World War Zoo gardens project blog has passed the 5000th reader / web hit mark and is preparing for an award- can you help?

Display corner from World War Zoo gardens project June 2010 - Fox Rosehill Gardens, Falmouth, Cornwall display

Hooray! Our World War Zoo gardens project has just passed the 5000 reader mark since we started the blog in Summer 2009. 

We have also recently celebrated our first ‘podcast’ last week – have you heard this? 

We’re now putting the World War Zoo garden project, displays, launch weekend, Facebook & Twitter pages, blog and all forward for a prestigious BIAZA Education (General & Public Visitor) award.(British and Irish Association of Zoos And Aquaria) www.biaza.org.uk   The deadline is  July 23rd, 2010. 

We need your help! We always need feedback and comment from users, readers or visitors on such projects. 

Did it surprise you to learn about this neglected aspect of history? 

Did it surprise you to learn that a modern zoo has a wartime Dig For Victory allotment on one of its former lawns? 

Have you enjoyed looking at some of the objects in the zoo’s wartime collection, featured in photographs on the site? 

Did you get the connection? Has World War Zoo  made you think differently about the past and the resource challenges of the future? 

Has it evoked any interesting memories or family stories of the time? Would you like to share them with us? 

Some of our source material - old wartime gardening books by the fabulous Mr. Middleton, Imperial War museum seeds from their Ministry of Food exhibition online shop, 1940s varieties available from modern seed suppliers like Suttons, all in an ARP 1940s tin medical box - World War Zoo gardens display, Newquay Zoo

Many thanks to those of you who have already left comments or sent us emails about our project and its unusual way of communicating sustainability, recycling and grow your own and food miles “with a  Vera Lynn soundtrack” by looking at the experiences of zoos, aquariums and botanic gardens in the 1940s.   

We’d love you to leave us a comment.

You can browse the earlier articles back to July 2009 or look at our blogroll for useful links, including the excellent Imperial War Museum  Ministry of Food exhibition running throughout 2010.

You can comment via our blog direct to the project team.

Talk about fresh! Talk about food metres, not miles! Everyone gets conscripted or enlisted – Kat from our Cafe Lemur washing some of our surplus salad lettuce for use in the zoo cafe, once zoo keepers had used as much as they could! World War Zoo project, Newquay Zoo.

The price of oil, paint and big ships of all nations from the Ark to the supertanker. German invasions, budgets, The World Cup and the wartime zoo keeper’s vegetable garden at Newquay Zoo.

Charles Pears (1873 -1958), painting “The Bombing of The British Chancellor 10 July 1940”, signed, oil on canvas, a large painting at 80 x 125 cms and presented by the Falmouth Harbour Commission, 1993. Copyright: Falmouth Art Gallery http://www.falmouthartgallery.com

England vs. Germany, BP, oil  and the “British Chancellor” have all been in the news  over the last week.

Admittedly, we mean respectively for most,

1. not war but World Cup football (though according to some  past England managers and Newquay Zoo staff, not a “game of life and death”, but “more important than that),

2. giant Gulf Coast oil spills and 

 3. British Chancellor George Osborne and the Coalition’s new Austerity budget of national shared pain.

Chatting about the events of the day to zoo visitors and staff over the garden fence at Newquay Zoo’s World War Zoo garden wartime ‘dig for victory allotment’, it seems that oil, the budget and the World Cup have replaced our frustations at Volcanic ash and swine flu.  Volcanic ash this year delayed enough holidays, stranded our zoo staff and disrupted world wide food supplies by plane. Volcanic ash grounded one of our staff heading over to the World Land Trust / BIAZA zoo nature reserve in Brazil whilst Zoo staff have to think about possible alternatives to air travel when travelling to overseas projects and meetings

"Let your shopping help our shipping" was one propaganda message about saving food - grow your own is another, promoted by a typical piece of advertising from a wartime gardening magazine (from the World War Zoo gardening collection / archive at Newquay Zoo).

 The 2001 fuel strike in Britain (Petrol over £1, outrageous?!) saw similar disruption to businesses and food supply, with a similar bit of wartime hoarding during the recent “snow chaos”  and deadly “Swine flu epidemic” beloved by journalists.

In the British and American press, BP is under fire for the PR and physical handling of its clean up operations in the Gulf of Mexico, with several interesting articles in the press. A glimpse at just one Sunday paper last week, The Observer, had pages of coverage of this environmental, financial, diplomatic and political “nightmare“, seemingly threatening the wartime special relationship of America and Britain. 

The analysis of these events in business and comments pages by columnists like Ruth Sutherland and Sir David King (no less than the Chief Scientific Adviser to Blair’s wartime British government from 2000 -2007) reads more like warnings about Peak Oil in Resurgence or The Ecologist green magazines a few years ago. Sutherland and King  argue about  of “a dangerous addiction to Oil”, our “thirst for oil’s inextricable link to conflict and corruption” and David King’s  warning of the imperative need to “end our dependency on petrol”, not just in Obama’s America but around the world.

