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  WAR HORSE

  Author’s Note

  In the old school they now use for the village hall, below the clock that has stood always at one minute past ten, hangs a small dusty painting of a horse. He stands, a splendid red bay with a remarkable white cross emblazoned on his forehead and with four perfectly matched white socks. He looks wistfully out of the picture, his ears pricked forward, his head turned as if he has just noticed us standing there.

  To many who glance up at it casually, as they might do when the hall is opened up for parish meetings, for harvest suppers or evening socials, it is merely a tarnished old oil painting of some unknown horse by a competent but anonymous artist. To them the picture is so familiar that it commands little attention. But those who look more closely will see, written in fading block copperplate writing across the bottom of the bronze frame:

  Joey, by Captain James Nicholls, Autumn 1914

  Some in the village, only a very few now and fewer as each year goes by, remember Joey as he was. His story is written so that neither he nor those who knew him, nor the war they lived and died in, will be forgotten.

  My earliest memories are a confusion of hilly fields and dark, damp stables, and rats that scampered along the beams above my head. But I remember well enough the day of the horse sale. The terror of it stayed with me all my life.

  I was not yet six months old, a gangling, leggy colt who had never been further than a few feet from his mother. We were parted that day in the terrible hubbub of the auction ring and I was never to see her again. She was a fine working farm horse, getting on in years but with all the strength and stamina of an Irish draught horse quite evident in her fore and hind quarters. She was sold within minutes, and before I could follow her through the gates, she was whisked out of the ring and away. But somehow I was more difficult to dispose of. Perhaps it was the wild look in my eye as I circled the ring in a desperate search for my mother, or perhaps it was that none of the farmers and gypsies there were looking for a spindly-looking half-thoroughbred colt. But whatever the reason they were a long time haggling over how little I was worth before I heard the hammer go down and I was driven out through the gates and into a pen outside.

  “Not bad for three guineas, is he? Are you, my little firebrand? Not bad at all.” The voice was harsh and thick with drink, and it belonged quite evidently to my owner. I shall not call him my master, for only one man was ever my master. My owner had a rope in his hand and was clambering into the pen followed by three or four of his red-faced friends. Each one carried a rope. They had taken off their hats and jackets and rolled up their sleeves; and they were all laughing as they came towards me. I had as yet been touched by no man and backed away from them until I felt the bars of the pen behind me and could go no further. They seemed to lunge at me all at once, but they were slow and I managed to slip past them and into the middle of the pen where I turned to face them again. They had stopped laughing now. I screamed for my mother and heard her reply echoing in the far distance. It was towards that cry that I bolted, half charging, half jumping the rails so that I caught my off foreleg as I tried to clamber over and was stranded there. I was grabbed roughly by the mane and tail and felt a rope tighten around my neck before I was thrown to the ground and held there with a man sitting it seemed on every part of me. I struggled until I was weak, kicking out violently every time I felt them relax, but they were too many and too strong for me. I felt the halter slip over my head and tighten around my neck and face.

  “So you’re a fighter, are you?” said my owner, tightening the rope and smiling through gritted teeth. “I like a fighter. But I’ll break you one way or the other. Quite the little fighting cock you are, but you’ll be eating out of my hand quick as a twick.”

  I was dragged along the lanes tied on a short rope to the tailboard of a farm cart so that every twist and turn wrenched at my neck. By the time we reached the farm land and rumbled over the bridge into the stable yard that was to become my home, I was soaked with exhaustion and the halter had rubbed my face raw. My one consolation as I was hauled into the stables that first evening was the knowledge that I was not alone. The old horse that had been pulling the cart all the way back from market was led into the stable next to mine. As she went in she stopped to look over my door and nickered gently. I was about to venture away from the back of my stable when my new owner brought his crop down on her side with such a vicious blow that I recoiled once again and huddled into the corner against the wall.

  “Get in there you old ratbag,” he bellowed. “Proper nuisance you are Zoey, and I don’t want you teaching this young ’un your old tricks.” But in that short moment I had caught a glimpse of kindness and sympathy from that old mare that cooled my panic and soothed my spirit.

