August 12, 2021 • 30 mins
When 17-year old British seaman George Hickenbottom saw an undernourished, ailing stray wandering the dockyards of Hong Kong, his heart melted. He smuggled the cat about the HMS Amethyst and named him Simon. Simon soon won over the captain and crew, partially due to his winning personality, but mainly due to his astonishing prowess as a rat-catcher. And when disaster struck the Amethyst, the gravely-wounded Simon soldiered on, protecting food stores as the crew struggled to escape enemy forces. Learn more about Simon's adventures at sea in the second part of this two-part series on military cats.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Uh we are but as
always proud to be accompanied with our super producer fellow
cat lover, the one and only Max Williams. Give it
up for him. Uh they called me Ben. This is
part two of our dive into the world of military cats. Uh,
(00:50):
you don't know. Over the break our quote unquote break
for this two part episode, I was thinking, do you
think either either of your cat you've met my cats too,
do you think any of our forecats would be military worthy? Oh? Man, Well,
a previous cat of mine who still exists. His name
(01:11):
is Fernando a k A. Robert a k A. No,
I think that's the only two names you guys. Um,
he was an indoor outdoor is an indoor outdoor cat.
I think it's definitely a requirement for a military cat.
You gotta be able to rough it in the out
of doors. And he would just, you know, do some
really intense stealth kills and present his his prey to
(01:33):
me and my my former roommate in the most elaborate
and bizarre of way. It's pretty sure that cat is
a bit of a psychopath. He killed like a rabbit,
like a full grown rabbit. So yeah, I think Robert
would probably definitely cut it, probably in some sort of
weird black ops kind of assassination squad perhaps. Yeah. Um,
I think Dr Bankman is more of a lover than
(01:55):
a fighter, more scientists than a scholar than a soldier.
But the other cat, the cat of many names, would
go full Colonel Kurtz. For anyone familiar with Heart of Darkness.
I think they would have to send the equivalent of
of a special cat operative to stop his reign of terror. Luckily, uh,
(02:16):
the cat we're talking about today in Part two of
our Military Cats episode is not a feline Colonel Kurtz.
His name is Simon. As we said in part one, cats,
like many animals, have been accompanying humans into war for
a very very long time. I believe one of our
first examples was ancient Egypt. But this guy, Simon, this
(02:41):
cat had such an amazing story that we decided to
dedicate an entire episode to him. Yeah, you may recall
from episode one. If you haven't listened to that one,
by the way, you should. But this woman will stand alone,
so if you don't want to write away, you can
hold it off for another day. But part one is
a doozy. And then then we talk about a pair
of cats named Faith in Panda during the London Blitz
(03:04):
of World War two around nineteen thirty six, and Faith
was nominated for what's called a Dicken Medal, which we
describe which is like this like medal of valor specifically
given to animals. Faith was nominated, but she did not
make the cut. She was not eligible because she was
a civilian cat. But she did get a medal for
(03:26):
bravery anyway, like a special you know, kind of like
a like a participation awards sort of but still really
nice for a faith. Today's cat, Simon, is the only
cat to ever receive this prestigious animal award, the Dicken Medal,
the highest British honor for valor in the field of battle. Yeah,
(03:47):
this guy, Simon has been reported on in Time dot com,
has been reported on in uh per infer dot org.
Of course the massively fam us in the United Kingdom
by our friends at mental Floss as well. So we
just want to give another shout out to Jackie mead
(04:08):
Over at Mental Floss for the excellent work on war
cats or cat war heroes. Here's Simon's origin story. Simon
is a stray. It's there's a seventeen year old with
the name George Hickenbottom who brings Simon from Hong Kong
(04:28):
to his ship, the HMS Amethysts and not going Afterwards,
the Amethyst gets their orders. They are to proceed up
the Young Sea River to guard the British embassy from
the Chinese Communist Revolution. Halfway there, the ship takes fire
from the p l A, the People's Liberation Army. Simon,
(04:49):
similar to Pouli that we mentioned in our previous episode,
is snoozing during the fight. He's sleeping in the cabin's
quarters when a shell goes through the bulkhead and Simon
gets his first wartime injuries. He has shrapnel in his legs,
his face and his back are burned. The ship runs
the ground and they can't like other British sources, can't
(05:12):
rescue them because there's too much enemy fire. Yeah, if
you want to see a picture of Simon, highly recommend
uh jumping on over to p d s a dot Org,
which is an animal welfare organization. They have a whole
page about Simon Um and his time on the d
M fifty four destroyer, and there's a really great picture
(05:33):
of him with some crew members get have given him
a good little scritch, But he is a tough looking cat,
let me tell you. He's just got this look about
him like he's seen some stuff. And that's because he
has seen some stuff. And yeah, the seventeen year old
who was what's known as an ordinary seaman. That's probably
the lowest rank that you can get on a naval vessel. Uh, seventeen.
(05:56):
I guess they must have been playing a little fast
and loose with enlistment aged Limon, so maybe it was
just younger back then. Um. But he actually he takes
a shine to this little school, scrawny stray and he decides,
I Am going to smuggle this cat onto my ship,
which is called the Amethyst. So there's a guy, you know,
(06:17):
like a guard or whatever, and George Hickenbottom hides the
cat under his dress, you know, his this sailor's suit,
his tunic, and he takes him to his tiny, tiny
bunk that's where he keeps him. And George was eventually
appointed captain of the Fox Soul. It seems like it's
some kind of British slang that was used in uh
(06:39):
in military parlance. Um, but what that basically means is
like he's in charge of like scrubbing the toilest with
the toothbrush and making sure everything is neat and tidy.
He's essentially like the maid for the whole ship. Forecastle's forecastle.
It's the upper deck of a sailing ship, uh, the
forward part of a ship, of the sailor's living quarters.