Satirical press cartoonists don’t quite reach the understated and quiet anger of Zec’s controversial wartime cartoon of a torpedoed merchant seaman clinging to wreckage in a dark stormy sea, beneath which stated simply and unemotionally  “The price of Petrol has increasd by one penny – official“.

 Newquay Zoo amongst others, is not alone as a business considering the price and future of Extreme Oil, transition towns and future food and fuel security.

Newquay is no stranger to tanker disasters, having seen the Cornish coast  coated with oil in the 1967  Torrey Canyon disaster. Reputedly the prospective zoo site which opened two years later in 1969 was the dumping ground for much of the oiled sand from the clean up operation. Oiled birds were frequent ‘first aid’ inmates in the zoo’s Wildlife Hospital operational in the 1990s before passing up the line to experts like Rex Harper of the local RSPCA, author of Otter on the Aga and other animal books.

As for the “British Chancellor”, whilst the rest of the weekend papers were full of World Cup prediction and Budget summary, I was looking at a postcard and a picture on the Falmouth Art Gallery website http://falmouthartgallery.com of tankers on fire in  Falmouth Docks.

From near the Gem fish and chip restaurant up the Hill above Falmouth Art Gallery, both with many  maritime paintings on the wall, you can watch ships heading up river or into the docks. From the nearby National Maritime Museum Cornwall’s observation tower or from the Docks and its viewing area at Castle Drive, from  Pendennis Point and the fabulous rockpools at Castle Beach  or from the wartime gun emplacements of King Henry’s Pendennis Castle or matching St. Mawes Castle (both English Heritage) , whose garrisons once watched  saw Darwin’s Beagle sail home past, you can see still big ships of all nations. 

There are large cargo ships waiting for  bunkering for low sulphur fuel (an environmental requirement) before heading through the Channel or bulk tankers hanging around for months waiting for the oil or commodity prices to change.  There is the regular friendly invasion of Germans aboard giant cruise ships, heading off to tour the Eden Project or nearer heritage gardens like Trebah, Glendurgan or Trelissick (the latter two both National Trust) whose woodland walk up the Falmouth and Helford  river reaches take you (always by surprise) past huge laid up freighters and cargo ships in the river, a sign of recession in the 1930s, 1980s or of the fuel crisis in the 1950s. Trebah Gardens Trust was mentioned in a previous blog posts for its role as an embarkation beach for US troops in D-Day and its Archive of wartime memories, one featured below from the BBC People’s War website.  Secret resistance and commnmdo operations took place from the quiet waters of the Helford river sneaking in under cover of the French and Breton fishing fleets , whilst HMS Campbelltown and its daring Commando raids on St. Nazaire in 1942 are remembered on the Prince of Wales pier near Falmouth Art Gallery.

A week or two earlier I had been looking at the original big picture of the British Chancellor in Falmouth Art Gallery (viewable online athttp://falmouthartgallery.com ) with its Curator, Brian Stewart after an awards tea party. The Gallery was celebrating the fantastic educational and community role of the gallery recognized by another major heritage award received in London for our partnership work on Darwin 200, Darwin having arrived back from his Voyage of The Beagle through Falmouth Harbour. Newquay Zoo and Falmouth Art gallery, like wartime America and Britain, have a ‘special relationship’.

We were talking about how the gallery and zoo could do “Darwin 200 meets Spike Milligan” to celebrate landscape and wildlife painter Edward Lear’s forthcoming bicentenary in 2012 with a suitable “Festival of Nonsense” (other Olympic sized events are available that year). Lear spent two dismal rainy weeks, not quite doing much painting in Cornwall and Devon. 

Surrounded by the plant art of “A Mixed Bunch” on the walls, Brian Stewart was bemused and puzzled by my rambling tales of successes and failures of the World War Zoo ‘dig for victory’ garden at Newquay Zoo (including failing to get last year’s zoo painter in residence Cornish artist John Dyer to paint the fledgling wartime allotment plot during his residency).

Then the painting of the British Chancellor and its 70th anniversary date caught my eye – 10 July 1940. The first day of the Battle of Britain. The first day of serious bombing of Briatin , effectively the start of the Blitz. 

I asked Brian Stewart whether he and his team would be using the painting for one of his amazing award-winning “across the generations” community projects. There must be many in Falmouth Town and the local area amongst the older generation who grew up there or worked in the Docks when this wartime bombing happened, if the conversations at the world’s best and friendliest fish and chip restaurant The Gem up the hill from the gallery are anything to go by!

I’m sure Falmouth’s  wartime role and this fantastic painting will be featured in a forthcoming book From Sailing Ships to Supertankers by BBC Radio Cornwall regular broadcaster, harbour expert and pilot David Barnicoat (listen out on Wednesdays, 8.35 a.m. BBC Radio Cornwall). Falmouth Docks are 150 years old this year, its story being told in the book with proceeds going to the Mission to Seafarers helping distressed mariners of all nations.

You can read more of Falmouth and Cornwall’s wartime  story in Bob Acton’s two books on wartime Cornwall and Peter Hancock ‘s Cornwall at War 1939-45 (all usually  available on Amazon.com and E-Bay). 