  I was left there with no water and no food while he stumbled off across the cobbles and up into the farmhouse beyond. There was the sound of slamming doors and raised voices before I heard footsteps running back across the yard and excited voices coming closer. Two heads appeared at my door. One was that of a young boy who looked at me for a long time, considering me carefully before his face broke into a beaming smile. “Mother,” he said deliberately. “That will be a wonderful and brave horse. Look how he holds his head.” And then, “Look at him, Mother, he’s wet through to the skin. I’ll have to rub him down.”

  “But your father said to leave him, Albert,” said the boy’s mother. “Said it’ll do him good to be left alone. He told you not to touch him.”

  “Mother,” said Albert, slipping back the bolts on the stable door. “When Father’s drunk he doesn’t know what he’s saying or what he’s doing. He’s always drunk on market days. You’ve told me often enough not to pay him any account when he’s like that. You feed up old Zoey, Mother, while I see to him. Oh, isn’t he grand, Mother? He’s red almost, red-bay you’d call him, wouldn’t you? And that cross down his nose is perfect. Have you ever seen a horse with a white cross like that? Have you ever seen such a thing? I shall ride this horse when he’s ready. I shall ride him everywhere and there won’t be a horse to touch him, not in the whole parish, not in the whole county.”

  “You’re barely past thirteen, Albert,” said his mother from the next stable. “He’s too young and you’re too young, and anyway Father says you’re not to touch him, so don’t come crying to me if he catches you in there.”

  “But why the divil did he buy him, Mother?” Albert asked. “It was a calf we wanted, wasn’t it? That’s what he went in to market for, wasn’t it? A calf to suckle old Celandine?”

  “I know dear, your father’s not himself when he’s like that,” his mother said softly. “He says that Farmer Easton was bidding for the horse, and you know what he thinks of that man after that barney over the fencing. I should imagine he bought it just to deny him. Well that’s what it looks like to me.”

  “Well I’m glad he did, Mother,” said Albert, walking slowly towards me, pulling off his jacket. “Drunk or not, it’s the best thing he ever did.”

  “Don’t speak like that about your father, Albert. He’s been through a lot. It’s not right,” said his mother. But her words lacked conviction.

  Albert was about the same height as me and talked so gently as he approached that I was immediately calmed and not a little intrigued, and so stood where I was against the wall. I jumped at first when he touched me but could see at once that he meant me no harm. He smoothed my back first and then my neck, talking all the while about what a fine time we would have together, how I would grow up to be the smartest horse in the whole wide world, and how we would go out hunting together. After a bit he began to rub me gently with his coat. He rubbed me until I was dry and then dabbed salt water onto my face where the skin had been rubbed raw. He brought in some sweet hay and a bucket of cool, deep water. I do not believe he stopped talking all the time. As he turned to go out of the stable I called out to him to thank him and he seemed to understand for he smiled broadly and stroked my nose.

  “W
e’ll get along, you and I,” he said kindly. “I shall call you Joey, only because it rhymes with Zoey, and then maybe, yes maybe because it suits you. I’ll be out again in the morning – and don’t worry, I’ll look after you. I promise you that. Sweet dreams, Joey.”

  “You should never talk to horses, Albert,” said his mother from outside. “They never understand you. They’re stupid creatures. Obstinate and stupid, that’s what your father says, and he’s known horses all his life.”

  “Father just doesn’t understand them,” said Albert. “I think he’s frightened of them.”

  I went over to the door and watched Albert and his mother walking away and up into the darkness. I knew then that I had found a friend for life, that there was an instinctive and immediate bond of trust and affection between us. Next to me old Zoey leant over her door to try to touch me, but our noses would not quite meet.

  The real war horses

  Of all animals, the horse is one of the shyest, least aggressive and most highly strung. Yet for thousands of years horses have been coerced into participation in wars.

