Soldier Dog Read online

  Corporal Hunter took up Stanley’s field glasses and raised them to his eyes. Deep furrows were carved down his forehead like twin valleys. Hunter shouted for two more linesmen over the top to repair the communication lines and as he did so, Stanley saw his eyes flicker over the parapet, towards the wall of flame along the far side of the canal. What chance of survival did the Corporal give the men? Did he know, even as they went out, that there was no chance of their coming back? Another linesman was fighting his way along the trench to Hunter.

  ‘The shelling’s cut the lines, sir . . . There’s no point, sir, they’re blown to bits as soon as they’re laid.’

  ‘Oh God,’ breathed Hunter to the linesman, aghast and haggard. ‘No signals and we can’t lay new lines till nightfall. We’ve only the runners and they haven’t a chance – the Hun’s taken the tunnel under the canal – they’d have to swim across.’

  Hunter raced back down to the Signal Station. There were more shouts from below, unintelligible. Fidget was shouting to Stanley that the front line had pulled back again, that it wasn’t holding. A man came up the stairs, white-faced, eyes full of fear, a fresh runner, with Hunter behind. Hunter looked towards the canal and the sickle of flame that grew hourly closer.

  Stanley looked at the face of the runner. And he looked down at Bones, willing and ready. Would he be wanted now? his round eyes seemed to ask. Stanley saw, with a rush of love, the large square skull and wing-like ears, and he felt a lump rising in his throat. Bones must go, a man should not be sent – the dog was faster, lower, had the better chance.

  ‘No, sir. Don’t send a man. S-send my dog, sir.’

  Hunter turned. ‘Send a dog?’ He gave a mocking, irritated shake of his head.

  ‘S-send the dog, sir,’ said Stanley. ‘Save the man and send the dog.’ Bones inched closer to Stanley, his tail flicking. ‘It’s what he’s trained for, sir.’

  Hunter looked over the plain.

  ‘He’s as good as a man, sir, better than a man. Send him up to B Company with the runner, sir, but let the dog run back with the message. He’s a strong swimmer, sir.’

  ‘All right.’ Hunter closed his eyes and nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll give it a go.’

  The runner mouthed a heartfelt ‘God bless you’ at Stanley.

  The boy knelt on the duckboard floor in front of Bones. The dog was so tall, so proud, it made Stanley’s heart ache.

  ‘Do your best, Bones. It’s important. Keep low. Come back. Above all, Bones, come back.’

  Stanley rose and handed the lead to the waiting runner.

  Two hours later

  A few miles to the east of Villers-Bretonneux

  Both sides were waiting, both watching, both wary. The shelling had died down, the fog begun to burn away, the ravaged plain growing clearer. The front line was thin and sporadic, just platoons here and there. The observation posts of both A and B Company were just mounds of rubble. There was no communication line to C Company.

  Hunter was at Stanley’s side, listening to a linesman.

  ‘Too many breaks, sir, there’s too many breaks – we don’t know where the men are – if the men are . . .’

  Nauseous with worry, Stanley scoured the plain. Bones and the runner had been sent to B Company, or to where B Company had been, to the forward left, at Stanley’s ten o’clock. To the north, this side of the Allied line, there were almost certainly, Fidget said, enemy outposts. Stanley had sent Bones up. He himself had sent the dog up. But it would be a hollow victory over the Fuller-phone if any harm came to Bones.

  Hunter scanned the line along the canal for the hundredth time. Droplets of sweat coated his forehead. He turned abruptly to Stanley.

  ‘Has he done it before? Has the dog worked in this sector before?’

  ‘No, sir, but he’ll do it. He can do it, sir.’

  The Corporal took his cap off to wipe his brow and Stanley realized, for the first time, that Hunter was not so much older than Tom.

  ‘Has he ever worked in line before, anywhere in line?’

  ‘No, sir, but he can do it, sir. He’s as good as a man for the job.’

  Bones would do the work he knew so well, Stanley was certain of that. The dog would run home from anywhere, from any point of the compass. He was strong and he was fearless and if it were just a matter of running from the front line to the back line, Bones would do it – but if the front line was broken, if there were enemy outposts behind it . . .

  ‘Has it come to this? To a dog?’ asked Hunter, still wiping his brow.

  Fidget grabbed Stanley, pointing. ‘Stanley – there!’

  A shout went up from the kitchen, from Cook.

