to finish. Let’s go back to summer 1915. A year has passed since the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the war that his death triggered is also approaching its…