  In 1914, the British Army had around 25,000 horses. They only had eighty armoured vehicles, relatively new inventions and prone to mechanical breakdown. In contrast, horses and mules were thought to be reliable forms of transport. The army depended on them for transporting goods, ammunition and the wounded.

  As the war continued, 15,000 new horses and mules had to be found each month to replace those killed or injured.

  Battle conditions represent everything that horses dislike and fear. General Jack Seely remembered: “He had to endure everything most hateful to him – violent noise, the bursting of great shells and bright flashes at night, when the white light of bursting shells must have caused violent pain to his sensitive eyes. Above all, the smell of blood. Many people do not realize how acute is his sense of smell, but most will have read his terror when he smells blood.”

  For many horses it was the weather and the mud, rather than the bullets and bombardment, that was the final straw. Roads were broken up, and the poor animals would sink deep into the mud. Sometimes they could not get out, and died where they fell.

  Additionally, a horse’s daily grain ration was just 9 kilos. This was 25 per cent less than recommended in England in peacetime, where the work would have been much easier. Hunger became a constant problem, particularly in the bitter winters. Horses tried to eat the wheels from wagons, and were sometimes fed sawdust. Besides being injured or killed in battle, thousands of animals died from stress, disease and malnourishment.

  Particularly strong and fit horses were sent to the cavalry. Although these horses were not hauling heavy loads, a cavalryman and his equipment weighed about 150 kilos, and cavalrymen were instructed to dismount and walk their horses at every opportunity. In 1914, generals and decision-makers on both sides still used nineteenth-century warfare strategies and assumed that the cavalry would play a pivotal role. At the outbreak of war, Britain and Germany each had a cavalry force of 100,000 men. However, on the Western Front, men and horses came up against barbed wire, machine guns and tanks for the first time. The horrific slaughter that ensued persuaded many that the traditional cavalry charge was obsolete. Yet, even by the end of the war, there were some who still did not accept this. For example, General Douglas Haig wrote: “I believe that the value of the horse … is likely to be as great as ever. Aeroplanes and tanks are only accessories to the men and the horse … As time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse – the well-bred horse – as you have ever done in the past.”

  Many letters and memoirs touchingly show the effect on soldiers of the slaughter of the animals. Lieutenant Dennis Wheatley described what happened one night: “There were dead ones lying all over the place and scores of others were floundering … broken legs … terrible neck wounds… We went back for our pistols and spent the next hour putting the poor, seriously injured brutes out of their misery. We lost over 100 horses.”

  At the end of the war, a scheme was established to enable officers who had sold their horses to the army to buy back survivors. This was extended so that soldiers who had worked with an animal in the war would be told when it came up for auction. Trooper Huggins bought his “Billy”, and wrote: “we had him for years and years on the farm … he ended his days in clover.”

  Sadly, happy endings like Billy’s, and Joey’s in War Horse, were all too rare. By 1917, the British Army had over 760,000 horses and mules overseas, but only 65,000 horses returned to Britain after the war. Charities like the RSPCA highlighted the plight of the abandoned animals. The horses were starving, being worked to death, or being sold to French and German abattoirs. In Cairo, the first Brooke Hospital was eventually set up by Dorothy Brooke – the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital.

  The removal of horses from Britain had a profound effect on home society. Farming and transport, which had depended on horsepower, had to find mechanized alternatives and by 1918, there was no going back to using horses as before. Today, with fewer than a million horses in the UK, it is difficult for us to understand just how integral to everyday life they used to be. Up to eight million horses from all sides died in the First World War.

  Why the Whales Came & The Wreck of the Zanzibar

  THE DREAM

  Most of my stories take a while to dream themselves up, some take years to gestate. Some lie like dormant seed for decades, before they find the nourishment to enable them to grow. But Why the Whales Came was that rare story that was handed to me on a plate. So much was in place, it needed little invention on my part. I found I could sit on my writing bed, pick up my exercise book and simply tell it down.