(07:01):
So it's a humorous title, yes, exactly, very tongue in cheek,
very British indeed. But of course, I mean, come on, cats,
you can't really hide the cat forever. I don't know
if anyone's ever tried to hide one from their landlord
to keep from paying a pet deposit. I sure have.
But inevitably, they don't really like to be controlled. You know,
they are gonna do what they're gonna do, and whether
(07:22):
that means me alling when you block them in a
room or something like that, or shut them away so
no one sees them, they're certainly not going to play
along with whatever your schemes might be. So yeah, the
captain of the ship eventually met Simon thankfully. Though the captain,
Lieutenant Commander Ian Griffiths, really doug cats. He had several
family cats back home. UM, so this was a fortuitous
(07:46):
encounter and he didn't reprimand George at all. In fact,
he was he was kind of excited about it. And
it turns out that the Amethyst needed a ship cat.
This is the thing we talked about this. Throughout the
history of the military, there have been cat employed to
keep the pest population down on a ship. Especially that
can be a thing. There are definitely rats that can
(08:07):
get aboard ships at different ports and they can clean
out food supplies and all the rations, and that can
be a real problem, and they can carry diseases, especially
if you're traveling in real humid, kind of nasty hot weather,
which they were. So the captain allows George to keep
the cat and allows the cat to occupy that role.
(08:29):
But since George is the foxel or the forecastle, um,
he's also responsible for cleaning up after the cat. Uh.
And the captain, according to George himself, says that if
he sees any cat droppings cat leavings aboard the ship,
he would quote have me up on a charge. Uh.
(08:49):
And he actually got a lot of help and support
from his crewmates who also liked the cat um so
any uh they called it muck that was seen was
quickly thrown overboard. And you can find a lot of
these accounts in that fabulous article from per and for
dot org, which is a lovely name for a cat website. Yes,
(09:10):
and uh, Simon did something that I understand but don't
philosophically respect. Uh. He was a social climber. He was
in the networking and nepotism. Uh. He of course made
friends with everybody, but he really wanted to make friends
with the captain. And we must assume that there was
(09:30):
something he could sense about the hierarchy of a ship.
And also side note um George Hickenbottom at seventeen was
it was legally enlisted. Even now, at least in the
u S. Seventeen is the minimum age for enlistment for people.
But but is that too young to go to war?
(09:52):
I definitely think it affects someone's outlook later in life anyway.
So Simon's one of those things where if you can't
like seventeen year olds, there's a lot of things seventeen
year olds can't. They can't buy alcohol, again, drink in
a bar. They can't buy cigarettes or vapes in these days.
It just feels like a little bit of a stretch
(10:13):
for to expect them to be able to, you know,
die for their country when their country doesn't treat them
as a full human in other respects. None of those
things are like the end all be all of what
it means to be alive, but it still does feel
I've always felt that was a little bit of a mismatch. Well,
you do get exceptions when you're in the military because
of that very reason. Those laws, those laws are different
from military members, but also the human brain is not
(10:36):
fully fully developed until the mid twenties, so anyway, anyway,
that's a story for a different episode. But here's what happens.
Simon is all about kissing up and he becomes an
honor student. If he's not hanging out in George's room,
he's hanging out at the captain's cabin. And when he
kills rats, he's you can either say he's trying to
(10:59):
curry favor her or he's trying to brag, because he
starts taking some of these dead animals to the captain directly,
sometimes even leaving them on his bunk, and Captain Griffiths
and Simon really dig each other like this cat will
follow Griffith's around. And then if Griffith's like whistles or
(11:23):
you know, if you have ever lived with a cat,
you know the move like sport. Uh yeah, then uh,
Simon will come running to Griffith's. And no one had
a like a soul responsibility for feeding him, but he
always he never went hungry. Everybody loved him, and they
(11:44):
all like you know, they all wanted to give him
treats and wanted to pediment stuff. So this is a
pretty great situation for Simon. In December of that year,
a new captain comes aboard a guide, him Captain Skinner.
Luckily for Simon and for the crew, Skinner also digs cats,
and so Simon leaves pretty much lives his life as
(12:07):
he did before under the rule of Griffiths. So now
things are going pretty well until that faithful river trip
we teased in the beginning. Maybe we can talk a
little bit about what was going on in context here.
(12:29):
It's doubtlessly something by the way that Simon as a
cat would not care about. But here's what's going on.
There is a brutal, bloody civil war in the Nation
of China, Communist insurgents for the People's Liberation Army p
l A led by Mause Dong and the ruling Nationalist
(12:50):
Party of Tchang Kai Shek. The country is embroiled in
this and the Amethyst is ordered up the river up
Young z from Shanghai. It's and Un King to relieve
another ship called the HMS Consort. The Consort had been
guarding the British embassy for a while, but they needed
(13:10):
some time off, and time was of the essence because
both sides of the civil war had signed a ceasefire agreement.
That ceasefire agreement had an expiration date midnight on April
fighting could resume, so Mao's People's Liberation Army um, we're
holding the north side of the Yangtze and these nationals
(13:35):
were controlling the south bank, and Britain hadn't really picked
a side yet in this conflict. They weren't expecting it
to be an all out blood bath. British officials, however,
believed that the Amethyst could reach Nan King in time
to take advantage of the ceasefire. But then on the
morning of April the Amethyst was sixty miles from the
(13:59):
city when the ceasefire abruptly came to an end from
the north shore. Uh. There were explosions all around, gunfire, mortar,
all of that good stuff, and an explosion hit the ship,
and the bridge and the wheelhouse and the power room
(14:19):
took the brunt of that impact. The ship got hit
more than fifty times, and nineteen of his crew, including
the captain, lost their lives on that attack on April
um seven were injured, and Uh the Amethist eventually was
able to limp away and taking refuge in a shelter
(14:44):
in a creek that was a little bit upstream. So
essentially the Communist had the Amethyst backed into a corner.
