Beef And Dairy Network - Episode 35 – Professor James Harcombe

Episode Date: May 20, 2018

Episode 35 – Professor James Harcombe Mike Shephard joins in for this episode in which we speak to Professor James Harcombe, a military historian with a special interest in the contribution of cows in war. By Benjamin Partridge and Mike Shephard. Stock media provided by Setuniman/Pond5.com, filmsound/Pond5.com and Soundrangers/Pond5.com

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Plunge. This month, I travel to one of the country's great seats of learning, Portsmouth, to speak to Professor James Harkam. His book, Fallen Beef, The Hidden History of Cattle in Warfare, is being republished this year to coincide with the 100th anniversary of 1918, and makes sensational claims about the number of beef animals involved in historic conflicts, especially during World War I. It is his contention that not only were cattle useful for practical reasons, for example as a source of milk or as a way of measuring the ideal width of a trench, they also performed combat roles and were central to the outcome of the war. I started by telling Professor Harkam just how much I'd enjoyed reading the book. I read it on the train down and it's a real page turner.

It is, yes. It's a bit of a rip-roaring, it's a bit of a boy's own adventure, I think. I mean, the book itself took a number of years to research and sources aren't always clear about the use of cattle in warfare. uh for you to see in the stories i think what i wanted was for people to to kind of engage with those stories of individual cows bulls in the first world war bullocks some of them i mean calves as young as three months were serving on the front line it was um it was horrible these were active serving cattle uh these were combat cattle. They knew they had a job to do and they were willing to do it. They were willing to go out there to serve, to milk and to die for their country, which is something that I think many of us have forgotten. Well, that's a good point because I was reading this book and my mouth was agape because, as you know, I'm very engaged with the world of cattle in general, much more than your average man on the street.

And yet I hadn't heard any of the stories that were in your book. And it was quite a strange experience, really, to be reading about these great moments of history in British history and international history as well. And I just had no idea that the cows were involved. This is it. Well, I think, I mean, please forgive me. I don't want to get onto my high cow, as it were. But there has been something of a horse washing of history, going back even to ancient times. Cattle are there. We're told that the Trojan horse was indeed a horse, that it was clearly a Trojan cow filled with other smaller cattle.

So it's your contention that the Trojan horse was a big wooden cow? Absolutely. But you're also saying that instead of it being filled with men, as we would think of it, warrior men, it was actually filled with cows as well, which is a step further again. I think it's obvious. I mean, the use of cattle in warfare is longstanding. You mentioned the phrase horsewashing, and that's a big part of your book.

You accuse various people throughout history of horsewashing, not just modern historians. Why is it horses that are thought of as the animal of war when, if what you're saying is correct, cows have put in a much stronger shift over the years? It's horsewashing, plain and simple. The horse-storians have got on board. It's become very trendy, very fashionable, to attribute everything in history to horses. What we have to bear in mind is that there were no horses in this country until the mid to late 60s. Really?

Absolutely. What about if I were to go to London and walk to Trafalgar Square, and that's where, of we uh we venerate various people from history there are statues everywhere um famously nelson's column yes dedicated to nelson mandela a lot of statues there with generals on a horse now you're telling me that the first horse came to britain in the 1960s yes how does that tally with what we're seeing then with these statues that were made in the 1800s of generals on big imposing... It's artistic license. It's plain and simple. They exist in paint. They exist in marble. Sure. Do they exist in real life? Not a chance. No more than the wood nymphs and unicorns and lions and tigers that you see in art. Absolutely fictional.

It's a mythical fantasy. Absolutely. It's a complete fantasy. It's a romanticized version of the real combat cattle, the war cows, that would have been doing that job. If the horse didn't exist at all, in nature even, am I right in saying that?

It's a romanticized vision. How is it now that we have a horse, where did that come from? I they were they were they were bred for pleasure um originally in in japan i believe after the war um and again it becomes something of a fad in the mid 60s so when you say bred bred from what from cows yes from from a mixture of cow rabbit d DNA spliced with dolphin semen. So you're telling me that the horses that we see today were created within living memory? Yes.