  ‘The kid’s dog – there – look!’

  More shouts rippled along the trench.

  ‘The boy’s dog – his dog’s at the canal!’

  Two sappers rushed up and stood by Hunter. Stanley looked, his heart racing. There on the nearside of the canal – there he was – the kingly giant – one hundred pounds of gleaming muscle – shaking himself – now loping away easily, unhurried. Now dropping into the sunken railway line. Stanley waited, breath held.

  ‘Clever boy, clever boy, that’s it, take cover,’ breathed Stanley. Minutes passed. Too long, too long – he should be up by now. Stanley glimpsed Hunter shaking his head from side to side. Stanley steadied himself. No, Hunter was wrong, the dog would come up, but where? Fidget clutched at Stanley again – pointing. The dog was out now, keeping tigerishly low to the ground, his brindled body unflinching, negotiating ridges and crests and jagged pieces of iron. They watched Bones make a semicircle round the high, firm edge of a crater.

  ‘Astonishing . . .’ said Hunter.

  Stanley could see in his heart the black triangle ears and shining eyes, hear in his heart the firm tread of his paws. That little message round his neck, if only Bones knew it, would go from Hunter to Brigade HQ, then by dispatch rider to the Corps Commander and on by telephone to an Army HQ, from there to the HQ of the Commander-in-Chief and finally all the way across the Channel to the War Office.

  Awash with pride, Stanley saw Bones racing across the ravaged plain. He himself had trained that dog, Stanley told himself, seeing himself opening the cylinder, pulling out the message, checking the time, noting it in his Army Record Book, handing the message to an amazed and grateful Hunter.

  Stanley, Hunter and Fidget all stood close, all intent on Bones. Beyond Fidget stretched a row of tense, watching men. Bones dropped into a shallow runnel and Stanley heard Hunter say, ‘Amazing . . . He’s taking cover again . . .’

  ‘Come, Bones, come,’ whispered Stanley.

  There were perhaps only four hundred yards to go. Stanley prepared to let the dog in, holding aside the trench netting over the fire step, fingering the titbit in his pocket, ready with the words, ‘Good boy, good.’

  A sudden mortar exploded to Bones’s left and he was tossed skyward in a volcanic eruption of earth and flying steel. Frozen with horror, Stanley saw him, legs upward, like a stuffed toy. The ground fell away beneath Stanley. Numb and sick with dread he searched and searched again the area where he’d last seen the dog.

  ‘Where did that come from?’ said Hunter. ‘Can you see the dog?’

  ‘There, sir, a hundred yards, sir, to the north, where the line’s given way – there to the left – an enemy outpost behind the line!’ shouted Fidget.

  Hunter gripped Stanley’s arm and pointed. ‘There – he’s there – your dog’s up . . .’

  Stanley couldn’t see at first, he was shaking so violently. Then he could – Bones was up, but facing the wrong way.

  ‘Bones!’ he shouted, starting on to the parapet. Hunter yanked him back. ‘Bones!’ Stanley called again. Bones’s head was turning one way, then the other. He was confused. The dog was flummoxed by his landing, or the shelling. Stanley rammed one fist into the other, sick with dread, but now Bones was racing away in a demented zigzag course perpendicular to that he’d started out on. On and on he
went, his back end rounded and hunched. Hunter cursed. Stanley started up the fire step again. The dog was not well, he had to call him back – Bones never deviated from his course. ‘Bones!’ he called. ‘Bones!’

  Hunter pulled him back. ‘No . . . No . . .’ Hunter’s arm was around his shoulder now. ‘Get down, stay low. Let the dog go.’

  Stanley shook himself free and started forward again.

  ‘Get down, Ryder. That’s an order,’ barked Hunter.

  Two hours trickled by in quiet misery. Stanley combed the plain, inch by aching inch, again and again and again. If Bones were alive he’d come back; he’d been hit perhaps, but he’d been able to run.

  The tangle of wire and weeds on the parapet grew dark and indistinct. In the far distance to the north, the enemy guns began again their grumbling and their winking stabs and flashes of light. Knowing that Stanley was waiting for Bones, wouldn’t leave his dug-out till the dog came in, Corporal Hunter carried Stanley’s rations to him. Hunter said nothing but Stanley felt his despair, the despair of all the Devons, whose hope lay in the cylinder around Bones’s neck. Hunter placed Stanley’s rations on the platform, rested a hand on Stanley’s shoulder and said, ‘Eat, Ryder, you must—’ He stopped, open-mouthed, ghastly pale, looking along the length of the trench. ‘Ryder . . .’ Hunter’s voice died away.

