Westbrook Pegler
Albany Daily Democrat/December 28, 1917
Old Ding Dong is still running around the trenches—a marked rat.
He is a big fellow, even for a trench rat, and the average trench rat grows as big as a Shetland pony, according to the Sammies.
A youthful infantryman caught him around one night as the big fellow scampered about the dugout. The Sammy was standing guard, and not being very busy guarding, he got a Y-shaped tree branch and clamped the Y over the rat’s neck.
With the rat held helpless he tied a little bottle around its neck and turned the animal loose again.
The next occupants reported that the rat was still an inmate of the dugout. And the Sammies have named him Ding Dong because the bottle sounds like a bell when it strikes the flooring.
The Archive of American Journalism 