They were running scared. Um. So there was a series
of negotiations that then began um with the Communist to
allow them to you know, let them go on their
merry way. Yeah, this is what I was talking about earlier.
(15:04):
So we think Simon was most likely snooze in a
way and in a cabin somewhere when a Chinese shell
knocked a huge hole in the hull of the ship.
Shards of shrapnel hit this sleeping cat in his back
and his legs and as he's either running or he's
(15:25):
thrown by the explosion. I think he's running due to
our conversations with the amazing Rachel Lance, the world's pre
eminent expert on maritime explosions. Simon's face has burned, his
whiskers and eyebrows gets singed. He has you know, traumatic injuries.
He crawls as far out of the way as he can.
(15:46):
He passes out. He's missing for several days, but eventually
he staggers on deck and another Griffiths, not the former captain,
a petty officer named George Griffiths, finds him and, like
you would with any other sailor, he has taken to
sick bay. He's in terrible shape. He's weak, he's dehydrated.
(16:06):
He hasn't recovered from miss injuries. Medical officer named Michael
Fearingly goes to work removing the shrapnel in a couple
of different places, stitching Simon's body up and then looking
at his face. They were concerned he might have gone
deaf due to being so close to the blast, and
they also find that his heart seems incredibly weak, so
(16:30):
Fearingly has to be the bearer of bad news. And
he tells the crew, yes, Simon survived, but he's not
out of the woods yet. So they're trying to figure
out what to do. And then a guy who's not
a cat fan enters the fray, Lieutenant Commander John Kieran's.
He had come across land from Nan King and now
(16:54):
that Captain Skinner was dead, he was in charge of
the Amethyst, and he was like, look, I don't like cats.
I'm not gonna let this cat sleep in the captain's quarters.
And so now the cats start sleeping in the and
the petty officers mess which is like, you know, the
lunch room. Uh. And then he's just you know, if
you've ever had a pet that's been injured, you know,
(17:16):
when it's touch and go, you try to make them
as comfortable as possible. There's not really anything you do
but hope they pulled through. That's right. Um, And the
ship doctor doctor Fearnley suggested that Simon actually live a
little closer to the sick bay, um, because him being
you know, convalescing cat could potentially boost moral for the
(17:39):
the young crewmen who were there trying to recover from
their wounds as well. This attack, after all, was a
huge hit to moral that's about as big a hit
as you can take. Is one of the form of
a mortar round. They get shot at your ship. They
had lost their fellow crew members. There was a lot
of sadness and suffering and uh, you know, people really
(18:00):
wondering what was next for them, and so having this
cat around because he also had to endure those same adversities,
it was really kind of like a solidarity situation, like
a real boost them around. They felt that they were
all kind of in this together. And it's silly sounding
in a way, but it's also really really moving because
(18:20):
if you think about it, I could see how that
would exactly be the case, just feeling like, oh this
cat make if this cat could make it, this little
scrappy guy, that we can make it too. Yeah, that's
that's exactly what happens. So Simon is is familiar with
the ways of hierarchies and oceans now and he tries
to win over this lieutenant commander who would be like,
(18:43):
if there were a bad guy in or in this
Pixar film that I'm seeing, it would be this lieutenant
commander Karen's So Simon gives him a dead rat as
a present. This guy is now captain the ship, has
no idea what to do, so he just it's funny, Gus.
He like he knows it's a gift, and so like
re leads down and pet Simon for the first time.
(19:05):
Wait still, Cimon's nott paid attention throws the rat overboard,
but he has now sort of taught Simon that you
will be rewarded for rats, which becomes very important very quickly,
and they, uh, they befriend each other. The Pixar moment
is when the captain takes sick. He gets a virus
and he's bedridden for a few days, and so Simon
(19:27):
starts hanging out with him. Uh, and then from that
point on Kerans and Simon's are friends. But while that's happening, Look,
the Amethyst got rocked in the worst way. The ship
is really deteriorating. Rations have to be cut in half
because the Chinese forces that are kind of keeping them
(19:48):
locked in there, they're not supplying food and they're not
allowing things to come through. Uh. The negotiations aren't going
well because the Chinese forces want the British to say
the Amethyst had fired first, and that's not true. So
the British aren't going to aren't going to play ball here.
(20:09):
So the ship and its crew are stranded and that
little creek for almost ten weeks. This is bad. Ten hot, sticky, gross,
humid weeks. And of course, as we talked about, that
hot wet condition is really really a good one for
(20:31):
rat breeding. Uh So that became a thing. The food
supplies were in really really serious danger of being consumed
by the now teeming piles of rats that were on
the ship. And let's make no mistake, these were not
like cute little white rats you know that you see
perched on people's shoulders and stuff, or running around in mazes.
(20:54):
Uh these were nasty guys. These were attack rats, vicious
rat it, you know, just absolutely feral, massive rats. One
particularly nasty one, which the crew members nicknamed mouth say tongue,
would repeatedly attack the food supplies and learned to evade
(21:16):
the traps that were set for it. Uh So, with
Simon finally took this bastard out, the crew were absolutely
beside themselves. They promoted Simon to able seacat, which is
the cat equivalent of able seamen, which would be you
know a higher rank of like a kind of just
basic crewman, and they again symbolic he was already this
(21:38):
amazing symbol of resilience. Now he was literally helping them
survive by killing these nasty rats that were going after
their food in a very real way. And this is
an unsustainable situation. Despite Simon's heroism, there's almost only so
much he can do. So it's nearly three months after
that original attack. Negotiations are at a stand still, and
(22:03):
the captain is thinking, look, negotiations are growing nowhere. We're
running out of fuel, we're running out of food. At
some point we're gonna have to make a run for it.
So he waits until the night of July. The moon
(22:24):
is included. There's a very low light, and there's a
merchant vessel named the kang Ling Liberation that's passing the Amethyst.