Online or at the gallery in person, you can have a closer look at Charles Pears (1873 -1958) painting “The Bombing of The British Chancellor 10 July 1940”, signed, oil on canvas, a large painting at 80 x 125 cms and presented by the Falmouth Harbour Commission. Not quite as large as the ship though –  built in 1921 by Laing& Sons, Sunderland for The Britsih Tanker Company as one of 47 sister ships, she was about 7,085 gross tons, (10,925 deadweight) 440 x 57 x 34 feet in dimensions, a single screw propellor ship  powered by two steam turbines.   

During World War 2, Brian Stewart told me it was “evident that Falmouth would be a target for German bombers”. On Wednesday 10 July 1940 at 2.30 p.m.  hours, Falmouth  Docks received one of their heaviest raids, being difficult to disguise or camouflage being the third largest natural harbour in the world. The Docks and Harbour were well known to crews and ships from all over the world. Two years earlier, a large German warship the Schleswig Holstein had made a courtesy visit (or closet espionage trip?) to the same harbour. Falmouth streets today are still places to glimpse or hear sailors and crews from all over the world, not just during the Tall Ships event. 

Charles Pears’ dramatic painting shows three vessels ablaze. Three ships were hit, one of which sank.

The first ship,  British tanker TASCALUSA or TUSKALUSA (6499grt) was sunk by German bombing, alongside the Northern Arm of the Docks. TASCALUSA was refloated on 29 August 1940 and beached at Mylor Flats opposite the harbour for scrapping.

Two other ships were burnt out. The second ship, Greek steamer MARI CHANDRIS (5840grt) was in Falmouth in June for repair after a collision. It  was set afire by TASCALUSA but the entire crew of the Greek ship was rescued.

The third ship is the one named in the painting, the British tanker BRITISH CHANCELLOR (7085grt) was damaged by German bombing and set ablaze at Falmouth. She was later dry-docked for  extensive repairs before  being sold in the 1950s, renamed and eventually broken up in 1961.  A dramatic and hard life which ended at only 40!  

In Peter Gilson’s local eyewitness words from the BBC People’s War online archive  www.bbc.co.uk:  “The Docks became the focus of attention for the Germans and on July 10th 1940 the docks were quite badly hit.”

“There were three vessels along the Northern arm, the Maria Chandris, a Greek vessel, the Tuskalusa and The British Chancellor a tanker, fortunately not loaded with oil at the time. These three were hit and after notable acts of bravery notably by one of the Falmouth pilots who managed to dodge the fire to get on board one of the ships. The Maria Chandris was towed away from the burning wreckage of the other two ships to St. Mawes Creek and put on Amsterdam Point where it burned fiercely for three days …”

Strangely, Peter Gilson recalls “even though the whole of St. Mawes was illuminated like day, the ship fiercely burning for a few days 400 yards offshore, [an Air Raid Warden in St. Mawes] went around the village instructing everyone to put out their lights. The Tuskalusa was towed to St. Just Creek and it was allowed to burn out, after which it was broken up and taken away and used for scrap. The British Chancellor was repaired and put back in service and strangely enough, my brother served on it later in the war.”

© Article ID:  A8710210,  CWS 180804D 16:23:57 — 16:25:50 story has been added by CSV volunteer Linda Clark on behalf of the author Peter Gilson. His story was given to the Trebah Video Archive, Trebah Garden Trust,  supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund 2004

Marine paintings such as by Rob Jones the ex-fisherman painter of amazing Cornish seas, or the many paintings at Falmouth Art gallery and National Maritime Museum Cornwall show are often very good on depicting weather, a topic of conversation beloved of sailors and gardeners. Looking  at the sky and sea conditions  in the British Chancellor painting, above the clouds and flames can be seen tiny black  flecks of ‘flak’ (Anti Aircraft fire) from the AA defences at Pendennis Castle.

Does the British Chancellor painting show the following troubled skies?

10th July  1940   Weather Forecast

Overcast with rain over most of Britain. Southeast England and Channel, showery.

Combat Report – first day of The Battle of Britain, July 10 – October 31, 1940

The main Luftwaffe attacks concentrated on shipping. At 1100hrs a convoy was attacked off North Foreland by 1 Dornier (Do17) bomber escorted by Me109s. Spitfires of No: 74 Squadron, scrambled from Manston, engaged the enemy aircraft. At the same time Spitfires of No: 610 Squadron were scrambled from Biggin Hill to intercept Me109’s over Dover. At 1330hrs about 120 enemy aircraft had formed in the Calais area to attack the convoy between Dover and Dungeness. Hurricanes from No: 34, 56 & 111 Squadrons along with Spitfires of No: 74 & 64 Squadrons were scrambled.

Later in the day enemy raids took place along the West, South and East coasts with the largest being nearly 70 bombers attacking Falmouth & Swansea.

During the night, further raids were plotted with bombs dropped on Guisborough, Canewdon, Hertford, Isle of Grain, Isle of Mull (West Coast of Scotland), Colchester, Welwyn and Ely.

