Over Here, then off to D-Day beaches 1944: wreath at Trebah Gardens war memorial, Cornwall

 With all the publicity surrounding the film of War Horse this week, I was interested over Christmas to be given and read Richard Van Emden’s book on soldiers and their animals in the Great war, called Tommy’s Ark (Paperback, Bloomsbury), the animal equivalent of Kenneth Helphand’s Defiant Gardens book.

 Last week at Cornwall College Newquay, I delivered one of their varied programme of  research seminars by outside speakers, talking  about my research  into the role of zoos, zoologists, (botanic) gardens and nature in wartime.

Throughout the talk and questions, the value of nature and the natural world in extreme times kept cropping up. Peter McGregor the Professor who organises the seminars mentioned he had been surprised when he traced the famous research into Blue tits pecking cream through  tops milk bottles was published in and dates back to 1940, when he thought minds would be more  focussed on the Battle of Britain and threat of invasion.

The respect for and value (or lack of value) of wildlife in the midst of the strange life and death world of the trenches and wartime came up in conversation after the seminar too.  I was busy answering questions and  chatting whilst students looked through a small display afterwards of wartime memorabilia, wartime gardening and wildlife books and magazines from our collection. During this and other sessions, I’m often asked by students what they ‘could or should be reading and so I mentioned this new book by Richard van Emden to several students, alongside the older, more wide ranging books Jilly Cooper’s Animals in War (recently reprinted in paperback) and Juliet Gardiner’s The Animal’s War (IWM). Jilly’s book helped fundraise for a memorail to these animals in London.

We had talked in the seminar about the known cases of keepers killed from London and Belle Vue Zoo (Manchester), many of them serving in the artillery either as hardy physical labour or more probably for their large animal handling skills of the horses and mules with the guns.

Alongside the War Horse type material of the suffering of horses and mules, Tommy’s Ark is full of unusual details about the mascots, pets and wildlife spotting, even the occasional spot of hunting and angling that officers and soldiers in the trenches recorded in diaries, letters home and in the oral history archive that Richard Van Emden and the Imperial War Museum have collected. Lieutenant Philip Gosse, RAMC, the son of a famous naturalist family, toured the trenches on the lookout for local small mammal specimens to be sent (stuffed) to the Natural History Museum in London. There is a roll of honour / war memorial of their staff killed in action near the NHM entrance.  Newquay’s doctor / director of health (or his relative?) Major AGP Hardwick RAMC crops up in the book, from an account in the IWM archives, of his smuggling ferrets back to the trenches for ratting duties. 

Tommy’s Ark  is a rich, rewarding, sometimes unsettling and well organised book by Richard Van Emden, http://www.richardvanemden.co.uk/ one to match his oral history The Last Fighting Tommy about Harry Patch  whose medals can be seen on display not far from our base in Newquay Zoo at Bodmin’s DCLI Museum   http://cornwalls-regimentalmuseum.org/specialfeatures.html

Why do the troops on both sides  notice animals, befriend them, make mascots of them? Several of these more unlikely or unruly mascots ended up in zoos, including the role model for Winnipeg the bear at London Zoo, better known as Winnie the Pooh in AA Milne’s books. The answer is probably the same as why the students I was talking to had staked their time and money (especially when tuition fees increase next year) in a course and career that will likely not make them rich. Probably not famous  either, except for some  budding wildlife film makers, photographers, potential presenters and journalists on the Wildlife Education and Media course.

It’s perhaps something in the blood, a vocation, a passion, a different view or value of the world that makes a professional or  amateur naturalist,  zookeeper, or aquarist  of one person, but seem a strange career choice to another. E.O. Wilson calls it biophilia, a love of living things. Richard Mabey has written very movingly about this, especially in his darkest days battling depression. Kenneth Helphand’s recent book Defiant Gardens, much mentioned in our wartime zoo gardens blog, covers much the same from a planting and gardening angle.  

The wartime pages of Animal and Zoo Magazine (1936-41) are full of articles that would not be out-of-place in today’s peacetime BBC Wildlife magazine – nature notes, photographs, zoo news – with the occasional snippet about how the war was affecting wildlife. There was an obvious  tension in the magazine letters page between those who would like to see no mention of the war at all (Dublin Zoo’s description as ‘a place of peaceful resort’ in war and peace comes into mind from Catherine De Courcy’s excellent recent history of that zoo) alongside those readers and naturalists who observed how the role, value  and lives of wild and domestic animals are changed by war.

Chester Zoo Archive Zoo News, 1942/3

Friday 2nd January 1942            Not so bad a day. On Fire Watch in evening. Got permission and went down the Palais for a couple of hours. Had quite a nice time. (from Eileen’s Diary, 1942 – see below)

Happy New Year? 1941 was reckoned the ‘grimmest year of the war’ for Britain and the Allies by some historians (see our January 2011 blog post). 1942 didn’t start much better with the collapse of Empire outposts like Hong King, Singapore, Burma and Malaya and American bases like the Philippines before the unstoppable Bamboo Blitzkreig of the Japanese Imperial Army, Air Force and Navy.

Clays Fertiliser advert from 1940s Britain

By the end of 1941, despite the Enigma codebreaking successes at Bletchley Park http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/  (where several zoo staff and future conservationists were working, no doubt their ‘Zoo German’ being useful),  the war at sea against the U-boats was going badly for the convoys of Merchant ships supplying Britain, along with several large Royal Navy ships sunk in December 1941 by  the Japanese.   1942 would see large naval battles at Midway and Coral Sea.

Limited successes against the Italians in the Desert War of North Africa in late 1941 and early 1942 might have brought a ready crop of Italian prisoners into POW camps in Britain, soon to be working in the market gardens and fields of Britain. However January 1942 saw the arrival of a new German general for the Afrika Korps Rommel the Desert Fox who would soon see his troops besieging Tobruk (falling 21 June) and threatening Egypt. Only the victory by Montgomery on 4 November 1942 at El Alamein would reverse this long retreat and uncertainty.

The German advance at Stalingrad was stifled by another harsh winter and stubborn Russian resistance; German forces would collapse early in 1943. The church bells (a warning of invasion) were rung in Britain in celebration of North African victories for the first time since 1939. It was as Churchill observed, at a low point in his wartime leadership, the ‘end of the beginning’.  

From a World War Zoo Gardens perspective, one wonders how many keepers and staff from zoos and botanic gardens across Britain, the Empire, Europe, Germany, Russia and now America and Japan were now pitched on opposing sides into this now worldwide conflict.

Already by 1942 the shortages of ‘manpower’ in zoos were being plugged on a  by female staff and old veterans of the Great War.  By 1942, many Japanese zoo keepers and vets had been drafted into the army. The Japanese mainland was raided by Jimmy Doolittle’s US bomber squadron on April 18 1942. The official response to this raid on Tokyo was quite devastating, with many large zoo animals being euthanased on order of  the Japanese authorities and army, a sorry and unpleasant tale told in Mayumi Itoh’s book Japanese Wartime Zoo Policy.   

Percy Murray Adams ZSL Whipsnade Keeper

Already one of the unwilling guests of the Japanese Army, ZSL Whipsnade Keeper Percy Murray Adams was likely to have become  a Japanese POW during early 1942, dying on 28th July  1943  (see our November 2011 armistice blog post). One of his ZSL staff colleagues at London Zoo , ZSL Clerk Lieutenat Henry Peris Davies  RA was already dead ‘Killed in Action’ against the Japanese on 21 December 1941 aged 27 (listed on the CWGC Singapore Memorial, having no known grave). London Zoo staff, many of whom served and suffered through the Great War and the loss of 12 colleagues, were seeing it happen all over again. Almost exactly a year earlier on 18th December 1940 another ZSL Clerk Leonard Peachey had been killed in flying training with the RAF. 