It's heading down the river. At about ten pm. The
captain seizes the moment and he makes a hundred and
four mile run down to the open ocean. The enemy
(22:45):
is not super aggressive, probably because the Amethysts got very lucky.
It took him five hours and they made it. They
ran into the HMS Concord part way up a river
called the Hong Pooh south of Wu Song, and they
escorted the rest of the way. The captain sends this
message say have rejoined the fleet south of Wusung. No
(23:05):
damage your casualties. God save the king. Uh So their
ordeal is over. They've been held hostage for a hundred
and one days. Their cruising back to believe it or not,
Simon's own birthplace, Hong Kong. On August first. There's a
special ceremony on deck um that represents everything the crew
(23:26):
has been through. The officers and the and the crew
are standing at attention. One person's holding Simon, and George
Griffith's who he mentioned earlier, is reading out a citation
where able seacats Simon is awarded the Amethyst Campaign Ribbon.
(23:46):
Uh This, as we mentioned the very beginning. Receiving these
prestigious awards like the Dickle make Simon unique in the
history of animals in the military. And this guy comes
in international celebrity. It's covered in the movies, it's covered
in the news. Cameras are recording their ship's arrival in
(24:07):
Hong Kong, and Simon is is well. I'd say he's
kind of posing for pictures. He's a cat. You know,
someone's holding them or someone's waiting until he stops for
a second. They're like click click click click click for sure.
And like I was saying, you can see pictures of
the cat, there's tons of them out there on on
several of the articles that we cited. And he is
a tough looking dude, really really interesting features and in
(24:32):
the very weathered world where he kind of vibe to him.
But as we said at the top of the show,
this became a massive story. Like you said, he was
an overnight sensation, and he became this international symbol of uh,
you know, resilience and and the ability to kind of
come back and push through all of the horrible, horrific
(24:53):
things that people saw an experience during World War Two. So,
while the ship was being repaired in Hong Kong, the
Armed Forces Mascot Club, which is part of the pv
s A, which I believe that's the website we were
talking about, that is a longstanding UK organization for you know,
devoted to the welfare of animals, not not just cats,
(25:17):
all animals, and they suggested that the captain or the
military give Simon an official commendation that he should be
awarded the prestigious Dicken Metal for animal gallantry. It was
also referred to often as the Animals Victoria Cross, which
(25:37):
is the highest military honor that you can get in
the UK. And again, how heartwarman is this? People reply
to this request and they write testimonials, one captain writing, uh,
we won't read the whole quoll, but the excerpt here
that's important is uh. He talked about how dangerous threats were,
how messed up Simon was, and then says throughout the incident,
(25:59):
Simon's behavior was of the highest order. One would not
have expected a small cat to survive the blast from
an explosion capable of making a whole over a foot
in diameter in a steel plate. And then he says
that Simon's presence was a decided factor in maintaining the
high level of morale and he gets the Dicken Metal,
(26:21):
He gets the highest order in the land in a
unanimous decision. That's right. And I gotta say they they
buried another player in this story here, Peggy the Dog.
I want to know more about Peggy the dog and
why Peggy didn't get more attention. Um, but where there's
a cat's story today? So we'll leave that for another day.
Maybe we'll do one about war dogs one of these days.
(26:42):
But in August five, the AP broke the news that
this award was going to be given to Simon. The
headline was Amethysts cat gets dick in metal for catching
rats um and the restless history. It was the only
feeline ever to get a prestigious dicken metal and the
(27:03):
only animal in the Royal Navy you ever earn this
medal too, so double threat Simon. Yeah, and he like
was literally got fan mail people writing fan letters to
a cat. He would get like two hundred a day,
along with toys and you know, treats and things like that.
And a lieutenant by the name of Stewart Head got
(27:24):
the honor or that the dubious honor, let's just say,
for sorting through all of this crap and making sure
the good stuff got to got to Simon and our
one last note here. Unfortunately, Simon received this tremendous accolade posthumously. Uh.
(27:44):
He passed away on November after only living two years,
and maybe it was. I mean, the official cause was
high fever and acute enteritis. His war wound, of course,
had seriously weakened him again. Cards and letters arrived by
(28:06):
the truckload his as we mentioned the very top of
the episode. Uh. He is featured in Time magazine. He
is in the obituary page of Time Magazine. He was
buried at the pds A Animal Cemetery at Ilford, which
is east of London, and especially made casket. Uh. There
was a short ceremony. There was a marker place that
(28:29):
was a wooden one originally it was later replaced with
a stone monument. And eventually the Amethyst carries out a
search for a new cat and they find another black
and white tomcat. They name him Simon to unlike Simon
one he comes from London, not Hong Kong. But if
I could paraphrase one of the old cliches, I guess
(28:51):
you never get the cat nip while you can still
snarf it, you know, I can't. You can't get the
flowers while you still smell him hunt. No, it's it's
a great adaptation. I love it. Um. And it's interesting
too because they specifically wanted to get a cat from
the exact area of London Camden, which is like super
(29:11):
hipster central these days. Uh. And they did that so
that's where Simon two came from. Um wraps us up.
I think for the story of Simon really really really
was worthy of of his own episode and uh so
sad actually, I think there really is kind of a
touching and bitter sweet end of the story that he
only lived two years. In those two years, they were
(29:33):
not an easy two years, but he meant so much
and stood for so much to so many people that
I think it was a life well lived. Well done, Simon,
You're a good cat. Thanks as always to Casey Pegram,
Thanks to the one and only Max Williams. Uh and
also no thanks to you man. We knocked out a
two parter. Uh and except for this line that I'm
(29:53):
about to say, we we didn't brag about how we
how we actually were able to plan it except for
just this one moment. Well we didn't have to because
this was actually conceived as a two partner from the start,
with the amazing help of our research associate Gabe Lucier,
who also is a cat person. If I'm not mistaken,
I believe that is correct. Thanks Everyone's Foster than Animals, Well,
(30:16):
thanks to Christo Rosciotis, Thanks to Eve's Jeff Code and
thanks to our very own favorite straight Jonathan Strickland, a
k a. The Twister, who at this point is far
overdue for an appearance. We'll see you next time, folks.