Statistics:  Losses include non-combat patrols and accidents

R.A.F. Losses: 8 aircraft damaged or destroyed and 2 pilots killed.

Luftwaffe Losses: 20 aircraft damaged or destroyed, 23 pilots & aircrew killed or missing and 10 wounded

The Battle Of Britain in miniature for a wartime boy! A beautiful wartime handmade wooden Spitfire toy, our other favourite suggestion for the wartime object collection on the BBC A History of The World.

In the skies during the ensuing Battle of Britain , from the Newquay / Cornwall  Sector St. Eval, both  Gladiator Squadron  247  and Squadron 234 Spitfires of 10 Group  – there’s more in the book Devon and Cornwall Airfields in World War Two by Graham Smith. This book and airfield near Newquay Zoo was mentioned in our previous post about the Newquay / Watergate Bay Liberator crash relics featured in our Wartime garden weekend, May 2010.

And what became of the British Tanker Company that operated the British Chancellor? Around about 1954, as the ship was being sold, the  worldwide operation of the former  Anglo-Iranian or Anglo Persian Oil Company (hence the Persian national colours of red, white and green on the funnels) and the British Petroleum Company (ironically originally a German firm) finally became known  by the now familiar (or currently notorious in the USA) name of British Petroleum, BP.

We mentioned in our blog post title, From The Ark to the Super Tanker. The Ark always was an unusual boat, probably now aground and Stationary on Jersey. Newquay Zoo’s electrician Mick has an unusual Channel Islands family name, LeFevre, or Mick Le Ferret as he is affectionately known to some, being accustomed to working in small spaces around and under the zoo.  LeFeuvre is mentioned in a list of names amongst the fascinating website http://www.thisisjersey.co.uk/hmd/html/escapees.html

The list tells of many Channel Islanders and ships’ crews feelling to prots just across the Channel, escaping in small ships throughout July 1940 onwards from the German invasion of the Channel Islands –  Alderney,  Jersey and Guernsey (home of the world’s only Tomato Museum) . Some arrived into Falmouth in Cornwall around the time of The British Chancellor’s bombing, Brixham (home area of our sister zoo Living Coasts  http://www.livingcoasts.org.uk and the Start Bay area where The Whitley Wildlife conservation Trust has its Slapton Ley Nature Reserve (later events in 1944 there were mentioned in our June 2010  blog entry about D-Day). 

Newquay Zoo and its sister zoo at Paignton has long had a connection or ‘special relationship’ with Jersey, some of our staff from Directors to keepers worked at Jersey Zoo as keepers, others worked there as volunteers or trained at the headquarters of the international Durrell  Wildlife Conservation Trust, www.durrell.org  Our partner college Cornwall College Newquay www.cornwall.ac.uk established in 2000 has proudly named one of its new buildings The Durrell Centre, opened by Lee Durrell, the Honorary Director.

Gerald Durrell was and remains a huge influence on the development of conservation minded zoos around the world; had Durrell not failed his army medical through sinus problems, could have been called up.

Luckily Durrell was not killed in World War Two nor indeed was his mischief unleashed on the armed forces of any nation unlike Spike Milligan. Instead he was sent to Whipsnade Zoo in 1945 as  a “student keeper”, experiences later recounted in Beasts in My Belfry and Lucy Pender’s lovely memoir about growing up at Whipsnade. Whipsnade was London Zoo’s home for some of its evacuated animals, keepers and their families.

Keeper Billett of Whipsnade Zoo ZSL in tin hat and gas mask pictured in the shortlived 'Animal And Zoo magazine', November 1939 (magazine / photo from the World War Zoo archive, Newquay Zoo)

Durrell thankfully wasn’t too unfit as his adventures on collecting expeditions after 1945, some with Paignton Zoo keeper the late Ken Smith,  helped restock the empty postwar zoos of the world.

Durrell’s amusing books and television films won animals and conservation many friends in its early days.

His passion for training “Durrell’s Army” as they are known, the many students who have been through the International Training Centre from Durrell’s field projects around the world, have done much to preserve and conserve endangered wildlife and habitats.

I wonder what Durrell or Peter Scott would have made of the Florida oil spill? Without Durrell and others of his postwar generation like Desmond Morris, the late Peter Scott of the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust and David Attenborough, the natural and human world would be the poorer.  Durrell’s  books prove as challenging as ever, a personal favourite being The Stationary Ark, his image of the zoos of the world working as a Noah style ‘rescue ship’ to breed endangered animals past the ‘floods’  of environmental disaster. That’s one ship I hope is never sunk or scrapped too soon.

So, the high price of oil …Look out for more about the World War Zoo garden project at Newquay Zoo in future blog postings or conatct us via the comments page below.

________________________________________________

Sources: 1. Dave Edge, from Middlemas, The British Tankers 

2. www.naval-history.net/xDKWW2-4007-20JUL01.htm

3. Today in World War 2 History http://http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/23110283/m/1771097952/p/30

D-Day 1944 and the disappearing peacocks and ducks of wartime Paignton Zoo

Photographic proof! Peacock (or peahen) sized garden pests peck away at our salad leaf selection, World War Zoo Gardens, Newquay Zoo.