By the end of 1942, quiet and gentle Peter Fallwasser the aquarist from Chester Zoo had died of wounds in North Africa on 22 December 1942, aged only 26, recorded in the Chester Zoo Our Zoo News and June Mottershead and Janice Batten’s book, Reared in Chester Zoo. By 1942, the war was taking its toll on zoo keepers and botanic gardens staff across the world.

Oh, and the American GIs arrived … in increasingly large numbers, in Britain on 26 January 1942, and on 8 November 1942 in North Africa an Allied landing  Operation Torch. Quickly, America, still reeling from the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 went onto a war footing. Rationing of food, sugar and later coffee began in 1941 in the USA.

Victory Gardens sprang up across America again. (Again? They had briefly flourished in America as in Britain in the First World War). See Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden for many great links and the PBS US TV gardening series http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/victorygarden/watch/video_3301_wm.html 

So 1942. It’s all dates and history book stuff – but what did it feel like to people there? Sadly December  2011 saw the passing of Fred Thornhill, aged 92, one of Newquay  Zoo’s oldest volunteers well into his eighties. Fred had been a medic and stretcher bearer in the British Army in the 1941/2 Western Desert Campaign and didn’t talk about it often, but from the rare comments, his experiences dealing with the human debris of the desert war had left a strong impression on this big man. He occasionally produced the odd tiny photo snapshot of his family or army travels. Once for a display of horns, antlers and other ‘animal weapons’ , Fred brought in his bayonet for us to borrow and mount on the wall. He’d somehow acquired or swapped it with a Free French  Foreign Legionnaire, he said, as I weighed it in my hands. Despite its current polish, it had been used in action, he added quietly. I handed it quietly back for him to keep with a slight shudder thinking where it had been.  Strange how objects can be ‘haunted’ or suddenly change in your estimation – another grisly candidate object for the BBC’s excellent series History of The World In 100 Objects?

Another personal touch or view of 1942 has been in the pocket diaries of Eileen K. and of Peggy Skinner that I have been editing for publication, the first hopefully in 2012.  Eileen,  a young Post Office clerk in London is passing a more peaceful year on Fire Watch several times a week after the Blitz of 1940/41 (recorded in her 1941 diary). Recently engaged, her fiance is a war worker also on regular exercises with The Home Guard.  

10 Monday August 1942      Wynne came round first thing. Joins the WAAF on Wednesday week. Cold morning. On Fire Watch tonight. Warning during night but did not have to get up.

Her friends steadily leave for work as nurses, WAAFs. There’s regular cinema trips, dancing at the Palais and getting a trousseau and bottom drawer ready for a wartime marriage against a backdrop of rationing of food, scarce household items  and clothes. The clothes rationing she records as introduced in June 1941 (Utility, Civilian Clothing  1941 or CC41 label ) soon extends to furniture and further restrictions in summer 1942 on clothing and the amount of material used.  It’s obviously a struggle to stay presentable and well fed with all the shortages.

With fuel restrictions. Eileen also ‘Holidayed at Home’ with nearby country relatives in Surrey, an anticipation of the Staycation holidays of our New Austerity since 2007. Allegedly zoos near cities have had a better year 2011 than ones like ourselves at the seaside. (In wartime, seaside was often too far, hotels requisitioned for the forces or evacuees, the beaches of which in wartime were in many cases off-limits or on ‘Invasion coasts’). 

The music that Eileen would have listened to included Bing Crosby’s White Christmas and Vera Lynn’s White Cliffs of Dover. Films released in 1942 included classics such as Casablanca, In Which We Serve and Mrs. Miniver.

Thurs 8   October 1942   “Not seeing Don as he’s on Home Guard all night. Went to the  Chelsea Place with Mum. Max Miller up there. Did not think much of the show.”

Fri 9  October 1942       “Met Don outside the Forum. Our film quite good. Humphrey Bogart gone good.”  [Is this film Casablanca?]

Peggy Skinner an 18 year old  London born student at Glasgow University saw these films in 1943  and records in her diary on  Saturday 9^th  January 1943:      “Very uninteresting day for my last Saturday of holiday.  I would have liked to have gone with mum and dad to see Noel Coward In Which We Serve but I did not like to ask and anyway I’d made up my mind that next term I must work harder (what a hope but I must try) and must try also to enjoy myself more, but how I could do that without going to dances which is impossible, I don’t know.”

When she saw it later, she liked the film, more so than Mrs Miniver:

Wednesday 7^th  April 1943    I went to pictures by myself this evening to Paisley to see “Mrs Miniver” with Greer Garson  and Walter Pidgeon. As I rather expected I would be I was rather disappointed with it. I’d heard such a lot about it  that I’m doubtful if any picture could come up to standards which were to be expected of a film  of which I’d heard such glowing stories. The little boy in it was awfully good, also the clergyman and Walter Pidgeon and the Young Mrs Miniver but Greer Garson seemed to have an awful fixed grin on her face.

We’ll feature a little more about Peggy Skinner’s diaries 1940, 43 and 46-49 later in 2012 closer to publication, and she will be added to the Glasgow University Story website and  blog  http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/ww2-background/

Like Churchill with his view that the end of 1942 was the ‘end of the beginning’, Peggy’s  1943 diary entries start on a more optimnistic note than her (missing) 1942 diary would have done:

Tuesday 2^nd     February 1943:                I’m going to bed very late again as I had a bath and once I get in I can never be bothered getting out. The war news has been good now for a month or two, it is the best spell we have had since war began, the only trouble seems to be inTunisia and it’s not too serious there – yet. It must do the occupied countries a lot of good to hear good news for a change.

Eileen  or Peggy mention little by 1942/3 in the way of actual bombing (though still many air raid warnings) but the Baedeker raids of 1942 saw several historic and largely undefended British cathedral cities such as  nearby Exeter (23 and 24 April; 3 May 1942), Bath , York and Canterbury badly damaged in surprise air raids.

This was no doubt retaliation for the steady increase of bombing raids on Germany by Bomber Harris’ RAF Bomber Command  , including Lubeck and the first RAF 1000 bomber raid on Cologne in May 1942 followed by other German cities. These raids accidentally took a heavy toll on the German city zoos, many of which historically had been built in cities partly as green parks and gardens.

2012 sees the 70th anniversary of the daring commando raid Operation Chariot at St Nazaire  (commemorated nearby our Newquay Zoo  in the departure port of Falmouth 28 March 1942 ) and the disastrous Dieppe Raid  on August 19th. This was a forerunner of the 1944 D-Day landings which saw the Southwest countryside and towns around ourselves in Cornwall and our sister Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust sites at Paignton Zoo and Slapton Ley occupied by huge numbers of Americans arriving for the Second Front which was being discussed throughout 1942.

So many anniversaries throughout 2012 which we shall document from the unusual perspective of how they affected zoos and botanic gardens and their staff.

We’re also widening our World War Zoo Gardens research to include the Great War and how this affected zoos and their staff, as well as mnay animals as the 100th anniversary of the Great War is not far off in 2014. This will be much in the news with the relaese of the film of Micheal Morpurgo’s book War Horse in mid January. (Morpurgo has also written about the German zoo animals of the Second World War in An Elephant in the Garden).  The lessons learnt from the First World War was of some use to a generation of zoo keepers, often veterans themselves,  preparing to survive another potentially very different war.   What can we learn from them for our own future?