  At the end of straight bay, the section of trench beyond Fidget, stood Cook, a candle in his hand. Now men were rising, some still holding their mess tins, rising in a wave and standing aside, in silent horror.

  ‘Ryder – your dog – he’s made it back . . .’ Again Hunter’s whispered words tailed away.

  Stanley leaped forward, then stopped. Bones was stumbling, unsure of his legs, of his ground, of his direction – what was wrong? He was staggering, legs buckling and head low, grazing the ground – what was wrong? Those eyes – they were gooey, oozing. Bones couldn’t see. Terrible to watch, blind and staggering, all grace gone, every bending step the heartbreaking depiction of nobility, courage and loyalty.

  Cook’s candle was passed down the line. More candles were lit by the men who stood aside, a fitting guard of honour for the great dog stumbling on between them, hocks and stifles bent double.

  Not wanting to confuse Bones, Stanley took a slow, deliberate step, holding out his hand, now moving closer again. Bones’s ears flickered. He raised his head an inch or two.

  ‘Good boy, good,’ Stanley whispered. Bones took another buckling step. One more and he reached his master, staggering, falling at Stanley’s feet. A second passed. ‘Good boy, good,’ Stanley was whispering, but now, with the last of his strength, Bones was straining to rise, to straighten his trembling forelegs, to lift his head to his master.

  Stanley saw his ears prick, his tail quiver, and he saw the gummed-up, damaged eyes.

  ‘Good boy, good.’ With fumbling, useless fingers, Stanley unclasped the cylinder and took out the message, then handed it to Hunter.

  Bones’s head thudded to the ground, his jowls loose and sprawling on the dusty duckboards.

  Fidget was wringing his hands. ‘Gas, Stanley, he’s been gassed. Shoot him . . . kindest thing . . . to shoot him.’

  ‘I’ll shoot you before I shoot this dog.’ Stanley heard the anger in Hunter’s voice, turned and saw him wipe his eyes as he tried to read the message.

  There was a new note of panic as Hunter, still reading, shouted for a sapper.

  ‘B Company are holding Boche prisoners. There’s no front line to speak of there – they’re trapped – surrounded on three sides, two hundred feet to the right of the intersection of the road and the sunken railway line. All signalling equipment destroyed before leaving the post. The prisoners have revealed a further attack coming tonight. Twenty-hours.’ Hunter looked up. ‘That’s minutes – fifteen minutes from now – we’ve no front line in this sector – we’re sitting ducks.’ Hunter handed the message to the sapper, whirled around to Stanley, then away again, hesitated and turned back.

  ‘Fifteen minutes . . . Good God! . . . Thank God, Ryder, for your dog. I’d never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.’ Hunter leaped away, shouting for an AVC man, for a veterinary man, as he ran down to the Signal Station.

  Minutes later, there was panic and disorder all along the line.

  ‘Move backwards. Move backwards. Take up position in the support lines.’

  ‘Back down the trench. Get back, back down the trench.’

  ‘Keep moving backwards.’

  Amidst the flood of men heading for the communication trench, Stanley sat alone, cradling Bones’s head, searching Bones’s flank for wounds with panicked, jittery fingers. Only fifteen minutes till the Hun attack. He felt a sharp prick in the pad of a finger. Along the lower edge of exposed flank, along the line of the belly, ran a deep gash, the length of a child’s arm, the skin ripped, the pink and white guts laced with barbs of steel. Stanley made a choking sound, hands trembling helplessly above the ragged skin. Blind. Wire in his guts and with gas in his lungs. Oh, when would someone come to help them? He couldn’t carry the dog – would they be left behind as everyone retreated?

  All around there were confused shouts and yells. A stream of men poured along the communication trench, the remnants of a whole division surging past in headlong retreat. Stanley leaped up and spun around. A stretcher – he must find a stretcher. Senselessly he looked over the parapet. Trailing shadows morphed into men, tattered and ghoulish figures that stumbled towards the communication trench in heavy boots and huge helmets, rifles for crutches. Where the trench was too congested, men clambered into the open, scrambling over crumbling ridges and pits, past broken carts and wagons. A heavy-gun team ploughed uphill, the terrified gunners whipping and cursing their mounts onward. One infantryman was pushing another, purple-faced, with red-rimmed bulging eyes, in a wheelbarrow. A wheelbarrow! Stanley could move Bones in a barrow – where – where could he find another barrow?