Peacocks are an unlikely garden pest but I have posted photographic evidence – proof – that what I thought was slug and snail damage was pecking by birds. 

It could also be the egg shells donated by the zoo’s Cafe Lemur staff that are intended (crushed) to deter slugs. Might they attract a peahen preparing to nest? A rich source of calcium and we know peacocks to be nest raiders and wreckers around the zoo, especially of other free-ranging birds. 

The D-Day anniversary passed quietly nationally on the 6th June, not being a major anniversary year. For many of those involved in the Normandy  Veterans Association, it would have been a day to remember quietly or in company of other veterans.  However many sites around the SouthWest coast mark the occasion of D-Day, such as at Trebah Gardens in Cornwall, marking the moment when thousands of young British, Canadian and especially American troops left the South(west) coast bound for Occupied France. For many, they never speak of the events; Peter Dwyer, a much-loved zoo volunteer and  nature columnist into his eighties in our past zoo newsletter Paw Prints spoke and wrote often colourfully about local bird life, the zoo’s exotic inhabitants but rarely about his D-Day experiences aboard LST Landing Ships. 

Diary of an anonymous South London woman involved in Civil Defence, 1944 - D-Day, Tuesday 6 June 1944 "D-Day Invasion started. troops landed at Cherbourg. Went to Clapham & Brixton and to Oberon ..." nOte also the entry for Thursday 15 "Germany started sending pilot-less planes" - the first mention in the diary of V1 "doodlebugs" (Copyright: Diary in the World War Zoo wartime life collection, Newquay Zoo)

Diaries in the zoo’s  wartime life collection quietly mark the events amongst all the clutter of everyday life queuing for rations or working on the farm. 

D-Day saw a strange emptying of many South coast and West country towns in Devon and Cornwall, as tens of thousands of US, Canadian and British troops left their army camps and headed for the Normandy beaches from 6 June onwards. 

 Some of the American servicemen had an infamous last supper. Part of the Paignton Zoo estate is the nature reserve at Clennon Gorge in Devon, featuring wildfowl ponds and a stream through a limestone valley down to the sea. This part of Herbert Whitley’s estate was being developed in the 1930s just before the outbreak of war. Whitley had  vision of wildfowl ponds, woodland haunts of a wolf enclosure, old lime kilns turned into small mammal dens and converting old quarries into bear and carnivore enclosures, much in the style, ironically, of Carl  Hagenbeck’s zoo at Hamburg in Germany. Work had been completed by stonemasons on the first bear dens when war broke out in 1939. The bears never arrived in their dens, but the quarry enclosures were used as cookhouses for US troops camping in the adjoining zoo paddocks whilst waiting for D-Day in 1944. (At the same time, RAF and American bombing raids were targeting Berlin, Frankfurt, Nuremberg and other German towns with renowned zoos.)  

 As Jack Baker wryly notes in Chimps, Champs and Elephants, his history of Whitley and Paignton Zoo’s early days, “A clearing up exercise provided ample evidence that many a zoo peacock and ornamental bird had varied the diet of the visiting ‘doughboys’ …” 

So maybe those pesky peacocks pecking away at the plants of the World War Zoo “dig for victory garden” at Newquay Zoo 70 years later  is their way of extracting compensation or reparation. 

 We haven’t yet identified which US regiments or divisions spent their last days in England,  camped at Paignton Zoo and Clennon Gorge, so if anyone knows we would interested to find out more. Maybe in America somewhere, there are US veterans in their 80s and 90s who remember this unusual last meal of exotic bird or camping in the zoo grounds over 65 years ago. It would be interesting to hear from them and their memories of Paignton Zoo in wartime. We can be contacted at the World War Zoo gardens project via mark.norris@newquayzoo.org.uk  

 The training for the D-Day landing formed part of the tragic events at  Slapton Ley, then part of Herbert Whitley’s  estate. It is now a peaceful nature reserve owned by the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust which runs nearby  Paignton Zoo www.paigntonzoo.org.uk , Living Coasts www.livingcoasts.org.uk and ourselves at Newquay Zoo. The similarity of the beaches and nearby countryside at Slapton matched those on the D-day beaches in Normandy. The local population was moved out, many never to return and the countryside, woods and villages devastated by shellfire. An American War Memorial lists the names of those several hundred US servicemen lost on ‘Operation Tiger’, when a secret live firing exercise practising for D-Day was interrupted by German torpedo boats. A Sherman tank has now been raised from the seabed as another stark memorial of the events at Start Bay and Slapton Sands in 1944. 

"Let your shopping help our shipping" was one propaganda message about saving food - grow your own is another, promoted by a typical piece of advertising from a wartime gardening magazine (from the World War Zoo gardening collection / archive at Newquay Zoo).

In our next blog entries, we’ll look at the rapidly unfolding events of 1940 as Dunkirk was evacuated and what effects it had on zoos, botanic gardens and the zoo staff, families, animals and visitors. It must have seemed to many people that the world or their world was collapsing quickly out of control. 