It’s now raining in Newquay, great start to 2012! 2011 was on the whole a good year for the World War Zoo Gardens, with reasonbly good crops (some almost sweetcorn!) and the BIAZA Zoo award for planting in November 2011. Off to go through the wartime advice books and today’s seed catalogues to plan the next year’s planting in the wartime zoo garden … then there’s the website due soon … some time needed to wade through a few more gardening and history books that friends and family have kindly given at Christmas. Busy few months ahead. I’ll share the pick of these books in future posts …

LR Brightwell's wartime panda poster for London Zoo 1942

What colour are Giant pandas? Black, white … and in wartime, grey, blue or possibly green.

Pandas were amongst some of the larger and famous London Zoo animals which were evacuated to or kept safe at rural Whipsnade as war loomed in 1939, with bamboo shipped regularly by the train load from the West country at several points in the 1940s (and 1960s) to feed them (according to many local stories).

After the 1940/1 Blitz,  the surviving panda(s) returned to the comparative safety and quiet of London Zoo in 1942 alongside the Off The Rations exhibition as witnessed in the morale boosting wartime publicity poster by L.R. Brightwell. (It is reproduced in his 1952 London Zoo history book). It’s a beautifully detailed cartoon, reminiscent of the First World War troops off to the trenches where Brightwell and other London Zoo staff served,   but with  the modern 1940s touches of  bamboo food ration book, identity card, keeper’s ARP steel helmet and gas mask box. Some animals may have had gas masks, but generally animals had no ration books, hence the victory gardens dug in many British  zoos to feed animals, which our award-winning World War Zoo Gardens project recreates at Newquay Zoo.

Britain’s wartime Pandas helped to draw the crowds back to London Zoo and so glimpse the “Off The Rations” exhibition and ‘dig for victory’ model allotment gardens.  

Pandas are on the move and in the news again, from China to Edinburgh Zoo – and best of luck to all involved http://www.rzsspanda.org.uk Whatever the arguments for and against ‘Panda tourism’ that will be rehearsed as a ‘conservation con-troversy’ in the media,  hopefully these iconic animals will draw many people through the gates to visit RZSS Edinburgh Zoo and find out about all the other endangered animals, both native (at the RZSS Highland Wildlife Park) and exotic species at the zoo and its many conservation projects, including overseas projects such as the Falkland Islands.

Red panda conservation poster, Newquay Zoo, 2011 (designed by Cornwall College students)

Bill Conway, a major American zoo figure, argued that good zoos are ‘a place to turn recreation dollars into conservation dollars’. Here at Newquay Zoo we don’t have Giant pandas, but we do have their rare cousin the Red or Lesser panda, with its own conservation problems of habitat loss and hunting for its vivid red fur. In the same tradition as Brightwell’s cartoon panda poster, a contemporary student banner from our partner college CornwallCollege sums up one problem that zoos can highlight for action to its visitors: “Conservation not deforestation”.

Panda ‘Peace Ambassadors’  Tian Tian and Yang Guang, the Giant Pandas from China arrived at  Edinburgh Zoo today on 4th December 2011. They will be on show to the public from 16th December 2011. For details of how to get Panda Viewing tickets, visit http://www.edinburghzoo.org.uk .

It’s been almost twenty years since Pandas have been seen in British zoos. I’m told I saw them as a 1970s child but have no memory of this.  I was lucky enough to see several pairs of pandas in American Zoos, including a pair at San Diego Zoo in California about ten years ago. These were part of a long-running relationship between American zoos and China stretching back to the 1930s.

The Roosevelt family played an important role in making  Pandas – dead or alive -  more well known in the West.

Two pandas were caught in transit when the events of the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor took place, on 7^th  December 1941,  a “date which will live in infamy”, according to President Roosevelt. 

Another strangely comic wartime story about pandas cropped up recently on the email network of the Bartlett Society www.zoohistory.co.uk. Richard Reynolds recalls ” Before there was any national TV in USA, there was a national Sunday radio broadcast from the Bronx Zoo. I recall hearing several episodes on our radio here inAtlantain the fall of 1942. One of them dealt with the struggles to get the two giant pandas to the zoo just as war was breaking out in the Pacific. The animals had to be  flown over Japanese occupied China to the Philippines. They were on the high seas  en route to California from the Philippines when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor …”

“While at sea (after War broke out) the ship had to be painted in camouflage. The pandas were on deck for exercise and one of them got into the paint.  I can recall that as vividly as though it were it were yesterday though 68 years have elapsed” (with thanks to  Richard Reynolds, Atlanta, GA, 2009 for his memories).

So pandas are indeed black, white and  grey (or  blue and green) whatever disruptive coloration was in emergency use on US naval ships in 1941. Camouflage is one useful contribution of zoologists in wartime, and HMS Belfast still bears the colour scheme invented by Sir Peter Scott, founder of the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust but then a well known wildlife artist and young naval commander. Peter Scott helped set up the international World Wildlife Fund in the 1960s (Patron: another young wartime Naval commander, the Duke of Edinburgh). WWF has of course  as its logo the  iconic Giant panda.

Gas masks for Japanese zoo elephants on the cover of Mayumi Itoh Japanese zoo wartime book

The sad anniversary of Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war by the Japanese on Allied countries 70 years ago will be marked  with many events this Wednesday. Within a month, many British, American and Allied outposts were captured by a triumphant Japanese Army and Navy. As we pointed out in our January 2011 blogpost, 1941 was seen by some as the “grimmest year of the war” forBritain and the Allies.

The rubber plantations, zoos and botanic gardens of Singapore and other colonies of the British Empire were quickly overrun. Rubber became a scarce and salvageable commodity. Zoo keeper’s wellington boots and rubber hoses became difficult to replace. In Britain the ladies of the WVS and WI dragged village ponds for scrap rubber tyres. In America, zoo animals patriotically gave up their rubber tyre swings for the war effort in publicity salvage drives.

Eleanor Roosevelt the President’s wife ordered a Dig for Victory garden to be dug in the White House lawns as an example to her nation to save , make do and mend and give their all for the war effort. (A modern organic version of the victory garden has been recreated by President  Obama’s family). 

American zoos, especially on the coast, would have gone rapidly onto a war footing as British zoos had done in 1939; some closed, never to reopen.  One sad consequence of the declaration of war and very real fear of an invasion of Americaby the Japanese was the internment of ‘enemy aliens’ including Japanese-American families in harsh and remote places. Several generations of Issei, Nissei, Sansei and Yonsei responded by transforming their prisons and barrack blocks with beautiful stone gardens, a story told in Kenneth Helphand’s book Defiant Gardens.

Some of the ‘ghost marks’ of these ephemeral gardens at Manzanar CA are now national memorials, whilst many Japanese gardens erected after the war became peace gardens of reconciliation after the horrors of war ended at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I sometimes take Kenneth Helphand’s book down to our quiet Oriental gardens here at Newquay Zoo to read on quiet or difficult days.  Defiant Gardens is at times a difficult but ultimately inspiring book to read about this little known chapter of the war– a real argument for the peaceful urge to garden and plant, create rather than destroy. It would make a good present for the Christmas stocking for the quiet indoor months for your gardening friends.  http://defiantgardens.com/ Defiant  Gardens  flourished in the most unlikely places including ghettoes and POW camps.

