Instead of working on my phd, I figured out the deal with Tom's leg and the lion. Thankfully Tom wrote a memoir and Australian newspapers liked to gossip about state governors.
'In the spring of 1916' wrote Bridges, 'I got a recruit for the Division.' Bridges had been having lunch with Arthur Capel, a wealthy Anglo-French businessman (who famously had a decade long affair with Coco Chanel) and as he left, he spotted a lion cub in the yard. Capel offered Bridges 'the beast', which he had 'won in a Red Cross raffle a few days before'. Fetching a 'champagne basket', Bridges bundled the lion cub up and took it back to his division's HQ. There, they named the cub Poilu (the nickname for French soldiers, literally hairy). Poilu was apparently quite comfortable at divisional HQ. He 'made himself at home, for he was an amiable beast, and never showed temper and he stayed with us, running loose, until September 1917 when I was wounded.'
Bridges even wrote about how they found enough meat for Poilu.
He was not difficult to feed and it was one aide-de-camp’s job to see that he did not go hungry and this officer could be heard sometimes telephoning, 'Anybody got a dead horse this morning? All right, I'll send a car down for a haunch.'
Given the number of horses, donkeys and mules killed on the Western Front, I think it's likely they didn't have too hard a time finding food for Poilu.
Bridges' replacement in the 19th Division wasn't a fan and Poilu was crated up to be sent back to England.
Poilu escaped on the journey to England. Unfortunately for everyone involved, this happened at sea. Bridges wrote 'there was quite a party on board ship when he broke out of his crate during a rough passage and took command of the vessel, treeing crew and passengers on the bridge or in the rigging, until finally induced to enter a first-class cabin.' No word on how they got him out of the cabin.
Poilu's new home was in the private zoo of Garrard Tyrwhitt-Drake, a wealthy businessman who had an interest in animals and conservation. Poilu remained at the zoo for the next 18 years, fathering 5 lion cubs in that time.
Of Poilu's end Bridges wrote: 'Always the perfect gentleman, he contrived to die aged nineteen, on the 19th of June, this mascot of the 19th Division.'
So, where does the leg come in? Bridges' right leg was shattered by a shell explosion in September 1917 and was amputated either that night or the following day. What actually happened to the leg is not recorded.
But when your general's leg gets amputated and he's well known for having a pet lion, of course soldiers, of all people, are going to say he fed the leg to the lion. The rumour practically writes itself.
And it turns out to be based on a story that Bridges himself told. Here it is from a 1925 newspaper.
The story popped up repeatedly over the next few decades and the details vary on whether it was a wisecrack made to a nurse before surgery or whether he made sure the leg made it back to Poilu. Although according to some accounts, he seemed to joke that the leg did make it to Poilu.
By the end of his life, the story had grown, as stories tend to do, and we get the story in its fullest form.
It's a good story, and you can see how it's been polished (or embellished) over the years. Not sure why he had to throw the sexism in though.
Poilu was buried on the grounds of the Tyrwhitt-Drake zoo, Maidstone, in what is now Cobtree Manor Park, where his headstone still stands.