From cow DNA and dolphin spunk and a bit of rabbit? That's right. Jacked off a dolphin. That's what they did. Went to the operating table. Got a haircut of an Afghan hound, the sleek form of the dolphin, the sturdy four legs of the cow. You're looking at a monster.

A Frankenstein's monster, basically. Yes. But obviously we must remember that Frankenstein's monster is the name of the monster, not the creator. Of course. There is no evidence for a horse. The only evidence we have of horses is horse shoes. Why would a blacksmith in the old days make a metal shoe for an animal that doesn't exist? They were made for luck.

Simply for luck. They're a good luck charm. Or sometimes you'd attach two to a good-sized cow and it would use those for punching. Conceptually, that's very interesting, isn't it? The idea that you'd create something as a good luck charm that you would call a horseshoe without any conception of what a horse is like.

Have you never had a leprechaun on the end of a pencil? I have. Of course I have. Yeah. A leprechaun is a fictional beast. Yeah, but we have a conception of what a leprechaun is. So there must have been a tiny... But only because we've met tiny Irish men.

But that's what I'm saying. What are the antecedents of the fictional horse? What were they basing that on? Because we, as you say, we base the leprechaun on the various small Irish men that you'll meet if you go to Ireland with their little hats

and their little ginger beards. You can see where the leprechaun comes from as an idea. Where does the horse come from as an idea? Did people look at cows and think... How could they be sexier? Maybe.

Well, this is what I'm getting at. Sailors. Sailors. Sailors who have been away from the land, they would look at a manatee and they would see a mermaid. And then what followed wasn't pleasant, but it helped a lot of sailors

get through some very long voyages. So how is it then that if the horse literally didn't exist back before the 20th century, that in our public imagination, we think of horses as being central to human endeavor and human life going back as far as humans, basically? Well, it's a delicious confection, isn't it? You know, it tastes sweet, so we want to eat it. You know, it's pure romanticism. It's in the same way that if you go to one of those tawdry battle reenactments on a bank holiday weekend or a Renaissance fair, you know, it feels like history, but it isn't. It's just a fat accountant in a suit of armor mucking about in a car park.

World War, of the Boer War. These are cattle. Sometimes they're camels. Very rare occasions, they are plucky sheep. Again, if we look into the records, obviously you take the livestock you can where you can. For the New Zealand contingent in the First World War fighting at Gallipoli, that was sheep. And that is why they died in such huge numbers. If they'd been on cows, it would have been a different story. If they'd been on cows, it would have been a walkover. What about the German side in the First World War? Did they have their own war cows? And did they clash on that? Did you have cow on cow action? Cow on cow violence. There are limited incidents that are recorded on the Western Front. We have to remember

just as the British idea of warfare is seen as a cattle train, the Germans operated very much a sausage machine. Pigs are intelligent animals, but they're also devious, crafty. They are disloyal. They have no concept of pride. That's the difficulty with the pig. You can put it in a spiked helmet. Sure. You can give it a big curly mustache. Why not? But that pig is never going to lead men to victory. Do you think that the reliance on pigs rather than cattle was one of the reasons why the Germans didn't win that war? It ultimately cost them the war. The trotters simply, they would sink through the mud. You have to remember the horrors of the First World War. This is a desolate landscape of filth, of human effluent, of relentless craters of mud. Pigs don't see that as horror. It was a pig's holiday.

They were in hog heaven. They were literally like pigs in shit. And that's why they wouldn't respond to orders. What was the turning point in the First World War? That's an excellent question uh i think a lot's been written about this obviously i have my own theories if we look at 1917 the russians have been knocked out of the war the russian revolution their cattle potential is utterly wiped out so really brit, Britain, France are alone on the Western Front.