Percy Murray Adams ZSL Whipsnade Keeper (from pre-war Animal and Zoo Magazine)

Three  of London Zoo and Whipsnade’s keepers, Henry Peris Davies (d. 21.12.1941, listed Singapore memorial)  and Albert Henry Wells (d. 25.01.1945, Burma)   perished through the long and bloody years of fighting in the Far East or in Japanese POW camps Percy Murray Adams (died in Japanese POW camp, 28.07.1943)  – Many of these keepers would have known or worked with the Giant pandas at London Zoo and Whipsnade. Read our November 2010 and 2011 blog post about ZSL London Zoo’s staff war memorial for more details.  I used to meet many old sweats of the the Burma Star Association and POWs on their visits to Newquay Zoo on their West Country reunions, a peaceful place  they said, despite the unnnerving  and evocative jungle scent in our Tropical House.

A Bamboo memorial garden to Far East POWs has been created through http://www.captivememories.org.uk/ with local schools at Ness Botanic Gardens near Liverpool http://www.bgen.org.uk/index.php/who/22/345-ness

 No doubt many US, Indian and Australian zoo staff also died, were wounded or served in the Far East, as did members of my own family who held the Burma Star. Part of our World War Zoo Gardens research involves tracking down the effects of wartime on zoos, their staff and animals so any details of memorials or casualties are very helpful.

 Mayumi Itoh’s recently published book Japanese Wartime Zoo Policy puts the other side of the story, describing the difficulties experienced by Japanese zoo animals and staff in wartime. Many Japanese zoo vets were called up to serve in the veterinary corps, keeping healthy that vital machine of war, the mule.

Not far from where Percy Murray Adams is buried, Sasanuma Tadashi, Ueno Zoo Tokyo keeper was killed.

Despite the language differences, I’m sure these two keepers, like the two soldiers in Wilfred Owen’s First World War poem Strange Meeting,  would have had much common ground.

Mayumi Itoh comes out strongly to the conclusion that zoos need peace to flourish, whether in wartime, during the 1960s Panda and chess games of Cold War diplomacy or in today’s recessionary and uncertain world where zoos and wildlife are engulfed or sidelined by conflict in places likeLibya, Africa and the Middle East.

The sheltered woods and quarries of Paignton Zoo (our sister zoo in Devon), our nature reserve at Slapton Ley and much of the area of Cornwall around Newquay Zoo (where the World War Zoo Gardens is based) were once temporary home and training ground to thousands of young GIs from all over America who shipped out to D-Day from our now peaceful West Country beaches. Some of them returned home to America, with many a Cornish orDevon ‘GI bride’ on their arm. Others never returned as they perished on the beaches of Slapton in Devon (remembered by Ken Small’s Sherman tank memorial), Normandy or the Pacific.  Our own World War Zoo Gardens at Newquay Zoo is a peaceful and productive memorial garden to the men, women, children and animals of all nationalities who have been affected by war around the world.   

So maybe we should celebrate the peace, ‘sweetness’ and ‘sunshine’ that Tian Tian and Yang Guang (in translation) the Giant Pandas will hopefully bring (despite the crowds) to Edinburgh Zoo and the world. If you can’t make it toEdinburgh, you could visit your local zoo or spend a few quiet hours in the garden.

We’ll be busy getting ready for our Christmas weekend on 10 and 11th December 2011, and carol service on the 11th – see http://www.paigntonzoo.org.uk - and closed only on Christmas Day. We’ll be busy fundraising for the conservation of rare South-east Asian birds from those Far-East jungles in our Gems of The Jungle aviary project throughout next year.

So finally, a peaceful Happy Christmas and (Chinese) New Year (or Happy Panda Hogmanay) to all our blog readers over the next few weeks! 

Stuck for presents or stressed by Christmas, you can read our  last December 2010 blog post (much pingbacked)  where we reflected on ‘make do and mend’ wartime Christmas presents and a few modern ideas for presents. Panda adoptions for Christmas presents maybe?

The BIAZA award for best use of plants in a landscape feature went to Newquay Zoo for the World War Zoo gardens project.

Newquay Zoo's wartime gardener and blogger Mark Norris with the BIAZA award for best plants in a landscape feature and design.

The British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) annual awards ceremony are dubbed the ‘zoo oscars’ as they recognise outstanding contributions and achievements made by member zoos in the fields of conservation, animal welfare advances, animal husbandry, enclosure design, marketing, PR, education and research.

The 2011 BIAZA awards were presented by TV vet Steve Leonard at an award dinner and zoo conference at in the impressive new Himalaya conference space and visitor centre at Twycross Zoo on 16th November.  Snow leopards strolled down off their roacky outcrop to come and watch through the large floor to ceiling windows.  Steve’s own blog can be found at http://web.me.com/steveleonard/Homepage/Blog/Blog.html 

As this blog formed part of our BIAZA award submission, I’d like to  thank  all our readers for your comments, feedback and interest (over 25,000 hits) which has supported us since 2009. 

As  leader of the wartime garden project, I am thrilled that this project has received this award.

It was two years ago that I asked Newquay Zoo Director Stewart Muir if we could dig up lawns and flower beds to recreate a ‘Dig for Victory’ garden. Since then the project has gone from strength to strength – providing food for the animals, a talking point for visitors and a living memorial to many men, women and children involved in the war effort, reflecting the gardens that sprung up in unlikely places all over the country during World War Two, including zoos.

To be recognised by peers in the zoo world for the wartime garden project is extremely rewarding, especially because the standard of nominations is usually very high.

I was very pleased to be asked to do a presentation during the conference about the project to zoo educators and other zoo staff, taking part of our travelling display and artefacts with me. I’m looking forward to doing the same to our zoology students at Cornwall College Newquay as part of the rresearch seminar programme in January 2012.

The history and garden project has proved a great talking point with visitors, and Mark has picked up some useful gardening tips ‘over the fence’. ‘I have learnt a lot from talking to visitors of all ages and look forward to talking to more garden societies. I have really enjoyed listening to visitors’ stories and views about food, rationing, animals, green issues, zoos and family history.

Our sister zoo Paignton Zoo, which alongside Newquay Zoo and Living Coasts in Torquay is part of the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust, was highly commended by BIAZA for a research project on howler monkeys.

Dr Miranda Stevenson, Director of BIAZA said: “The BIAZA awards highlight the significant achievements within the zoo world and once again this year’s award-winning projects show the exceptional contributions our members make to conservation and education each year. Equally, they are standard bearers for excellence in animal husbandry and welfare. We congratulate all the winners.”

What next for 2012 ?

November and December is quite quiet in the garden at the moment, so apart from planning next year’s plantings, we’re harvesting the last of the Autumn crops to tidy our plot up. Monkeys love our Green Globe Artichokes, especially when thrown by Junior Keepers onto the top mesh of enclosures (like weird vegtable hand-grenades) to make them difficult to reach.  Excellent enrichment for monkeys and very entertaining for visitors to watch. Future note: wartime steel helmets will be  useful when artichokes bounce off the mesh at the first few throws  …

The World War Zoo Gardens project forms part of the Zoo’s education programme, which runs successful curriculum linked workshops from Early Years Foundation Stage through to Higher Education. We’re currently working on our new (2012) primary history workshops, resource packs and talks for schools about the Home Front (Primary History Unit 9, Years 3 to 6) on how zoos, their staff, animals and vsistors survived the dangers and challenges of wartime – keep watching our website http://www.newquayzoo.org.uk/education/world-war-zoo-1.htm

We’re also working on a dedicated new World War Zoo Gardens website within the next month to support the project – watch this space! 