(30:37):
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Uh we are but as
always proud to be accompanied with our super producer fellow
cat lover, the one and only Max Williams. Give it
up for him. Uh they called me Ben. This is
part two of our dive into the world of military cats. Uh,
(00:50):
you don't know. Over the break our quote unquote break
for this two part episode, I was thinking, do you
think either either of your cat you've met my cats too,
do you think any of our forecats would be military worthy? Oh? Man, Well,
a previous cat of mine who still exists. His name
(01:11):
is Fernando a k A. Robert a k A. No,
I think that's the only two names you guys. Um,
he was an indoor outdoor is an indoor outdoor cat.
I think it's definitely a requirement for a military cat.
You gotta be able to rough it in the out
of doors. And he would just, you know, do some
really intense stealth kills and present his his prey to
(01:33):
me and my my former roommate in the most elaborate
and bizarre of way. It's pretty sure that cat is
a bit of a psychopath. He killed like a rabbit,
like a full grown rabbit. So yeah, I think Robert
would probably definitely cut it, probably in some sort of
weird black ops kind of assassination squad perhaps. Yeah. Um,
I think Dr Bankman is more of a lover than
(01:55):
a fighter, more scientists than a scholar than a soldier.
But the other cat, the cat of many names, would
go full Colonel Kurtz. For anyone familiar with Heart of Darkness.
I think they would have to send the equivalent of
of a special cat operative to stop his reign of terror. Luckily, uh,
(02:16):
the cat we're talking about today in Part two of
our Military Cats episode is not a feline Colonel Kurtz.
His name is Simon. As we said in part one, cats,
like many animals, have been accompanying humans into war for
a very very long time. I believe one of our
first examples was ancient Egypt. But this guy, Simon, this
(02:41):
cat had such an amazing story that we decided to
dedicate an entire episode to him. Yeah, you may recall
from episode one. If you haven't listened to that one,
by the way, you should. But this woman will stand alone,
so if you don't want to write away, you can
hold it off for another day. But part one is
a doozy. And then then we talk about a pair
of cats named Faith in Panda during the London Blitz
(03:04):
of World War two around nineteen thirty six, and Faith
was nominated for what's called a Dicken Medal, which we
describe which is like this like medal of valor specifically
given to animals. Faith was nominated, but she did not
make the cut. She was not eligible because she was
a civilian cat. But she did get a medal for
(03:26):
bravery anyway, like a special you know, kind of like
a like a participation awards sort of but still really
nice for a faith. Today's cat, Simon, is the only
cat to ever receive this prestigious animal award, the Dicken Medal,
the highest British honor for valor in the field of battle. Yeah,
(03:47):
this guy, Simon has been reported on in Time dot com,
has been reported on in uh per infer dot org.
Of course the massively fam us in the United Kingdom
by our friends at mental Floss as well. So we
just want to give another shout out to Jackie mead
(04:08):
Over at Mental Floss for the excellent work on war
cats or cat war heroes. Here's Simon's origin story. Simon
is a stray. It's there's a seventeen year old with
the name George Hickenbottom who brings Simon from Hong Kong
(04:28):
to his ship, the HMS Amethysts and not going Afterwards,
the Amethyst gets their orders. They are to proceed up
the Young Sea River to guard the British embassy from
the Chinese Communist Revolution. Halfway there, the ship takes fire
from the p l A, the People's Liberation Army. Simon,
(04:49):
similar to Pouli that we mentioned in our previous episode,
is snoozing during the fight. He's sleeping in the cabin's
quarters when a shell goes through the bulkhead and Simon
gets his first wartime injuries. He has shrapnel in his legs,
his face and his back are burned. The ship runs
the ground and they can't like other British sources, can't
(05:12):
rescue them because there's too much enemy fire. Yeah, if
you want to see a picture of Simon, highly recommend
uh jumping on over to p d s a dot Org,
which is an animal welfare organization. They have a whole
page about Simon Um and his time on the d
M fifty four destroyer, and there's a really great picture
(05:33):
of him with some crew members get have given him
a good little scritch, But he is a tough looking cat,
let me tell you. He's just got this look about
him like he's seen some stuff. And that's because he
has seen some stuff. And yeah, the seventeen year old
who was what's known as an ordinary seaman. That's probably
the lowest rank that you can get on a naval vessel. Uh, seventeen.
(05:56):
I guess they must have been playing a little fast
and loose with enlistment aged Limon, so maybe it was
just younger back then. Um. But he actually he takes
a shine to this little school, scrawny stray and he decides,
I Am going to smuggle this cat onto my ship,
which is called the Amethyst. So there's a guy, you know,
(06:17):
like a guard or whatever, and George Hickenbottom hides the
cat under his dress, you know, his this sailor's suit,
his tunic, and he takes him to his tiny, tiny
bunk that's where he keeps him. And George was eventually
appointed captain of the Fox Soul. It seems like it's
some kind of British slang that was used in uh
(06:39):
in military parlance. Um, but what that basically means is
like he's in charge of like scrubbing the toilest with
the toothbrush and making sure everything is neat and tidy.
He's essentially like the maid for the whole ship. Forecastle's forecastle.
It's the upper deck of a sailing ship, uh, the
forward part of a ship, of the sailor's living quarters.
(07:01):
So it's a humorous title, yes, exactly, very tongue in cheek,
very British indeed. But of course, I mean, come on, cats,
you can't really hide the cat forever. I don't know
if anyone's ever tried to hide one from their landlord
to keep from paying a pet deposit. I sure have.