  ‘Stanley. Quick.’

  It was Fidget. Fidget with a stretcher. Stanley was overwhelmed with relief and gratitude.

  ‘Quick, Stanley. Get him on. Quick.’ Fidget was strapping his pigeon basket to his back.

  Beyond the parapet someone shouted, ‘Where’s the front line?’

  ‘There isn’t one.’

  Stanley unravelled the stretcher on the platform and together they lifted the helpless dog on, while all around them, men shouted and cursed. ‘Keep moving backwards. Hurry. Out of the way. Into the reserve lines. Move on. Move on.’

  Stanley and Fidget forced their way into the rush of men flooding back to the support lines, reached the intersection with the communication trench, and – within seconds of turning – heard a confusion of bursting shells and crashing walls.

  There were alarmed yells and screams from scattered men running towards the back line.

  ‘It’s in enemy hands – the front line – all in enemy hands!’

  ‘The Hun’s got posts and bits of trench a hundred and fifty yards away!’

  ‘The enemy’s following behind—’

  Another savage crash made Stanley leap out of his skin as dirt and earth rained into the communication trench.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Fidget as he and Stanley turned to each other in horror, blinking away dust and debris, wiping sweat and grime from their faces. Both glanced backwards with the same fear.

  ‘Here, take this.’ Stanley thrust his end of the stretcher into the nearest hands and leaped up. The roof of the Signal Station had fallen in. Smoke was pouring out. Hunter would have been in there destroying equipment before abandoning it. Stanley saw a tall figure reach the fire step, stagger two paces and fall, writhing. ‘Hunter,’ he breathed.

  Hunter’s body gave a sudden, short spasm, then went rigid. There was another explosion. Insensible with shock, Stanley dropped back into the communication trench, looked at Fidget and moved his head slowly from side to side. ‘Hunter,’ he said. ‘They got Hunter.’

  The Devon man holdi
ng the stretcher shoved it back into Stanley’s hands.

  In the support line an officer was holding up a rifle to stop runaways, bellowing, ‘Halt! Stand firm. Take that section!’

  He let Stanley and Fidget pass, waving them in the direction of a Veterinary First Aid Station. They weaved their way past labour units digging fresh graves, past a queue of the walking wounded wrapped in blankets at a Regimental Aid Post, between stretcher-bearers, carts, ammunition stores and columns of fresh men, all the while Stanley whispering over and over to Bones, ‘Bones, stay with me, Bones, stay. Hang on. You’ll be all right, you’ll be all right . . .’

  ‘There.’ Fidget pointed to a horse-drawn cattle float, by the side of which a pair of men were treating a wounded dog on a small wooden table. An AVC officer with a thin, hunted face approached and cast a weary eye over Bones.

  ‘Gas . . . bad case.’

  Mutely Stanley guided the man’s fingers to the barbed wire in Bones’s belly. The officer looked up and said, ‘It’s not a case for the Mobile Units.’

  Dizzy with the compounded terror and horror of the day, Stanley covered his eyes as he spoke.

  ‘Is there n-no hope?’

  The vet took his hand. ‘We treat hundreds of animals – every day – and seventy per cent or so are got fit enough to return to the front line.’

  ‘What h-happens to – to those not fit enough to return?’

  There was heartache in the officer’s voice as he answered. ‘We’ve orders to shoot animals that can’t be released fit for active service.’

  With a gentle squeeze he released Stanley’s hand and directed him to a motorized horse ambulance and Veterinary Hospital number 10. Fidget helped load Bones into the truck and turned to leave.

  ‘Good luck, Stanley,’ he said. ‘God bless your dog.’

  Alone in the ambulance, Stanley wept openly for Bones, who’d run blindfold through a battle so many worlds beyond his comprehension.

  The night of 4 April 1918

  Veterinary Hospital number 10, Neufchâtel, near Etaples

  Together, Bones and Stanley travelled alone a short distance through the night, the driver picking his way without headlights along a glimmering, potholed road, passing infantry, cavalry and endless ammunition limbers until they arrived at what looked like a big white circus tent. A white flag with a blue cross flapped from a mast.