As well as  blogging, I am currently  doing research for a book on zoos and botanic gardens in wartime, which will highlight how zoos survived during World War Two and how we can learn from this for the future.  Whilst at Twycross Zoo, I spent a day in their zoo library, which also holds the library and archives of the Bartlett Society (www.zoohistory.co.uk), looking at the range of books and memoirs on zoos worldwide and looking for scattered snippets about their wartime survival strategies. I was also following up references for some of the civilian wartime diaries I’m editing for publication in 2012. These diaries will be sold through Newquay Zoo’s online shop online being set up later in 2012 with profits going back to running the zoo and its many education and overseas conservation projects. A Christmas present for the list, but for December 2012 …

Enjoy your gardening … and a peaceful December.

NOVEMBER  is always a bit of a solemn month for me in the garden with the darker days earlier, the lost hour of summer time, leaves fallen; it is also Remembrance Sunday, poppies and Armistice Day.

At Newquay Zoo, there is one of the noisier two minutes silence in the nation if the maroon bangs go off at 11 o’clock in Newquay, as this sets off all the zoo animals calling out.

At London Zoo, at memorials and churches all over Britain and Europe, people will stop and gather, think and reflect on the extraordinary, almost incomprehensible loss of life in wartime which affected so many walks of life including zoos and botanic gardens.

Heligan Gardens http://www.heligan.com/  Mevagissey in Cornwall, only about twenty miles from Newquay Zoo, is a garden restoration unlike many others I have visited, as it is haunted by the loss of the generation of garden and estate staff. They left their names under the penciled graffiti “Come not here to sleep nor slumber” in the “Thunderbox”, the primitive bothy toilet for estate staff. Many of these staff did not survive their service in the First World War in mind or body. The estate and garden without its usual labour force, as the Heligan staff today simply describe it, “quietly went to sleep” until the story was uncovered along with the overgrown gardens in the early 1990s. A beautiful little book tracing the staff named and signed in pencil on that wall and on the estate books has recently been published The Lost Gardens of Heligan - Heligan History: Lost Gardens, Lost Gardeners, being a Commemorative Album of Heligan through the Twentieth Century, featuring the Tremayne archive and the stories of staff who were lost in the Great War (published by Heligan Gardens Ltd and available on their online shop for about £3.95) 

Zoos, aquariums and botanic gardens suffered similar losses of staff, as poignant as the effect on estates like Heligan or large organisations like the Great Western Railway (West country stations like Exeter still have the long list of the dead on their platform walls).  

Few records survive for zoos, I have so far frustratingly found.  I have been researching the wartime effects on a few typical British zoos operational in the First world war and what that generation learnt in preparation for surviving the Second world war (when our wartime dig for victory garden project at Newquay Zoo is set) for a forthcoming article in The Bartlett Society Journal www.zoohistory.co.uk  The few records so far can stand in for a whole generation and zoos across the world.

On Armistice Day Friday 11^th and on Remembrance Sunday 13^th, spare a thought for the fallen staff of the Natural History Museum London. Every year staff gather at the war memorial plaque there to remember the fallen zoologists, scientists and musuem staff lost in both world wars. I met some of their current and retired staff at the WAZA / SHNH / Bartlett Society Zoo history conference in May this year. They had many tales of bravery including fire watching for and disposing of incendiaries on the museum roof.  Without whom …

Spare a thought for ‘gentle’ Peter Falwasser,  26 year old aquarist at Chester Zoo, buried at Helipolis in Egypt, died 22 December 1942 of wounds received in Middle East desert fighting, Gunner 952126, 1st Regt, Royal Horse Artillery.

 Spare a thought for the fallen staff of Belle Vue Zoo Gardens in Manchester (now closed), their names listed on a vandalised war memorial in Gorton Cemetery.  

Spare a thought for the keepers and zoo staff remembered on the ZSL war memorial at London Zoo. 12 names are listed from the staff  out of 54 who served in the forces or munitions work in the First World War out of a staff of 150.

Poppies will be laid at the ZSL War Memorial, a Portland Stone memorial designed  by architect John James Joass in 1919, based on a medieval Lanterne des Morts memorial  to the dead at La Souterraine,  Creuse Valley, France. The memorial was moved from the main gate area in 1952 after the 1939-45 names were added and is now near to the Three Island Pond area.  

Reading the names means these men are not forgotten.

Read the names and spare a thought for these lost zoo staff from both wars.

Researching and reading a few of these background stories puts a more personal face on the scale of the losses, especially in the First World War. I shall feature a few more of these stories over the next year as information is discovered. The impatient reader can check the www.cwgc.org site.  Many thanks to Kate Oliver at ZSL who transcribed or guessed the names on the very well polished brass name plates.

ZSL London Zoo war memorial

 The Zoological Society of London

In memory of employees who were killed on active service in the Great War 1914-1919

29.9.1915        Henry D Munro            4 Middlesex Regt                ZSL Keeper (Transcribed details on this need to be checked)

18.03.1916      William Bodman           (Buffs) 6^th Btn, East Kent Regt, Private            ZSL Helper. Age unknown. Commemorated on the Loos Memorial, no known grave.

10.07.1916      Albert A Dermott         13^th Btn. Rifle Brigade, Rifleman   ZSL Messenger, aged 22, killed on Somme, no known grave, listed on Thiepval Memorial 

15.9.1916        Arthur G Whybrow      2547, 19 Bn. County of London Regt , ZSL Helper. Killed aged 23 during Somme battles, probably in the clearance of High Wood by 47 (London) Division, 15 September 1916. Individual grave at London cemetery, Longueval. Married.

05.10.1916      Gerald P Patterson       19 County of London Regt                   ZSL Helper (Transcribed Regiment details on this need to be checked)Probably Private G P Patterson of the 8^th Battalion, Norfolk Regiment was killed on 5^th October 1916, no age given, during the Somme fighting. Individual grave. Buried in Connaught Cemetery, Thiepval, Somme, France.  

23.10.1916      William Dexter  Kings Royal Rifles, Riflemen       ZSL Keeper2^nd Battalion, Rifle Brigade. Aged 31.  Individual grave at Bienvillers Cemetery. Married.

09.04.1917      Robert Jones            9 Royal Fusiliers       ZSL Gardener 472712, 1^st / 12^th Btn. London Regiment (The Rangers), aged 31. Individual grave,  Gouy-en Artois Cemetery, killed first day of the Battle of Arras 1917.  

21.4.1917        Henry George Jesse Peavot      Honourable Artillery     Co       ZSL Librarian    B Co. 1^st Btn, aged 35.  Killed during Battle of Arras period, No known grave, listed on Arras Memorial. Married.

23.9.1917        Albert Staniford            Royal Field / Garrison Artillery  ZSL Gardener  174234 216 Siege Battery. RGA   Individual grave, Maroc British cemetery, Greany, France.  Period of Third Battle of Ypres / Passchendaele, July to November 1917

03.10.1917      William Perkins      Royal Garrison Artillery     ZSL Keeper 115806, Bombardier, 233^rd Siege Battery.  Buried in individual plot, Belagin Battery Corner Cemetery, Belgium. Aged 39. Married. 

29.11.1917      Alfred L Day                2 Rifle Brigade                          ZSL Helper 19.1.1918 may be a wrong date transcribed on a well polished brass plate; the most likely casualty is Alfred Lomas Day, S/20305 2^nd Bn, Rifle Brigade, killed 29 November 1917 and buried individual grave (1841) Rethel French National Cemetery, Ardennes, France.