 This period of June and July 1940 is being widely commemorated by many events 70 years on; it saw the first intensive bombing raids on towns in South Wales from bases in Europe on July 10^th and the Battle of Britain dawns in the sky, whilst Operation Sealion (for invasion of England) planning began in Germany and Occupied France on July 2^nd 1940. The Blitz bombing on British cities such as Bristol, London, Manchester, Liverpool and their zoos was not far off in September 1940.   

Already bombed, Paris with its historic zoo was occupied on 14^th June 1940. The surrender of France swiftly followed on June 22^nd. The occupation of the Channel Islands and its tomato rich market gardens began on June 30^th 1940 (islands later to be the site of Gerald Durrell’s hugely influential Jersey Zoo, postwar) amidst the  occupation of much of Europe which saw food supplies dwindle to blockaded Britain. Submarine attacks increased confidently from their new bases in Channel ports. 217 Allied merchant ships would be sunk supplying Britain in the next three months, crossing the Atlantic from July to October 1940. “Let your Shopping help our shipping” became a new ‘food miles’ motto. 

Britain dug in, Dug for Victory on its lawns and back gardens and drilled its Home Guard. General De Gaulle over the BBC radio on the 18^th and 23^rd June famously praised the flame of French resistance that had survived and found shelter in England amongst the Free French and many other Allies.  

• So what did these events mean for many of the zoos at the time?
• What can we learn from this for the future challenges of climate change and extreme or peak oil? 
• Which objects of the Newquay Zoo wartime life collection best evoke this 1940 period?
• What’s been happening in the World War Zoo ‘dig for victory’ zoo keepers’ wartime garden at Newquay Zoo?
• What allies, sacrifices and fall guys can a wartime gardener or one today rely on in the perennial battle against pests and diseases? (we’ll look at companion planting).

 You can find out more  in future blog entries and review past ones on the World War Zoo gardens project, archived on this site (see the menu or tool bar, right).

The ‘miracle of Dunkirk’ remembered, rare macaque monkey webcam and roughly torn (Jamie Oliver style) wartime leeks and cabbage fresh for the zoo animals from the Wartime zoo keepers’ garden at Newquay Zoo

Symbol of the 1940 Blitzkrieg, Dunkirk and the rapid Nazi occupation of Europe, this German Army Panzer tank regiment metal cap badge features the laurel wreath of victory, Nazi Swastika and eagle symbols and image of an early German Panzer tank. Worn proudly in early years of victory, ironically this badge was found abandoned in Germany at the end of the war in 1945 by Major F.H. Tyler of the British Army. Donated to the World War Zoo gardens project by Major Tyler's family, relatives of a zoo staff member. .

This Dunkirk anniversary weekend,  there have many tearful old men (and not forgetting the women who love them) remembering the hell of the beaches of Dunkirk  and the ‘miracle’ of their escape by sea in small boats back to Blighty 70 years ago. Many were left behind, wounded or imprisoned as Europe was overrun by a Blitzkrieg of Panzer and Stuka, Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe.  

What did Dunkirk and the fall of Europe mean for the zoos and botanic gardens? In 1939, 75% of food in Britain was imported through shipping. This meant that  food from distant Empire or later Commonwealth countries  like India, Australia and Canada in merchant ships had to run the gauntlet of U-Boat submarine blockades, torpedo and aerial attack, despite convoy protection.   

No wonder ‘food miles’ (as they are known today) were a concern  of an early poster slogan,  “Let your Shopping, Help our Shipping” (many wonderful posters viewable or for sale on the Imperial War Museum website and shop www.iwm.org.uk).  Britain and its zoos lost their food supplies from European countries, especially in the Mediterranean,  and the market gardens of the Channel Islands. Onions, tomatoes and other crops became hard to obtain. Strangely, mealworms, a staple insect food for many zoo animals still today, was mostly obtained prewar from Germany, as one British zoo director regretted.  

Before long, botanic gardens and glasshouses, greenhouses, zoo lawns and empty enclosures would be transformed into tomato farms, veg patches, along with pig, rabbit and chicken enclosures by an enterprising and hungry staff.  

Like those in Poland, many zoos across Holland, Belgium and France fell under German occupation, ironically a nation noted for their great interest in zoos. Many British zoo keepers and directors would have had visited these forward-thinking German zoos and known their staff or sent animals there on breeding loan. Tragically for an international minded profession, this choice and option  did not exist by May and June 1940.  Many surviving and prize animals were spirited away to Germany, a story recounted by  Diane Ackerman in The Zoo Keeper’s Wife about Warsaw Zoo.  

Further stories about what happened to other European Zoos, Aquariums  and Botanic Gardens in wartime we are researching as part of the World War Zoo gardens project for a book due in 2011/12.  

The long-lasting damage that food and fuel shortages inflicted across zoos and botanic gardens in Britain and Europe was eclipsed by the firestorms of aerial bombing by both sides and battlefields raging across Berlin, Dresden, Russia, Eastern Europe, Asia  and parts of Japan. Little was left, for example,  of Berlin Zoo after the fighting for example, under a hundred animals from the many thousands in what was before the war regarded as one of the world’s leading zoo collections.  