But inevitably, they don't really like to be controlled. You know,
they are gonna do what they're gonna do, and whether
(07:22):
that means me alling when you block them in a
room or something like that, or shut them away so
no one sees them, they're certainly not going to play
along with whatever your schemes might be. So yeah, the
captain of the ship eventually met Simon thankfully. Though the captain,
Lieutenant Commander Ian Griffiths, really doug cats. He had several
family cats back home. UM, so this was a fortuitous
(07:46):
encounter and he didn't reprimand George at all. In fact,
he was he was kind of excited about it. And
it turns out that the Amethyst needed a ship cat.
This is the thing we talked about this. Throughout the
history of the military, there have been cat employed to
keep the pest population down on a ship. Especially that
can be a thing. There are definitely rats that can
(08:07):
get aboard ships at different ports and they can clean
out food supplies and all the rations, and that can
be a real problem, and they can carry diseases, especially
if you're traveling in real humid, kind of nasty hot weather,
which they were. So the captain allows George to keep
the cat and allows the cat to occupy that role.
(08:29):
But since George is the foxel or the forecastle, um,
he's also responsible for cleaning up after the cat. Uh.
And the captain, according to George himself, says that if
he sees any cat droppings cat leavings aboard the ship,
he would quote have me up on a charge. Uh.
(08:49):
And he actually got a lot of help and support
from his crewmates who also liked the cat um so
any uh they called it muck that was seen was
quickly thrown overboard. And you can find a lot of
these accounts in that fabulous article from per and for
dot org, which is a lovely name for a cat website. Yes,
(09:10):
and uh, Simon did something that I understand but don't
philosophically respect. Uh. He was a social climber. He was
in the networking and nepotism. Uh. He of course made
friends with everybody, but he really wanted to make friends
with the captain. And we must assume that there was
(09:30):
something he could sense about the hierarchy of a ship.
And also side note um George Hickenbottom at seventeen was
it was legally enlisted. Even now, at least in the
u S. Seventeen is the minimum age for enlistment for people.
But but is that too young to go to war?
(09:52):
I definitely think it affects someone's outlook later in life anyway.
So Simon's one of those things where if you can't
like seventeen year olds, there's a lot of things seventeen
year olds can't. They can't buy alcohol, again, drink in
a bar. They can't buy cigarettes or vapes in these days.
It just feels like a little bit of a stretch
(10:13):
for to expect them to be able to, you know,
die for their country when their country doesn't treat them
as a full human in other respects. None of those
things are like the end all be all of what
it means to be alive, but it still does feel
I've always felt that was a little bit of a mismatch. Well,
you do get exceptions when you're in the military because
of that very reason. Those laws, those laws are different
from military members, but also the human brain is not
(10:36):
fully fully developed until the mid twenties, so anyway, anyway,
that's a story for a different episode. But here's what happens.
Simon is all about kissing up and he becomes an
honor student. If he's not hanging out in George's room,
he's hanging out at the captain's cabin. And when he
kills rats, he's you can either say he's trying to
(10:59):
curry favor her or he's trying to brag, because he
starts taking some of these dead animals to the captain directly,
sometimes even leaving them on his bunk, and Captain Griffiths
and Simon really dig each other like this cat will
follow Griffith's around. And then if Griffith's like whistles or
(11:23):
you know, if you have ever lived with a cat,
you know the move like sport. Uh yeah, then uh,
Simon will come running to Griffith's. And no one had
a like a soul responsibility for feeding him, but he
always he never went hungry. Everybody loved him, and they
(11:44):
all like you know, they all wanted to give him
treats and wanted to pediment stuff. So this is a
pretty great situation for Simon. In December of that year,
a new captain comes aboard a guide, him Captain Skinner.
Luckily for Simon and for the crew, Skinner also digs cats,
and so Simon leaves pretty much lives his life as
(12:07):
he did before under the rule of Griffiths. So now
things are going pretty well until that faithful river trip
we teased in the beginning. Maybe we can talk a
little bit about what was going on in context here.
(12:29):
It's doubtlessly something by the way that Simon as a
cat would not care about. But here's what's going on.
There is a brutal, bloody civil war in the Nation
of China, Communist insurgents for the People's Liberation Army p
l A led by Mause Dong and the ruling Nationalist
(12:50):
Party of Tchang Kai Shek. The country is embroiled in
this and the Amethyst is ordered up the river up
Young z from Shanghai. It's and Un King to relieve
another ship called the HMS Consort. The Consort had been
guarding the British embassy for a while, but they needed
(13:10):
some time off, and time was of the essence because
both sides of the civil war had signed a ceasefire agreement.
That ceasefire agreement had an expiration date midnight on April
fighting could resume, so Mao's People's Liberation Army um, we're
holding the north side of the Yangtze and these nationals
(13:35):
were controlling the south bank, and Britain hadn't really picked
a side yet in this conflict. They weren't expecting it
to be an all out blood bath. British officials, however,
believed that the Amethyst could reach Nan King in time
to take advantage of the ceasefire. But then on the
morning of April the Amethyst was sixty miles from the
(13:59):
city when the ceasefire abruptly came to an end from
the north shore. Uh. There were explosions all around, gunfire, mortar,
all of that good stuff, and an explosion hit the ship,
and the bridge and the wheelhouse and the power room
(14:19):
took the brunt of that impact. The ship got hit
more than fifty times, and nineteen of his crew, including
the captain, lost their lives on that attack on April
um seven were injured, and Uh the Amethist eventually was
able to limp away and taking refuge in a shelter
(14:44):
in a creek that was a little bit upstream. So
essentially the Communist had the Amethyst backed into a corner.
They were running scared. Um. So there was a series
of negotiations that then began um with the Communist to
allow them to you know, let them go on their
merry way. Yeah, this is what I was talking about earlier.
(15:04):
So we think Simon was most likely snooze in a
way and in a cabin somewhere when a Chinese shell
knocked a huge hole in the hull of the ship.