10.9.1918        Charles William Dare    County of London Regt                        Helper, 245116, London Regt (Royal Fusiliers),  Vis-en-Artois memorial, no known grave. Killed during period of the “Adavnce to Victory” (August to November Armistice  1918)

“TILL THE RED WAR GLEAM LIKE A DIM RED ROSE / LOST IN THE GARDEN OF THE SONS OF TIME” memorial verse

Zoological Society of London

In memory of employees killed by enemy action during the war 1939-45

Regent’s Park

Davies. Henry Peris (Lieutenant RA)    ZSL Clerk: Killed in action Far East 21.12.1941   164971, Royal Artillery, 5^th Field Regt, died aged 27. Listed on the Singapore memorial.

Leney. William Walter Thomas      ZSL  Overseer: Killed by flying bomb 25.11.1944

Peachey. Leonard James (Sergeant RAF)    ZSL Clerk: Killed in air crash Lincs 18.12.1940

Wells.  Albert Henry (Gunner RA)         ZSL Keeper: Killed in action, Burma 25.01.1945 Gunner 1755068, Royal Artillery, 70 H.A.A Regiment

Whipsnade Park 

Adams. Percy Murray (Gunner RA)              ZSL Keeper: Died in Japan POW         28.07.1943  Gunner 922398, Royal Artillery, 148 (Bedfordhsire Yeomanry) Field Regt, died aged 26.

Checking with the excellent Commonwealth War Graves Commission records site http://www.cwgc.org under ‘search for a casualty’ shows that Albert Henry Wells is buried in the Taukkyan War Cemetery in Myanmar (Burma). Percy Adams in Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery, Myanmar / Thai border. The CWGC website notes of this cemetery: “The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project driven by the need for improved communications to support the large Japanese army in Burma. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery was created [postwar] by the Army Graves Service who transferred to it all graves along the northern section of the railway, between Moulmein and Nieke.”

ZSL Clerk Leonard Peachey,  RAF Volunteer Reserve,  died aged 32 as Sergeant Wireless Operator / Air Gunner in an air training crash serving with 22 Squadron in Lincolnshire at RAF North Coates / Cotes. He is buried in North Cotes (St. Nicholas) Churchyard, Lincs alongside what are presumably his crew from 22 Squadron, killed on the same day:  Sergeant Pilot Dennis George How RAFVR (aged 23) and Sergeant Observer Paul Victor Renai (aged 22, from Wellington, New Zealand) and Sergeant Wireless Operator / W.E. Mechanic Ralph  Gerald Hart (22). 22 Squadron brought the Bristol Beaufort into operational service http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/collections/aircraft/bristol-beaufort.cfm; receiving the first aircraft in November 1939 and, after an intense work up at North Coates in Lincolnshire, the Squadron resumed operations in April 1940, beginning with mine-laying sorties. It moved to RAF Thorney Island where torpedo operations were resumed in August. In order to cover a wider area of sea the Squadron sent out detachments, to RAF Abbotsinch  then to St Eval, Newquay in Cornwall  being the most regular posting. 22 Squadron was re-formed at Thorney Island in 1955 as a Search and Rescue Helicopter Squadron. Information from http://www.22squadronassociation.org.uk/Hist1546.html

William Leney at 65,  old enough to have served in the First World war, was killed alongside his wife Kate Jane Leney (also 65) at 59 King Henry’s Road (Hampstead, Metropolitan Borough) by flying bomb. Several flying bombs are recorded as having fallen around the London Zoo area, close neighbour of RAF Regent’s Park. 

Kate Oliver of   ZSL London Zoo’s current education team kindly transcribed the well polished names. She thinks that Helpers were young staff who had not attained keeper rank, something I will be following up in researching their backgrounds through the census, National Archives, London Zoo archive and National Archives. .

Since last year I have spoken to realtives of some of these men and ex London Zoo keepers like Les Bird, who has visited many of the ZSL graves. I am still very interested in hearing from anyone who has further information about these men or of other wartime zoo, aquarium or botanic garden related gravestones or rolls of honour. I can be contacted at mark.norris via my email @newquayzoo.org.uk

Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, Manchester, war memorial stories

The only other well documented zoo one is for Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, Manchester at Gorton cemetery in Manchester, now sadly much vandalized.  Much has been written about this early zoo and leisure gardens collection, which survived from the 1830s to 1977/8. 

Spare a thought for the men listed on the monument, and their families. To read more of their stories, Stephen and Susan Cocks have follwed up information in the book The Belle Vue Monument (or Memorial)- with information on the cwgc.org website and others for  the blog entry at http://blog.guidedbattlefieldtours.co.uk/2010/01/15/hello-world

More about the memorial, press articles from its dedication in 1926 and its current vandalized state can be found at http://manchesterhistory.net/bellevue/warmemorial.html and more from Stephen Cocks at http://blog.guidedbattlefieldtours.co.uk/2010/02/04/the-belle-vue-memorial-the-story-of-the-memorial

Belle Vue Zoological Gardens  staff killed on active service 1915-1918

1915 deaths

Private Henry Mulroy, 12^th Battalion. Manchester Regiment, killed Ypres, 16 August 1915. Buried Ridge Wood Military cemetery.  

Private Frederick Lester  Reid, 1^st Battalion, Loyal North Lancs Regt, died aged 31, 25 September 1915, battle of Loos, no known grave, listed Loos Memorial. Married.

1916 deaths

Private William Morrey, died 27 June, 1916, Manchester Regiment / 1^st Battalion, Special Brigade, Royal Engineers (probably a gas unit), buried Beauval cemetery, France. (Several William Morreys from the Cheshire, Lancashire and Manchester area are listed on the cwgc.org site, obviously a local name).

Private Alfred Routledge, 11^th Battalion, Manchester Regiment, killed on The Somme, aged 23, 26 September 1916. Married. Listed on the Thiepval memorial, no known grave.

Routledge is one of the many “Missing of the Somme” (in Geoff Dyer’s words),  killed in the  final days of taking Thiepval village, one of the original objectives of the 1^st July 1916, the first disastreous day of the Battle of The Somme two months earlier.

1917 deaths

Second Lieutenant James Leonard Jennison, 15^th, Battalion West Yorks Regt (Leeds Pals) killed Arras, 3 May 1917 – no known grave, listed Arras Memorial. Son of James, one of the two Jennison brothers who owned Belle Vue zoo. His father James died later that year, possibly as a result of this loss. His cousin Norman, son of Angelo Jennison, also died on active service. 

Private Ralph William Stamp, 18^th battalion, Manchester Regiment, died aged 23, 23 April 1917, no known grave, listed on the Arras memorial, the same as J L Jennison. 

Sergeant John E Oliver, 21^st Battalion, Manchester Regiment, killed 24 October 1917, Passchendaele battles, no known grave, listed Tyne Cot memorial. Married.   

Stoker First Class T J Tumbs, aged 40, killed HMS Drake, 2 October, 1917, convoy duty off coast of Ireland in U79 U-boat torpedo attack.

Private Harold?  Heathcote, 5^th Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment died in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), 19 October 1917, buried Baghdad war cemetery.