Poignant photos in the Imperial War Museum collection show empty looking zoos in Hamburg Zoo (Germany) and Antwerp Zoo (Belgium) being used as DP (Displaced People) camps for Polish and Russian refugees, evacuees and German troops captured as prisoners of war locked into the strongly barred Lion House, all pictures difficult to look at without noticing  the eerie echo of the bars and wire of the concentration camps.  

Where the missing animals were from the lion house and other enclosures suggest its own sad story. Many of these refugee and POW camps  soon had scratch vegetable gardens to feed the inmates and also keep them busy, a tale well told in Kenneth Helphand’s recent book Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in  Wartime  (available through Amazon and other suppliers).  

Our baby boom and red bottomed female Sulawesi Macaque monkey group exploring fresh leeks, enrichment from the World War Zoo wartime zoo keepers' veg garden at Newquay Zoo

The urge to garden and raise new life is something staff at Newquay Zoo share having nursed our fledgling ‘dig for victory’ veg patch on the Lion House Lawn through a poor summer and harsh winter  over the last year. This week, some of the long nurtured vegetables from 2009 have been harvested to make room for more planting. 

Leeks away! Robyn Silcock prepares to launch the first of our freshly dug leeks from our World War Zoo keepers' garden into the rare Sulawesi macaque monkey enclosure at Newquay Zoo, May 2010. Great enrichment, fresh picked with the soil still on the roots!

 Leeks (probably Musselburgh, a wartime variety) were  served up to our critically endangered Sulawesi Macaque monkeys within a few minutes and metres of being dug up – not bad counting food miles or for freshness,  still with soil on the roots. The young macaques  played with these, racing through the branches and along ropes, clutched like  a favoured doll or  must-have toy and status symbol, an inspiration to race and play vegetable tag.  The adult macaque monkeys peeled the leafy tips apart but were much more excited about the Perpetual Spinach, again another plant grown in the 1940s by wartime zoo keepers and recommended in the 1940s gardening books.  

Leeks with soil on the roots proved equally attractive (and sneezy!) to our rare (critically endangered) Yellow Breasted Capuchin Monkeys from Brazilian rainforests. Pat and Tux, two brothers,  ripped and tore the leeks about roughly in  a style that Jamie Oliver would approve, along with the enrichment bottles that our Junior Keeper made for them.     

African Pygmy goats in our small farm section demolished these giant leafy Savoy Ormskirk Late Green Cabbages, a wartime variety grown from seed in our World War Zoo Gardens at Newquay Zoo - Robyn serves up fresh lunch almost a year in the making!

African Pygmy goats quickly ate every scrap of the Savoy Cabbage Ormskirk Late Green, a variety recommended in the 1940s gardening books. Our critically endangered Visayan Warty Pigs, the world’s rarest pig from the Philippines, were not so impressed by ‘seconds fresh’  cabbage straight from the nearby earth. Noted for next year! 

Hopefully people visiting the zoo via our new macaque monkey web cam www.newquayzoo.org.uk saw this triumph of a Sulawesi Macaque baby boom (four youngsters born into the small group in one year) and patient nurturing of our wartime veg  garden come together at  our 3.15 p.m. ‘playing with your food’ enrichment talk.

As fresh as they get! One of our youngest Sulawsei Macaque monkeys puzzling over leeks, fallen from the sky, seconds after being freshly harvested with soil on its roots from the World War Zoo gardens zoo keepers' wartime veg garden, Newquay Zoo.

Unusual peacock sized garden pests are becoming a problem, something we’ll blog about in the next week.

Find out more about our project and the year long journey our wartime ‘dig for victory’ garden has taken from seed to Sulawesi Macaque monkey snack by reading past entries from the blog here.

From wartime 1940s allotments to modern times, you can read more about the hi-tech Verti Crop system of growing vegetables showcased by Kevin Frediani and the gardens team at our sister zoo Paignton Zoo www.paigntonzoo.org.uk. Opened in the 1920s, Paignton Zoo survived throughout war in the 1940s and is now at the cutting edge of plant technology in the 21st century.  

We value comments about our project and blog for the World War Zoo gardens project, you can find comment sections on the blog or contact us  via this blog.

Happy gardening!

Royal Mail marks 65th and 70th anniversaries of World War Two in stamps

Britain Alone 13 May 2010

Land Girls featured on the new 'Britain Alone' Royal Mail stamp issue, 13 May 2010

The Royal Mail is  very proud to announce our Britain Alone Special Stamp issue. It is Royal Mail’s tribute, 70 years on, to those who stood proud and defiant against the Axis powers in the dark days of 1940. The stories of their courage and fortitude make for an uplifting and fascinating read, as do the facts surrounding the evacuation from Dunkirk, which also features in this impressive special issue.

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/stamps/content1?catId=120900785&mediaId=121600780

Dunkirk is featured and a local historian at our recent wartime garden event informed me that fishing boats from Newquay and Cornwall were involved as ‘little ships’ in the Dunkirk rescue, a story we’ll follow up as we find more.

