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What was a trench rabbit, a suicide ditch, a donkey whalloper and just why did Kaiser Bill ban the production of sausages?

These – and just who was the real War Horse – are just some of the many questions answered by Welsh author Terry Breverton (pictured) in his new compendium of oddities, curiosities and little known facts from World War I.

And the book, published in the centenary of the start of war, also casts light on the ‘unknown’ Welsh Great War fighter ace with the fastest kill rate.

In Breverton’s First World War Curiosities, the author, a product of Barry Grammar School and now living in Llanybydder, Carmarthenshire, aims to be informative about the ‘war to end all wars’ but also wants to reflect the humour and good nature of front-line soldiers that alleviated the underlying sadness and terror of World War I.

He said: “Only with a sense of ‘gallows humour’ could they exist with any semblance of sanity in the conditions they faced.”

The little-known Welsh fighter ace, James Ira Thomas ‘Taffy’ Jones, was an unlikely hero, having a bad stutter as a result of being rolled down a hill in an oil barrel in his St Clears, Carmarthenshire, home as a child.

But, despite also having a reputation for crashing aircraft on landing, he went on to win the Military Cross, the Distinguished Flying Cross and bar and the Distinguished Service Order, recording 21 victories in just three months while flying the Royal Aircraft Factory SE 5 during World War I, a faster kill rate than any other pilot in the war.

He was accused of being ‘unsportsmanlike’ by fellow pilots for machine gunning parachuting enemy aces, but replied: “Never having been to public school I was unhampered by such considerations of form and just pointed out there was a b***y war on and I intended to avenge my pals”.

After finally recording 37 WWI kills, in World War II he was an acting wing commander at the RAF Porthcawl bombing and gunnery school and, flying an unarmed Hawker Henley, attacked a Junkers Ju 88 bomber with the only weapon he had, a flare pistol, which stopped the German plane attacking Swansea Docks. He died in 1960 aged 64 in Aberaeron.

In his examination of World War I terms and slang, Breverton found that a ‘trench rabbit’ was, in fact, a rat, the term used by US soldiers for the vast numbers of large rodents that infested the miles of trenches on both sides.

A suicide ditch was what the men called front-line trenches for sadly obvious reasons, while a donkey whalloper was a derogatory term for British cavalrymen, particularly the Household Cavalry, the expression coming from the British Foot Guards, the longstanding rivals of the Household Cavalry.

Other terms included tin opener (bayonet), crump (German 5.9in shell) and plug (shoot, plug with lead).

Breverton gives the title ‘the real war horse’ to Warrior, who went to war on the Western Front with Winston Churchill’s great friend General Jack Seely in 1914.

He survived famous battles including the Somme and Ypres, coming back four years later. Eight million other horses and mules did not.

Seely led a charge on Warrior at the battle of Moreueil Wood saying of the horse: “He had to endure everything most hateful to him, violent noise, the bursting of shells... above all, the smell of blood, terrifying to every horse.”

The book reveals German emperor Kaiser Willhelm banned sausage production as Zeppelin airships each required the guts of 250,000 cows to create its hydrogen cells.

The bovine intestines were collected from butchers in Austria, Poland and occupied France, plus Germany.

First World War Curiosities by Terry Breverton (Amberley Publishing, £9.99) is out now.