This article comes from the excellent 1st Australian Mining Corps website ‘Tunnellers’ and is a letter from the famous pre-war author Albert Dorrington to the N.Q. Register dated 21st August 1916.
I previously posted a letter from Private Wenham of 11th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment and his experience of Rats. It is interesting how the soldiers looked to rats for an early warning of a gas attack.
"RATS IN FLANDERS
A soldier writes me from Flanders anent rats in trenches. While admitting that there are thousands running about, he has not heard of one live man who has been bitten by them. It is quite the thing to put a piece of cheese on the end of a bayonet and put rifles over the trench tops, and when through the periscope a rat is seen eating the cheese, to pull the trigger of Mr Rat. But it has been discovered that the rat could smell gas long before the men could, so to-day, as soon as the men in the trenches see the rats getting uneasy, they know, that the gas is coming and on to the helmets. Also rats eat up all decay matter, and have cut down smells to a minimum."
The 1st Australian Tunnelling Company Memorial is located on the Western Front at Hill 60 in Belgium.
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