  In a way, I began the whole adventure, was the cause of it happening in the first place, and it was this adventure that provoked the telling of the tale, part truth, part fantastical, that was to become my story. Let me first of all tell you the adventure, and this part is true, absolutely true. I know, because I was there. It happened to me.

  This was my very first visit to the Isles of Scilly, nearly forty years ago now. To be honest I didn’t want to go at all. But my wife Clare insisted. She had been there as a small child, had loved it, the wildness of it, the beaches, the bird-life, the peace and quiet. One of my sons had discovered it too. So we went, not to France where I wanted to go but to Scilly.

  We found a bed and breakfast on Bryher Island, the smallest of the inhabited islands. The island was quiet, which suited me fine, but the cottage was small and crowded. I was trying to finish a book and needed to be on my own a bit. I asked our landlady, Marion Bennett, where was the quietest place she knew of on the islands. “Samson,” she said. “Just half a mile away across the water. Uninhabited. A few ruined cottages, lots of rabbits, black rabbits. And birds. You go there, you’ll like as not be quite alone. Very few people go there. Keith, my husband will take you over there, if you like. No trouble. It’s a nice calm sea.” So off I went in Keith’s boat with my writing book and a picnic. I planned to sit on a sheltered rock somewhere and try to write. He dropped me off on the beach and said he’d pick me up around teatime that afternoon and off he went. There I was on a desert island all on my own, but now I was there I didn’t really feel like writing at all. I looked around me. I could see the ruined cottages, and the narrow tracks heading along through the bracken. I would explore, do the writing later. That’s what I told myself.

  I never did do any writing that day. I became completely absorbed in my exploration. I followed the narrow peaty-black tracks through the bracken and discovered six or seven ruined cottages, middens of limpet shells outside each one. Clearly limpets were important to the diet of those people who had lived there. But who were they? Why had they left? I kept finding traces of those long-gone inhabitants: bits of old clay pipes, a rusty knife, the sole of an old shoe. In each cottage there was an open fireplace, and gaps where the windows had been. Some were more dilapidated than others. None had a roof, but the one I had not yet visited at the top of the h
ill had a chimney, with a gull perched on top, as if he was waiting for me. He was certainly watching me. I followed the track up towards the cottage, passing a well on the way. There was no water in it.

  By midday I was sitting in this cottage, happily eating my picnic when I looked up and noticed the weather had changed. Great grey clouds were skidding in from the Atlantic. A wind was getting up, and rain began to fall, a few drops at first, then heavier. I retreated to the only cover I could find, the open fireplace. I sat there in the fireplace and watched the rain come down. The wind was whistling around me, and I began to feel the cottage itself was speaking to me, punctuated by the crying of the gulls above. I felt suddenly I was an intruder, that both the cottage and the gulls wanted me gone. I wanted to go but it was now raining quite hard and I thought I would wait until it died down, until the wind dropped. The wind was whining about the chimney now, but was it the wind? It sounded so like a human voice! I heard rustlings outside the cottage. Just the wind, I thought, or maybe those black rabbits I had been told about. But it sounded more like footsteps to me. There was someone out there. I called. No reply. I called again. No reply. I found myself looking from gaping window to gaping window, sure now I was being watched, certain someone was out there.

  I ran out, down the track to the beach and waited there to be picked up. Keith didn’t come and he didn’t come. It was past four o’clock, five o’clock. Six. All I wanted was to get off this island. I was not wanted there, and I most certainly did not want to be there.

  Keith came at long last, apologizing. He had forgotten me, until Clare had reminded him that he had dropped me off that morning. When I got back I had a long hot shower to warm myself through, then came down for supper. There was much merriment about the whole incident. Marion chirped up, saying, “Oh, don’t worry, we wouldn’t have left you there overnight. We wouldn’t do that. There are ghosts over on Samson.” The others laughed. I did not. “No, really,” she said, “there are.” She wasn’t laughing now. “Don’t you know the story of the curse of Samson? That’s why there are no people there any more.” Then she told us all about the curse. And this was the story she told me – how much is true, how much legend, I do not know. All I do know is that I have never forgotten it.