Trenchy Rats: Worst Enemy in World War 1

Many soldiers from World War I shared that their worst enemy in war were not the soldiers they fought against, but rather the weather, the mud, the cold and, perhaps more than anything, the rats.

Rats in their millions infested the trenches where soldiers slept and lived.

These rodents, sometimes huge, tried to eat the soldiers' foods, crawled over them and bit as they slept, carried diseases and nibbled on the dead comrades' corpses, sometimes disfiguring them completely by eating their faces and eyes.

For these reasons, soldiers developed a passionate hatred for rats, which they tried to hunt for various methods, such as ambushing them with shotgun fire or stabbing them with their bayonets, in which a piece of cheese or bread would be attached to attract rats.

Trench rats were rodents that were found around the frontline trenches of World War I. Due to massive amounts of debris, corpses, and a putrid environment, rats at the trenches bred at a rapid pace. The rats likely numbered in the millions. According to some soldiers, these rats could grow to be "as big as cats".

The rats played a role in damaging the soldiers' health, psyche and morale and were responsible for lack of sleep, adding to the filthy conditions and unsanitary hygiene in the trenches. As such, the trench rats left a lasting impression on the Allied soldiers who served on the Western Front, with veterans who served in the French and British armies speaking about their horrible experiences with rats during interviews. Attempts to solve the rat problem were not effective during the war. Although they could be found in abundance during World War I, these rats appeared to decrease rapidly after the war ended.

The rats' contribution to the terrible environment in the trenches aided in the avoidance of using trenches in future wars, especially in Europe, where their negative legacy remains to this day, memorialized through media portrayals. Trench rats are often viewed with a pessimistic connotation associated with the worst of trench life and warfare, especially in their depiction in movies. They have also been portrayed in a positive light in poems, such as "Break of Day in the Trenches" by Isaac Rosenberg, as well as in modern fictional history videos as a metaphor for the life of a French soldier living in the trenches.

Physical effects on soldiers

Rats are known for carrying various contagious diseases. The close proximity between the soldiers and the rats led to these diseases being spread throughout the trenches. The most common of these would be typhus, bartonellosis (also known as trench fever), and leptospirosis. These diseases could take a massive toll on the soldiers, with trench fever possibly pulling a soldier away from the front lines for months at a time. Rats were carriers of lice. Lice can also transmit disease and played a role in spreading trench fever amongst the soldiers.

Trench rats also gnawed on those who were wounded, sleeping or unable to protect themselves. In one instance, a British soldier recounted in an interview that one of his fellow countrymen had his forehead bitten while he had been asleep, with the wound being severe enough to warrant a visit to the infirmary.

Psychological effects on soldiers

Trench rats contributed to many different psychological effects on the human psyche given their ability to disrupt sleep and reduce the overall quality of the soldiers' rest. The noises rats made in no man's land during night would sometimes cause soldiers to believe enemies were mounting an attack, leading them to grow paranoid and shoot out into the empty space between trenches. Rats also scurried across the soldiers' faces and bodies when they slept, which was another cause for awakening. On top of all of this, rats were known to eat the irretrievable dead bodies of soldiers left in no man's land, and the nibbling of rats eating bodies could be heard in the trenches during periods of silence between active warfare.

On the other hand, the situation with the rats also allowed some reprieve to the soldiers stationed along the Western Front. Due to long periods of inactivity in the trenches with an abundance of rats, rat hunting became a sport and a source of entertainment for the Allied soldiers to stave off boredom. Because ammunition needed to be conserved for battles, killing the rats with bayonets was acceptable and eventually became a pastime for the soldiers. Rats also served as companions, with some soldiers keeping them as pets to escape the brutality of the war around them.

Overall, the negative experiences with the trench rats that the Allied soldiers experienced on the Western Front far outweighed those of the positive and many British and French veterans who served there would later recall rats as an integral part of their worst experiences in the trenches, amongst the mud, rain, lice, trench foot and death.

Attempted solutions

Rat-hunter and dog showing off hunted rats

Ammunition had to be conserved for fighting the enemy, therefore soldiers were dissuaded from using bullets to kill the numerous rats in the trenches.[9] Other methods of killing rats were acceptable, be it through animals or bayonets although other attempted solutions were also implemented. Soldiers were often given monetary incentive to kill trench rats when they could. For example, in the French army, the quartermaster's office promised a bonus of 50 cents for each rat tail presented. At other times, rat-catchers were also hired by the army to catch the rats in the trenches as soldiers could not and were scared to fall asleep due to the rodents.

Chemicals

One of the first attempted solutions for ridding the trenches of rats was to use chemicals. Widespread use of gases composed of arsenic trioxide, carbon disulfide, and scillitin (squills extract) were used. Due to the high toxicity of the gases, these methods were abandoned after they were shown to have more effect on the soldiers themselves rather than the rats they were targeting.

Animals

Rat-hunters with terrier dog

Another method was bringing in other animals to catch the rats. For example, cats and dogs were kept by soldiers in the trenches to "help maintain hygiene" by culling the rodent population. Terrier dogs were especially useful, more so than cats, as they were bred to kill vermin and for hunting purposes which was applied to eliminating rats in the trenches. As such, many terriers were used as 'ratting dogs'.

After the war

After World War I, the French used chloropicrin gas to destroy the remaining rat infestation from the trenches, flushing them from their burrows and causing the rats to asphyxiate on the gas.

Although the lack of scholarship and media coverage on the topic of trench rats in World War I suggests the decrease in their population, and therefore, the success of such procedures, it is unknown whether all the trench rats had been eradicated at the time after the use of chemicals to flush them out and what happened to the trench rats living within the trench system after the war was over.

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