They're aware that the Germans are coming towards them, refreshed, fresh troops from the East. What do they do? Well, luckily, Uncle Sam's there, isn't he? And I think everybody recognizes the tremendous contribution of the Americans in both world wars, not only to morale, but in terms of armament and supply, but perhaps most strikingly of all, in the supply of Texas longhorn cattle. They're formidable beasts. One young Welsh fusilier described the first Texas longhorn he saw as just being like a wall of meat falling from the sky. Because these were the first parachute cattle. Right, and that was a new thing that the Americans brought in. That's right, being dropped from airships over Hamburg,

over the major naval ports of the Baltic. They'd seen the way things had gone on the Western Front, the smell of minced beef drifting across the trenches. So yes, they thought, put some goggles on these bad boys and let's drop them out of a zeppelin. These were American manufactured airships that sailed right above the German guns and even saw cattle falling on university towns like Freiburg, Lubeck.

The Germans didn't know what had hit them. So what happens when a Texas longhorn cow gets dropped into a German university town? Well, they cancel lectures that day, I can tell you. If you think about the sheer reach of those horns, and when that's coming down at 400, maybe 500 miles an hour onto delicate ceramic tile work that's shattered through a thatched roof of an old beer keller smithereens these kind of things are utterly flattened so this is different from the parachuting you know in the trench situation you've got the parachuting cows coming down you're talking about literally dropping a cow with no parachute out. Sometimes. I mean, this was, but you have to remember, it's the hindquarters of the Texas longhorn.

That is pure muscle. They land like a cat. They land like cats. I've seen it done. We combined with the technical college in Santa Fe, and we were able to test it in laboratory conditions, heights of up to 250 feet. A Texas longhorn will walk away from that.

Just land on its feet. Just land on its feet. Bounce away into the night. Keep those horns moving. Left, right, left, right. Maybe you've got an old shopkeeper. He takes one horn in the gut. Family of four.

The child's in a sailor suit. He's up in the air he's flying this is what we're talking about terror on the streets maybe they're not not the allies proudest moments no but it brought the armistice it brought peace what was the attitude of the the british tommy the the human fighter in the World War I, towards their cows. Absolutely loved them. Yeah, they had all kinds of nicknames for them. Horny little blighters, your beef pals, bully beef, they'd say.

Here comes the bully beef, you know, more so than the cavalry. You know, here comes the cavalry. We like to think people said they didn't. Here's our good mate, bully beef. In 1938, 20 years after the Great War ended, the social anthropologist Willard Rugman set about collecting and recording the popular songs sung in the trenches

by soldiers during the conflict. Most of the songs were about girls back home, and many are still well-known today, such as Mildred, You're My Kaiser My Kaiser, Daisy Daisy Where's Belgium Gone, and Dirty Edna's Back Passage. Of course, those songs may have been about cows back home, we sadly have no way of knowing. However, one short recording made by Willard Rugman captured a Great War veteran, then sadly homeless, living on the streets of London, singing the chorus of the old trench song, Me Old Beef Pal. Here he comes, me old bee pal Me old bee pal

Me old bee pal Here he comes, me old bee pal Me old bee pal Me old bee pal Me o'be come, me o'be come, here he comes, me o'n fin' pal, Iri fam' Me o'n fin' pal, Me o'n fin' pal, Me o'n fin' pal, Iri fam'

Me o'n fin' pal, Me o'n fin' pal, I am the only child The only child The only child I am the only child The only child The only child The old sweet town The old sweet town Here it comes The old sweet town The old sweet town

The old sweet town Here it comes The old sweet town me here he comes And me I'll be cow. So when was the last time that a cow was involved in a combat situation? Active service cattle. The British Army was phased out by 1982. The last serving cow died in the Falklands when he was dropped on an Argentine radio operator. Killed the fucker stone dead.

He was awarded the Victoria Cross for that. Posthumously? Yes. Operation Jerky, as it was known, was very much a symbolic act. Thatcher's government, keen to show the Argentine junta that they could not be bested,

they realized that they had to make some early symbolic moves against the occupying force. It would take weeks before the task force reached the South Atlantic, but what they could do was get one of their best cattle into a Hercules, refueling at Ascension, straight to the Falklands. And he walked willingly out of the back of that plane with pinpoint accuracy, took that guy out. And it's a funny story, actually. You'll know that in the Second World War, of course, it was quite common to write on the side of the bombs, this one's for Herr Hitler.