Our other zoo blog features Charles Darwin and wildlife on stamps, a joint project with RZSS Edinburgh Zoo  http://darwin200stampzoo.wordpress.com

Shades of Dunkirk, the race for the Channel Ports: No it’s not 1940 all over again. It’s the BBC Dig In Campaign, Icelandic volcanoes, ash and our Dig For Victory garden at Newquay Zoo prepares for our World war Zoo wartime garden event, 1 to 3 May 2010

Dig In for victory - BBC Dig in campaign seeds ready for planting in the next few weeks in our wartime garden, getting ready for our Wartime garden weekend at Newquay Zoo 1 to 3 May 2010.

Two of our resourceful zoo managers have just made it back from a European zoo meeting in Hungary  as there were no flights to be had in the last few days. (Another keeper’s planned trip to our BIAZA rainforest reserve project in Brazil didn’t even leave Britain). The Prime Minister ordered British subjects to make their way to the Channel Ports, on the expectation that the Navy or others would somehow get them back to Blighty.Over the last few days one could almost believe that Dunkirk and the fall of the Channel ports in May and June 1940 was being recreated as part of the 70th anniversary. Maybe I’ve spent too much time in the wartime garden and the 1940s preparing our displays  for our World War Zoo gardens event at Newquay Zoo on 1 to 3 May 2010.

This event marks the 70th anniversary of the events of 1940, rationing, dig for victory (or dear life as some wartime wags put it) and the happier 65th anniversary of  VE and VJ day in May and August 1945. Street parties, Spam fritters and the like.

I eagerly awaited a call from the PM on national radio for the owners of ‘small ships’ to make their way to France and bring back as many as they could. Once the channel ports had fallen, U boats and bombers attempted unrestricted blockade and blitz of Britain. Goodbye easy food imports and luxury goods for the duration.  Hello rationing, recycling, gardening (and spivs with suitcases on the black market). I wonder if any of our wartime suitcase ‘display cases’ of wartime objects  that didn’t go through the Battle Of Britain with WAAFs or accompanied evacuees might have belonged to the Private Walkers of the time, full of the Nylons and hard to get items of the time. (We’ve got some of these luxuries in our wartime collection to show you, no coupons or qusetions asked).

Today's headlines are recycled into tomorrow's plant pots while yesterday's Dig for Victory posters and civil defence helmets look on. The fabulous Paper Potters and a successful potting up of sunflowers in practice for visitors to try out at our wartime gardening event 1 to 3 May 2010. Note the vintage fuel can as a reminder of fuel rationing and the modern BBC Dig In campaign leaflet! Paper potters in FSC wood are available singly or in sets from http://www.henandhammock.co.uk and http://www.mithus.co.uk

Hard to get items in Britain and Europe the last few days include flights, ferry tickets, coach seats  and even hire cars. The last few days of Volcanic ash from Iceland might have cleared international air space but they’ve probably made many people realise how dependent we have become on flying for holidays, business and international trade with a knock on and backlog in many countries and food producers around the world. It also makes you realise the appalling conditions that wartime pilots had to fly in with subsequent losses. We have in our archive a flight dairy of a (bored) flight mechanic in RAF Reykjavik in Iceland, servicing planes which didn’t quite make it over from Canada and America in one piece. Some of these were Liberator bombers.

One of these US planes tragically crashed near Newquay at Watergate Bay on 28 December 1943 with complete loss of life. Relics of this plane and other local stories will be on display at the zoo on our wartime weekend, thanks to Newquay wartime schoolboy Douglas Knight who salvaged some of these relics along with some very impressive shrapnel from the zoo valley at the time.   

St George and the wartime dragon, ready for St. George's day this week - striking Battle of Britain imagery from Carmen Blacker and Joan Pring's wartime design for Newquay War Weapons Week, whilst evacuated with Benenden school to Newquay. Copyright Newquay Zoo

We’ll also have some memories and photos of Benenden girls from that famous school in Kent evacuated to the Hotel Bristol from June 1940 to  December 1945, to accompany the Newquay War Weapons Week salvage and savings poster designed by two sadly now passed away Benenden Girls  Carmen Blacker and Joan Pring. Photos show the girls doing voluntary agricultural work around the Zoo valley area in the 1940s.

We’ll also be highlighting the daring exploits of plant hunters including Frank-Kingdon-Ward, employed secretly during the war to map jungle scape routes, teach survival skills and find crashed aircraft in the jungles of Burma and South east Asia.

A pilot’s silk scarf escape map of these jungles will be on display to illustrate this strange tale.

Silk stockings and scarves aren’t needed to visit the zoo but you could dress to impress in 1940s style to visit us on 1 to 3 May 2010. We’d love to see you … you can take way your little pot of a wildlife gardening sunflower  as part of 2010 Biodiversity Year as well and a few wartime recipes.

Cheerio and TTFN!

Until We’ll  Meet Again …

Mark Norris ,

World War Zoo gardens project team