1918 deaths

Sergeant J Fuller, Devonshire Regiment / Pioneer Corps, died 14 April 1918. Buried Amiens, France. Married

 Private James G Craythorne, 1/6 Manchester Regiment, killed 20 October 1918 ironically in the fighting for Belle Vue Farm, buried at Belle Vue (Farm) Cemetery, France.  (Three or four generations of the Craythorne family worked as small mammal and reptile keepers at Belle Vue, including James Craythorne who follwed his own father into zoo work, was employed aged 12 from the 1880s  to retirement in 1944, replaced then by his son Albert!

Private Sidney Turner, Welsh Regiment, died aged 18, Welsh Regiment, buried in Gorton Cemetery (site of the Belle Vue Zoo war memorial). Several others who died after the war are also individually buried here.  

Captain Norman L Jennison, MC (Military Cross) , 6^th Manchester Regt (territorials), died of flu, Genoa, Italy 30 October 1918 serving with a trench mortar battery. Son of Angelo, one of the two Jennison brothers who owned Belle Vue zoo. His cousin James Leonard also died on active service.  

Belle Vue Zoological Gardens staff died from the effect of war after 1918.

This unusual addition gives a little glimpse of what must have happened to many zoo, aquarium and botanic garden staff who never recovered from the effects of active service in wartime. 

Private WM Wheatcroft, 3rd Battalion, Kings Liverpool Regiment, died aged 28, 10 July 1919, buried in Gorton cemetery.   

Sergeant Robert Hawthorne, died 24 June 1922, buried in Gorton cemetery.

Rifleman / Lance Corporal William Croasdale, Belle Vue’s baker, served Army Service Corps (bakery) and Kings Royal Rifle Corps, served overseas 1915 to 1919, aged 32, died 1922, (possibly Stephen Cocks suggests in a mental hospital, Prestwich).

Private Joseph Cummings, died 9 May 1926.

First Class PO Matthew James Walton DSM, fought Battle of the Falklands naval action, 1914, died 1926.

Since last year we have found the details of the last ‘unreadable’ name on the memorial, Private Bernard A Hastain  of the Rifle Brigade, scene painter of patriotic firework specactles  at Belle Vue Zoo who died in the 1930s  from the effects of wounds.

Tracing service men who died after service is more difficult, not registered on the CWGC site and one for future research in the National Archives medal and pensions records (the ‘burnt documents’) if they have survived.

There are sadly many more names to add to these wartime casualty lists from zoos, botanic gardens and aquariums as our World War Zoo gardens research project continues. We would be interested to hear of any more names or memorials you know of.

So buy a poppy (there’s a box in the Newquay Zoo office if you’re visiting) and spare a thought for these men and their families on Remembrance Sunday, and also for the many people not listed who were affected by their war service, men and women not just from  Britain but all over the world.

And then enjoy the noisy peace of the zoo gardens or wherever you find yourself …

'It All Depends on Me' playing card sized propaganda for your pocket diary, from the Brewers Society, 1941/42 (image from the World War Zoo gardens collection, Newquay Zoo)

In David Lowe’s wonderful Sunday evening programme Swingers and Singers (BBC Radio Devon / Cornwall, 8 pm – 10 pm Sundays, catch it on Listen Again  for a week afterwards http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00kpf74) about two weeks ago there was a cheery Charlestonesque late 1920s / Early 30s dance band number, called something like “It All Depends on You” which reminded me of this little trade card (above) and bit of morale boosting “It all depends on me” .

A big A4 copy sits above my desk at Newquay Zoo  above the scurf of plant pots, string,  seed packets and books as a little reminder for modern times and busy days at work.

I wonder how people would have responded then to the bossy or cheerful tone of this little card?

Music was  big morale booster, as was the funny little bits of propaganda from Potato Pete to the famous Mr. Chad (Wot No bananas?) still going strong chalked on walls when I was a child. Up near Shepherds Market in London a few months ago I saw the simple little chalk message Cheer Up! written on the wall, which made everyone smile who saw it. Better than the endless cynical  ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ variations everywhere.

Sadly yesterday the death of actress and singer 91 year old Betty Driver was announced, the news clips mentioning as well as her famous spell as Betty Turpin, barmaid of the Rover’s Return from my childhood onwards, there were also soundbites  of her lesser known dance band singing days including Potato Pete’s song. I hope they sing this cheery number at her funeral and have the wake in the Rover’s afterwards …

Maybe this is is a bit different  from the selfish ‘ME’ culture we’re told makes us all so different now from the 1940s generation, although the excellent Foyle’s War on television and various other dark histories of the Home Front pick up on the thriving, skiving and occasionally murderous underworld of the Home Front in difficult wartime. Stealing vegetables from wartime allotments was punishable with a fine (don’t tell this to the visitors who tuck into the odd ripe strawberry from our ‘dig for victory’ plot at Newquay Zoo).

Carolyn Lucas  the Green Party MP has been exploring the difference and similarities between the 1940s and today in her New Home Front report and poster competition, www.newhomefront.org  – worth downloading this report and keeping alook out for the poster competition winners.   

I’ll be talking about this ‘secret’ sustainability side of our wartime garden at the BIAZA Twycross ACE zoo meeting in November – if you want to look at more posters, they have a fantastic collection online at the Imperial War Museum website (see blog roll)and many reproducations in their fabulous online shop.

This week we have a teachers’ open afternoon on Thursday 20th October 2011 for teachers in Cornish schools to come in and meet our education team and find out more about what we offer schools – our Dig for Victory plot and some of the World War Zoo Gardens collection of material used in our schools talks on wartime zoos and wartime life will be on display. See our website for details and  http://www.newquayzoo.org.uk/news/world-war-zoo.htm 

We won’t forget Betty Driver / Betty Turpin RIP, and don’t forget – David Lowe’s Swingers and Singers http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00kpf74 each Sunday night (I keep wanting to call it ‘Swingers and Sinners’ but that’s probably another very different programme!)

Remember – “It All Depends On Me!” (So I’m off to ‘Dig For Victory!’ in our little allotment plot)

Berlin Zoo's surviving elephant and the elephant house after bombing raids 1943/44

One persistent problem for war zones is the problem of civilians and “useless mouths” (as non-combatants in the Dunkirk area) in blitzed and bombed areas – pet, farm and zoo animals are often amongst these overlooked ‘civilians’. In my zoo career over the last fifteen to twenty years I have seen appeals for help for zoos in Cote D’Ivoire and  Kabul Zoo in Afghanistan, the famous rescue of the animals at Baghdad Zoo by South African Conservationist Lawrence Antony  (Author of Babylon’s Ark) and his team, as well as the early 90s rescue plans for Kuwait Zoo and Kosovo Zoo. 

Having been working on the history of zoos in wartime I am well aware of the scale of effects of wartime on  zoos ranging from severe shortages of food, staff and building materials at one end of the wartime survival scale to near destruction at Budapest, Berlin, Warsaw and many others. Some zoos improvised their way through in a ‘make do and mend’ way during the war and in the difficult years afterwards (using surplus tank traps as concrete blocks for building enclosures at Chester Zoo, still visible today) to feeding animals through ‘dig for victory’ allotment efforts, or  evacuating animals from Chessington Zoo near to our safer area of our  sister zoo at Paignton  or from London Zoo to Whipsnade.  Adoption schemes are one long-lived response to wartime shortages of money and food, when animals had no ration books.

Zoos are fragile and easily lost.  When zoos are struck by natural disasters from floods to earthquakes, there is usually a concerted response by one of the larger zoos supported by many others and countless individuals to see that, alongside the vital humanitarian rescue efforts, that the zoos and wildlife are given some support and protection in chaotic times. Zoo keeping is an international profession (in the past, one could have said brotherhood) and the tragedy of war has seen zoos isolated from their international cousins often for decades or even keepers called up in the past and fighting and dying on opposing sides.