No, you won't like this, Himmler. I imagine bombs annoy you, Herr Goebbels. That kind of thing, ribald humour. And on the side of that cow, whose name is still classified, bit of steak

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Halfway through the interview, Professor Harkam hit me with a shameful and horrifying statistic. Over 20% of the homeless cattle on our streets served in our armed forces. If you look under a railway bridge now and see a cow, that cow has a service history. But you'll often see the cows under bridges and underpasses and things, and they have got the medals pinned on. Sometimes, yes. Often they'll have sold them for some cheap silage like the the very

cheapest stuff george cross for three liters of turbo silage and there they are out of their minds don't even know who they are what they did udders full of muck it's a tragedy. And you can't milk them, can you, once they've had that? No. No, it's like battery acid or cold piss. Have you ever drunk the milk of a cow that's been on turbo silage? I mean, I've had my own dark times. But out of solidarity, yes. I mean, when you look into a cow's eyes and it says, what am I here for? If I can't fight, if I can't milk, what can I do?

How do you win that cow's trust? How do you convince that cow to fight again, but a new battle, a battle of self-worth? You've got to suck its tits, haven't you? That's what you've got to do. Now, I don't mean to question the veracity of your work, and it's obvious that you're held in esteem by a great many people, but I think it would be remiss of me if I didn't bring up

some of the criticism that your work has faced. Oh, yes. The naysayers, as I like to call them, the horse brigade, maybe. Yeah. Well, let's start with actually the wider criticism, really, that your book displays a kind of level of jingoism, militarism that glorifies war in general, but more so war involving combat cows. war involving combat cows and that actually the campaigns we've seen over the past few years to phase out cows from active service which which started in the 60s with the hippie movement then of course filtered through into mainstream society uh and now there are you know being drawn up conventions in the in the un the cows shouldn't be involved in war it's it's often seen as a as a kind of cousin of the the anti- soldier movement. There's a feeling that these cows are innocent, they can't make their own decision to be involved in war, that it is wrong.

You know, these are all things that have been discussed at the highest level of international politics. And some people think that your work ignores that change of opinion that has come about over the past 50 years or so, and that you're behind the times. Now, how do you feel when someone says that to you? Behind the times? Well as a historian perhaps maybe it's my business to be behind the times but uh i would not say that my work glorifies warfare what it what it does is it honors sacrifice and yes i know there are people at the united nations who've made a lot of very pretty speeches i mean a lot of what maybe i would perhaps unfashionably call bleeding heart liberals like Kofi Annan or Robert Mugabe. These are all people that have spoken out for the right of the cow.

And yet I say the right of the cow is a right to choose. You've somewhat dodged, though, still the question that there is evidence that over the years, most of the cows that we saw in combat situations had not chosen to be there. Most of the cows that we saw in combat situations had not chosen to be there. They'd been sometimes knocked out, knocked unconscious, and they woke up in a war zone. They were on a pasture somewhere in part of a dairy farm, and then a man from the army comes up, offers them a handful of dock leaves, and then smacks them over the head with a kosh and before they know it, they're in the centre of a world conflict. That, I would say,

is part of the training process. But they haven't chosen to go on that process. What I want from you really, I want you to acknowledge that this campaign to get cows out of warfare comes from a place of a fact that cows didn't get to choose.

If they hung up their battle livery and huddled off back to the pasture, they would be shot. They would be shot. But how many cows were shot for cowardice? It is in the tens of thousands. I would refute that. My own research indicates that the number of combat cattle executed for cowardice was very slim, perhaps 10 or 12.

The numbers you're referring to, I think, are simply fat foxes or ill rabbits that have been dispatched with a hammer or shovel and then used to beef up the statistics quite literally. I mean, we must remember that the very idea of cowardice is for un-cow-like behavior. That's what we're looking at here. So when you see people condemned for cowardice, they've taken their chances, they've thrown their dice, if you will.