Shards of shrapnel hit this sleeping cat in his back
and his legs and as he's either running or he's
(15:25):
thrown by the explosion. I think he's running due to
our conversations with the amazing Rachel Lance, the world's pre
eminent expert on maritime explosions. Simon's face has burned, his
whiskers and eyebrows gets singed. He has you know, traumatic injuries.
He crawls as far out of the way as he can.
(15:46):
He passes out. He's missing for several days, but eventually
he staggers on deck and another Griffiths, not the former captain,
a petty officer named George Griffiths, finds him and, like
you would with any other sailor, he has taken to
sick bay. He's in terrible shape. He's weak, he's dehydrated.
(16:06):
He hasn't recovered from miss injuries. Medical officer named Michael
Fearingly goes to work removing the shrapnel in a couple
of different places, stitching Simon's body up and then looking
at his face. They were concerned he might have gone
deaf due to being so close to the blast, and
they also find that his heart seems incredibly weak, so
(16:30):
Fearingly has to be the bearer of bad news. And
he tells the crew, yes, Simon survived, but he's not
out of the woods yet. So they're trying to figure
out what to do. And then a guy who's not
a cat fan enters the fray, Lieutenant Commander John Kieran's.
He had come across land from Nan King and now
(16:54):
that Captain Skinner was dead, he was in charge of
the Amethyst, and he was like, look, I don't like cats.
I'm not gonna let this cat sleep in the captain's quarters.
And so now the cats start sleeping in the and
the petty officers mess which is like, you know, the
lunch room. Uh. And then he's just you know, if
you've ever had a pet that's been injured, you know,
(17:16):
when it's touch and go, you try to make them
as comfortable as possible. There's not really anything you do
but hope they pulled through. That's right. Um, And the
ship doctor doctor Fearnley suggested that Simon actually live a
little closer to the sick bay, um, because him being
you know, convalescing cat could potentially boost moral for the
(17:39):
the young crewmen who were there trying to recover from
their wounds as well. This attack, after all, was a
huge hit to moral that's about as big a hit
as you can take. Is one of the form of
a mortar round. They get shot at your ship. They
had lost their fellow crew members. There was a lot
of sadness and suffering and uh, you know, people really
(18:00):
wondering what was next for them, and so having this
cat around because he also had to endure those same adversities,
it was really kind of like a solidarity situation, like
a real boost them around. They felt that they were
all kind of in this together. And it's silly sounding
in a way, but it's also really really moving because
(18:20):
if you think about it, I could see how that
would exactly be the case, just feeling like, oh this
cat make if this cat could make it, this little
scrappy guy, that we can make it too. Yeah, that's
that's exactly what happens. So Simon is is familiar with
the ways of hierarchies and oceans now and he tries
to win over this lieutenant commander who would be like,
(18:43):
if there were a bad guy in or in this
Pixar film that I'm seeing, it would be this lieutenant
commander Karen's So Simon gives him a dead rat as
a present. This guy is now captain the ship, has
no idea what to do, so he just it's funny, Gus.
He like he knows it's a gift, and so like
re leads down and pet Simon for the first time.
(19:05):
Wait still, Cimon's nott paid attention throws the rat overboard,
but he has now sort of taught Simon that you
will be rewarded for rats, which becomes very important very quickly,
and they, uh, they befriend each other. The Pixar moment
is when the captain takes sick. He gets a virus
and he's bedridden for a few days, and so Simon
(19:27):
starts hanging out with him. Uh, and then from that
point on Kerans and Simon's are friends. But while that's happening, Look,
the Amethyst got rocked in the worst way. The ship
is really deteriorating. Rations have to be cut in half
because the Chinese forces that are kind of keeping them
(19:48):
locked in there, they're not supplying food and they're not
allowing things to come through. Uh. The negotiations aren't going
well because the Chinese forces want the British to say
the Amethyst had fired first, and that's not true. So
the British aren't going to aren't going to play ball here.
(20:09):
So the ship and its crew are stranded and that
little creek for almost ten weeks. This is bad. Ten hot, sticky, gross,
humid weeks. And of course, as we talked about, that
hot wet condition is really really a good one for
(20:31):
rat breeding. Uh So that became a thing. The food
supplies were in really really serious danger of being consumed
by the now teeming piles of rats that were on
the ship. And let's make no mistake, these were not
like cute little white rats you know that you see
perched on people's shoulders and stuff, or running around in mazes.
(20:54):
Uh these were nasty guys. These were attack rats, vicious
rat it, you know, just absolutely feral, massive rats. One
particularly nasty one, which the crew members nicknamed mouth say tongue,
would repeatedly attack the food supplies and learned to evade
(21:16):
the traps that were set for it. Uh So, with
Simon finally took this bastard out, the crew were absolutely
beside themselves. They promoted Simon to able seacat, which is
the cat equivalent of able seamen, which would be you
know a higher rank of like a kind of just
basic crewman, and they again symbolic he was already this
(21:38):
amazing symbol of resilience. Now he was literally helping them
survive by killing these nasty rats that were going after
their food in a very real way. And this is
an unsustainable situation. Despite Simon's heroism, there's almost only so
much he can do. So it's nearly three months after
that original attack. Negotiations are at a stand still, and
(22:03):
the captain is thinking, look, negotiations are growing nowhere. We're
running out of fuel, we're running out of food. At
some point we're gonna have to make a run for it.
So he waits until the night of July. The moon
(22:24):
is included. There's a very low light, and there's a
merchant vessel named the kang Ling Liberation that's passing the Amethyst.
It's heading down the river. At about ten pm. The
captain seizes the moment and he makes a hundred and
four mile run down to the open ocean. The enemy
(22:45):
is not super aggressive, probably because the Amethysts got very lucky.