The latest zoo to need this assistance is Tripoli Zoo, and I was delighted to read on the BIAZA website of the efforts being led  by the North Carolina Zoo, which BIAZA and many of its zoo members in theUK are supporting.

From the BIAZA website www.biaza.org.uk  

Give to Save the Animals at the Tripoli Zoo.

 In response to a request from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), the North Carolina Zoo has agreed to lead the American zoo community’s response to the emergency welfare needs of animals living in the Tripoli Zoo. The AZA asked Zoo Director David Jones to oversee these welfare operations because of his strong contacts with Middle Eastern zoo professionals and because of his historic leadership in getting food, water, shelter, veterinary care and other necessities to zoo animals trapped by the wars inAfghanistanandIraq. The NC Zoological Society, the 501(c)3, non-profit organization that manages charitable donations made to the North Carolina Zoo, will accept and distribute donations made to assist the Tripoli Zoo Animal Welfare effort. Donations to this fund will be restricted to projects that provide exclusively for the medical, nutritional, health, safety and welfare needs of animals living in the Tripoli Zoo.

http://store.nczoo.com/p-5-save-the-animals-at-the-tripoli-zoo.aspx

If you have a few spare dollars or pounds, however small, I’m sure the keepers and animals supported by the  Tripoli Zoo Animal Welfare effort would welcome them.

Part of our wartime garden display on Make Do and Mend in wartime, Newquay Zoo World War Zoo Gardens collection

Another busy week for the World War Zoo Gardens project at Newquay Zoo. The first of this season’s Garden Society talks took place on Wednesday 21st September 2011  at Goonhavern, a few miles east of Newquay. I’m still not unpacked from selecting out a few boxes of display material of wartime gardening books, posters, seed lists and other wartime memorabilia I took along to illustrate my talk on Dig For Victory and its modern parallels in our World War Zoo gardens project at Newquay Zoo. Gardeners (and cooks) loved leafing through these original and reproduction books before and after the talk.

Pinning the (reproduction) Dig For Victory posters up on their noticeboard for the evening felt a little strange as if the Village Hall and Community Centre had been old enough, the originals must once have been pinned there. Garden talks would have taken place in halls like this all over the country to eager Dig for Victory Gardeners 70 years ago. Goonhavern Garden Association celebrate   their 40th anniversary this year – so congratulations on this!

Celebration bunting, cabbages and mascot Blitz Bear out in the World War Zoo gardens at Newquay Zoo, Summer 2011

As ever my lovely  vintage Dig For Victory  spade dated 1944 (the same type as the  famous boot on spade iconic  poster) was much admired and could have been sold many times over.  A lovely weight and patina to it, this spade is still very capable of active service but now in my museum collection for the present along with a pristine Stirrup Pump. Slightly more battered examples of both are left in the wartime garden plot here at the zoo, to give the real impression that the gardener has just popped out for a few minutes.  

Whilst setting up, I had time to put some Vera Lynn music on for company, which was playing as the Garden Society members arrived. Highly atmospheric, and the music I was brought up to by my 1940s evacuee parents. I’m not sure of the legality of playing my warm up music as people arrive, but then legality and Vera Lynn don’t match in my family.  I recently discovered from my mother that she was the very young (4 or 5 year old) lookout for a gang of fellow evacuees in Ditchling where Dame Vera lived, on watch while the bigger kids went Scrumping in Vera Lynn’s Orchard.  Maybe we should plant an apple tree in our wartime garden section in both their honour …

Canny recyclers before their time! The WI did important work for the Dig For Victory and salvage campaigns. This wartime WI badge is from our wartime display, World War Zoo Gardens, Newquay Zoo.

Geoffrey Glasse from Goonhavern contacted me afterwards to find out if we were interested in surplus apples etc from his group. What to do with surplus produce in wartime caused many arguments between the Dig For Victory scheme organisers and the Ministry of Agriculture. The WI and canning machines was one solution …

The story of this campaign is well set out in the recent book by Daniel Smith, The Spade as Mighty as the Sword: The Story of World War Two’s ‘Dig for Victory’ Campaign (Aurum Press, 2011) including solutions to mysteries such as whose foot is on the iconic boot on spade Dig For Victory poster? Popularly it is said (for example in Jennifer Davies’ excellent Wartime Kitchen Garden (book of the 1990s BBC TV series) to be a Mr. W.H. McKie of Acton, London, but was it? Another mystery solved: which journalist turned informally dressed Labour Party leader  coined the phrase ‘Dig For Victory’? I was surprised.

As well as posters and radio allotments, newsreel films were well used to encourage reluctant diggers – you can see this in a  lovely short 6 minute Dig For Victory MOI film with Roy Hay the radio allotment gardener http://www.thebigworld.co.uk/howtodigforvictory.htm.

Other good newsreel clips include Radio gardener Mr Middleton chatting ‘Over the Garden Fence’ on this wartime gardening blog: http://wartimegardening.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/mr-middleton-talks-about-gardening/

My next talks are booked in November at  Twycross Zoo’s BIAZA Zoo conference  for the peer audience of Zoo  educators and marketing people . This is a good chance to get into the Bartlett Society (for zoo history research) library / archives held at this zoo. More research for our forthcoming book on wartime zoos and botanic gardens. I’m also talking at a Cornwall College Newquay seminar on the morning of November 30th to many of the FE and HE students at this conservation college next to the zoo.

 So that’s a few dozen people at a time. if you want to reach more, there’s always old (and new) media … the finest of which is wireless.

Radio (or Wireless) and music were important for morale and mood in wartime. The BBC continue this fantastic role today. One of the pick of this week’s listening for me was John Gray on  Radio 4′s Point of View (often a slot for David Attenborough’s Life Stories radio talks) about Winston Churchill becoming Prime Minister in 1940. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0150dsv#synopsis

If World War Zoo Gardens had a soundtrack? Its BBC Radio Devon”s every Sunday evening 8pm – 10 pm weekly Swingers&Singers programme (great title). It’s run by David Lowe (on Twitter he’s @ MrNostalja)  and  you can find live on the BBC online website and later on the repeats I-player site.  It’s great to know as I listen to this programme at home with my family that there are thousands of others of all ages tucked up listening to the same programme and its dedications all over the West Country, Britain and beyond. It’s like looking up at the moon and thinking it shines on so many others, the same moon in so many countries. I wonder how mnay people looked at the moon fearfully in wartime as a bombers’ moon. Swingers and Singers is a great source of evocative 1930s, 40s and 50s music. Enjoy!

Happy listening, happy gardening.

Find out more about us on the blog and the Newquay Zoo website. Mark

Heritage Open Day & Dig for Victory Event

'Dig For Victory' Summer From a photograph taken at a Dig For Victory garden, Newquay Zoo, 2010

 Enjoy free entry to Trengwainton Garden and share war time memories in our Dig for Victory allotment. Tours to the Dig for Victory site on the hour from the Reception (15 minute walk), last one 4pm.

Event details

Booking Not Needed, Suitable for Groups, Dogs on leads welcome, Uneven terrain at the Dig for Victory site and its approach, but accessible to wheelchair users with assistance.

Gates open: 10.30am  Last admission time: 4.30pm  No Additional charges

More Information: Trengwainton, 01736 363148 trengwainton@nationaltrust.org.uk  

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/heritageopendays

http://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/directory/HOD008640E