That's the root of the word. Comes from in war. Unlike a cow. Cow wore dice. So that's where the word comes from. Yes. Cow wore dice. Yes.

Right. This is a little bit awkward to talk to you about, but it does feel like something I need to bring up. Your standing in the academic community is patchy, should we say. You have your acolytes

and you have your naysayers. The word crackpot gets thrown around, as I'm sure you're aware. If you type your name into Google, there are a few rumors that come up on that front page there. And I think anyone listening who might be Googling your name just to see what you've been up to. Fudged research, gambling debts. Yes, I mean, it's a real picture. There's one thing that was particularly worrying to me.

I just wanted to be able to clear it up with you, really, and you can confirm or deny this, really. I'll deny it. Which is that there are rumours that you were seen throughout last summer, last year, and there were a number of witnesses who said that they saw you down at the dockyard in Portsmouth that they saw you down at the dockyard in Portsmouth pushing what looked like a horse in a bag into the sea.

And that wasn't just once. I think I read certainly five or six witness statements. Some people saw you dragging a big bag towards the dockyard. I just want to give you the opportunity to clear up what was going on there. Well, I mean, if people are going to level ridiculous accusations, then I'm certainly going to deny them. Maybe I should perhaps first lay bare a few very simple facts. Have you ever put a horse in a bag?

Do you know what a horse in a bag looks like? It looks very similar to eight or nine old VHS recorders in a bag. Very, very similar indeed. So you're saying you were disposing of household waste by pushing it into the sea? Absolutely. I can see why people make that assumption. If they see something that looks a bit like a horse, and then they look and read what you've written over the years about horses,

some of the things you've said are pretty stark, pretty bald, with your attitude when it comes to horses and people who like horses. Sure. I don't have a lot of time for horses. Does that mean I want to hurt horses, abuse horses? I don't have the time. But if I was speaking to horses now, maybe I'd say, maybe all horses should be seahorses. If you know what I'm saying. I mean, that sounded a little bit threatening,

to be honest. Oh, I don't think so. Just saying all horses should be seahorses sounds like, you know, maybe you think all horses should be bagged up and pushed into the sea, but that's not what you said. No, that isn't.

If you want to suggest that was my implication, you can draw what you want, as long as it's not a picture of a horse, because I'd spit on it and throw it in the sea. Professor James Harkam, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. A big thank you to Professor James Harkam for that fascinating interview.

We wish him all the best with all his future endeavours, whether that's writing another book that is largely rejected by the academic community, or pushing bags of old video recorders into the sea. His book, Fallen Beef, The Hidden History of Cattle in Warfare, is out now, and if you'd prefer to listen to in this area of study? I think it always piqued my interest. Even as a child, growing up, I remember my grandparents' house. There was this old, tattered-edged, sepia-tinted photo of a man who was, you know, all just moustache and hat, sat there proudly astride what was clearly his cow, his battle cow. Full military uniform, regalia.

Turns out that was my great-grandfather on the eve of the Battle of the Somme. And that cow brought his body back from six miles behind enemy lines. Took eight months. The old family story of course they were hearing the bells ringing out marking the armistice they thought everyone would be coming home

there's a single hoof beat on the window pane of the drawing room open the door there, there she is. His cow. Father's cow, they say. The old colonel, slumped across the back. Just... gristle and holes, really. In the chrysaline holes really in the mouth of that cow a telegram and that telegram was from the king it said well done

well bloody done The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The

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The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The The According to Professor Harkam's research, over three million cows died during the course of World War I. Official statistics put the number at seven. Whichever figure you believe,

why not take a moment to remember them today? They fought and died for your freedom. Your freedom to eat beef. Until next time, beef out. Thanks to Mike Shepard. The Dead Pilot Society podcast brings you hilarious comedy pilots that were never made, featuring actors like Aubrey Plaza, Andy Richter, Paul F. Tompkins, John Hodgman, Adam Scott, Molly Shannon, Busy Phillips, Tom Lennon, Anna Camp,

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