Of Rats and Men: The Decisive Role of Rodents on the Western Front

One would be hard pressed to find World War I scholarship without some level of environmental influence. Indeed, historians of the conflict cannot tell many—if any—stories without some nod to the natural factors that shaped the war because no combatants experienced the war without some level of ecological influence. Much as soldiers found it hard to confide their stories to loved ones, journals, and diaries without the chief characters being terrain, weather, disease, food, and vermin, it follows that historians might also elevate such factors to a similarly relevant place in how we understand the conflict. Yet, as with most conflicts, the natural and built environments remain a sideshow to the broader political, diplomatic, and traditional military influences in World War I scholarship. In sum, we have missed the stuff that consumed World War I soldiers’ experiences for events that made up only a small part of their existence. This chapter, then, will push to the forefront one of the most pervasive, exasperating, and ubiquitous parts of the war: the British, French, German, and American soldiers’ struggle with rats. In sum, World War I cannot be fully understood or appreciated without a more intentional examination of the vermin-infested medium in which the war happened. This chapter will give voice and prominence to what millions of other soldiers in the trenches gave voice and prominence: rats not only in the trenches but in their collective consciousness.