It took him five hours and they made it. They
ran into the HMS Concord part way up a river
called the Hong Pooh south of Wu Song, and they
escorted the rest of the way. The captain sends this
message say have rejoined the fleet south of Wusung. No
(23:05):
damage your casualties. God save the king. Uh So their
ordeal is over. They've been held hostage for a hundred
and one days. Their cruising back to believe it or not,
Simon's own birthplace, Hong Kong. On August first. There's a
special ceremony on deck um that represents everything the crew
(23:26):
has been through. The officers and the and the crew
are standing at attention. One person's holding Simon, and George
Griffith's who he mentioned earlier, is reading out a citation
where able seacats Simon is awarded the Amethyst Campaign Ribbon.
(23:46):
Uh This, as we mentioned the very beginning. Receiving these
prestigious awards like the Dickle make Simon unique in the
history of animals in the military. And this guy comes
in international celebrity. It's covered in the movies, it's covered
in the news. Cameras are recording their ship's arrival in
(24:07):
Hong Kong, and Simon is is well. I'd say he's
kind of posing for pictures. He's a cat. You know,
someone's holding them or someone's waiting until he stops for
a second. They're like click click click click click for sure.
And like I was saying, you can see pictures of
the cat, there's tons of them out there on on
several of the articles that we cited. And he is
a tough looking dude, really really interesting features and in
(24:32):
the very weathered world where he kind of vibe to him.
But as we said at the top of the show,
this became a massive story. Like you said, he was
an overnight sensation, and he became this international symbol of uh,
you know, resilience and and the ability to kind of
come back and push through all of the horrible, horrific
(24:53):
things that people saw an experience during World War Two. So,
while the ship was being repaired in Hong Kong, the
Armed Forces Mascot Club, which is part of the pv
s A, which I believe that's the website we were
talking about, that is a longstanding UK organization for you know,
devoted to the welfare of animals, not not just cats,
(25:17):
all animals, and they suggested that the captain or the
military give Simon an official commendation that he should be
awarded the prestigious Dicken Metal for animal gallantry. It was
also referred to often as the Animals Victoria Cross, which
(25:37):
is the highest military honor that you can get in
the UK. And again, how heartwarman is this? People reply
to this request and they write testimonials, one captain writing, uh,
we won't read the whole quoll, but the excerpt here
that's important is uh. He talked about how dangerous threats were,
how messed up Simon was, and then says throughout the incident,
(25:59):
Simon's behavior was of the highest order. One would not
have expected a small cat to survive the blast from
an explosion capable of making a whole over a foot
in diameter in a steel plate. And then he says
that Simon's presence was a decided factor in maintaining the
high level of morale and he gets the Dicken Metal,
(26:21):
He gets the highest order in the land in a
unanimous decision. That's right. And I gotta say they they
buried another player in this story here, Peggy the Dog.
I want to know more about Peggy the dog and
why Peggy didn't get more attention. Um, but where there's
a cat's story today? So we'll leave that for another day.
Maybe we'll do one about war dogs one of these days.
(26:42):
But in August five, the AP broke the news that
this award was going to be given to Simon. The
headline was Amethysts cat gets dick in metal for catching
rats um and the restless history. It was the only
feeline ever to get a prestigious dicken metal and the
(27:03):
only animal in the Royal Navy you ever earn this
medal too, so double threat Simon. Yeah, and he like
was literally got fan mail people writing fan letters to
a cat. He would get like two hundred a day,
along with toys and you know, treats and things like that.
And a lieutenant by the name of Stewart Head got
(27:24):
the honor or that the dubious honor, let's just say,
for sorting through all of this crap and making sure
the good stuff got to got to Simon and our
one last note here. Unfortunately, Simon received this tremendous accolade posthumously. Uh.
(27:44):
He passed away on November after only living two years,
and maybe it was. I mean, the official cause was
high fever and acute enteritis. His war wound, of course,
had seriously weakened him again. Cards and letters arrived by
(28:06):
the truckload his as we mentioned the very top of
the episode. Uh. He is featured in Time magazine. He
is in the obituary page of Time Magazine. He was
buried at the pds A Animal Cemetery at Ilford, which
is east of London, and especially made casket. Uh. There
was a short ceremony. There was a marker place that
(28:29):
was a wooden one originally it was later replaced with
a stone monument. And eventually the Amethyst carries out a
search for a new cat and they find another black
and white tomcat. They name him Simon to unlike Simon
one he comes from London, not Hong Kong. But if
I could paraphrase one of the old cliches, I guess
(28:51):
you never get the cat nip while you can still
snarf it, you know, I can't. You can't get the
flowers while you still smell him hunt. No, it's it's
a great adaptation. I love it. Um. And it's interesting
too because they specifically wanted to get a cat from
the exact area of London Camden, which is like super
(29:11):
hipster central these days. Uh. And they did that so
that's where Simon two came from. Um wraps us up.
I think for the story of Simon really really really
was worthy of of his own episode and uh so
sad actually, I think there really is kind of a
touching and bitter sweet end of the story that he
only lived two years. In those two years, they were
(29:33):
not an easy two years, but he meant so much
and stood for so much to so many people that
I think it was a life well lived. Well done, Simon,
You're a good cat. Thanks as always to Casey Pegram,
Thanks to the one and only Max Williams. Uh and
also no thanks to you man. We knocked out a
two parter. Uh and except for this line that I'm
(29:53):
about to say, we we didn't brag about how we
how we actually were able to plan it except for
just this one moment. Well we didn't have to because
this was actually conceived as a two partner from the start,
with the amazing help of our research associate Gabe Lucier,
who also is a cat person. If I'm not mistaken,
I believe that is correct. Thanks Everyone's Foster than Animals, Well,
(30:16):
thanks to Christo Rosciotis, Thanks to Eve's Jeff Code and
thanks to our very own favorite straight Jonathan Strickland, a
k a. The Twister, who at this point is far
overdue for an appearance. We'll see you next time, folks.
(30:37):
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.