Soldier Dog Read online

  At the far end of the straight bay, the Australian Brigadier-General was running against the flow of crawling men, yelling at them.

  ‘Get up and get into place and I’ll tell you when to take cover. Stay in your place!’

  Hamish thrust a Lee-Enfield rifle into Stanley’s hands.

  ‘Fix the bayonet.’

  Stanley fixed the bayonet and rotated it. He was in the front line; would have to defend himself – to kill, if necessary. He slid the bayonet abruptly into its housing over the barrel.

  ‘If you need tae, drive that toothpick as far home as you can. Aye, and twist it too, before you pull it out – It’s him or you, and for my sake, make sure it’s him.’

  There were more shouts.

  ‘Stay where you are and hold the line!’

  ‘You’re going into action at once!’

  Stanley was pushed aside as another rush of men – not Australians, these, but men in English khaki – came over the fire step and plunged along the trench. Was that the red rose of the East Lancs on those collar badges? Were they men of Tom’s battalion?

  Abandoning the bayonet, Stanley rushed after them. Were they Lancashires? Leaping and dodging, he forced his way downstream through the rush of men, with Pistol at his heels, weightless and agile as a shadow. The last of the Lancashires, the one at the back – that one! That last one was Tom’s height and build. Stanley ran, shouting frantically, ‘Tom! Tom!’

  No one turned or stopped.

  ‘Tom!’ Stanley called again, scrambling through men. He reached the intersection and snatched at the back of a coat, missed and snatched again at a sleeve.

  ‘Tom Ryder. Was he with you? Tom Ryder?’ The soldier rushed on, and Stanley felt, where an arm should be, only a fraying cuff which disintegrated in his hands. He opened his palm and saw shreds of bloodied cloth. Too desperate to compass the man’s wound, Stanley ran on, caught another man by the shoulders, and made him turn.

  ‘Sir, sir, was Tom Ryder with you? Do you know Tom Ryder?’

  The man looked at Stanley, his eyes glassy with fear. ‘Yes, he’s out there, cut off in the Monument. What’s left of C Company is up there with what’s left of the Second West Yorks. Brave, your Tom Ryder – held Jerry up with a revolver, kept on shooting, on and on, gave his men time to pull sandbags into place. There’s a machine gun on them somewhere, snipers on them everywhere, they’re sitting ducks – no ammunition, can’t get a message out, the Signal Station is blown to bits.’ He shook his head, turned and moved on.

  Stanley leaped up the nearest fire step, straining to see the group of trees he knew to be the Monument. Everything was quiet there. Behind him, someone was shouting, ‘Retire and get the lads back! Get the lads back!’

  Stanley forced his way upstream against the flow of men, back to his post. With trembling, mud-clogged hands, he grabbed his field glasses, and again scanned the ring of trees around the plain.

  The Brigadier-General was back, walking along the trench. His voice was calm and slow.

  ‘Stay where you are. Hold the line. Company Commanders to assemble at the double. We’re in the most advanced position. The enemy’s broken through on our immediate front. It’s through and past us on the right flank.’

  Fidget was huddled on Stanley’s platform, next to his pigeon basket. Sodden strands of straw-coloured hair clung to Fidget’s streaming forehead, his gaunt face a picture of alarm, fog and confusion in his watery eyes. The day had perhaps been too much for him. His eyes skittered and his mouth was helter-skelter as he said, ‘We’ll never get out . . . never get out . . .’

  Stanley gave an irritated shake of the shoulders. ‘We’re better off than the men in the Aquenne. Would you rather be there?’

  ‘Stay where you are. Hold the line. Stay where you are. Hold the line . . .’

  An hour passed while officers collected stragglers and non-combatants. Men of all stripes were armed, anyone who could still hold a rifle – tailors, grooms, buglers, officer’s batmen, even Cook. Fidget and Stanley waited in line, with bayonets fixed. They were given a dry biscuit, then stretched out into a skeleton battle formation.

  The rain was lighter now. Stanley could see where the line, to the left, was scattered and broken, manned by an exhausted ragtag battalion. The English 8th Division in the front line was overwhelmed, had sustained losses beyond endurance. The medical services were overwhelmed, and in the shaft beyond Fidget, wounded Lancs and Yorks were being patched up by their own comrades.

  Hamish and the sappers, under Captain McManus’s direction, were setting up equipment in Stanley’s dug-out, building a new forward Signal Station. Stanley, eyes straying helplessly towards the Monument, was supposed to be rigging up the Aldis lamp.

  ‘There’ll be a counter-attack,’ said Hamish grimly. ‘The generals won’t let Amiens fall, won’t let Villers stay in German hands. There’s no option for them. Sooner or later, there’s going to be a counter-attack.’

  Pistol half sat, half crouched, trying to keep his haunches above the sump water of the trench, never taking his eyes off Stanley. An iron roof was dragged over the trench, men hauled up reels of cable, looped wires around the walls, set up the instruments. Looking up from his polishing of the lamp’s lens, Stanley saw the grey dog raise his head too. He saw the dog’s unexceptional looks and he saw in his solemn eyes the wise and loyal soul within. Hamish, too, watched as Pistol’s nose followed Stanley’s hands as they coiled the wire of the lamp, and said, ‘By any measure, that dog is more, laddie, than a dog.’

  Early afternoon, 24 April 1918

  Aquenne Wood, near Cachy

  Stanley looked, for the thousandth time, to the north-west, to the shards of trees that clawed the sky, like desperate fingerless hands.

  A Brigade Commander appeared with new staff, all fresh and clean.

  ‘We must counter-attack at once. B Company will be in the centre, C Company will take the right. Get ready. There’s no time to waste.’

  There was disbelief and resignation in the faces of the infantrymen, exhaustion in their slumped bodies, but once again they readied themselves for an inspection and waited for what might have been an hour. There were more shouts, a patrol, waiting, more waiting, more shouts, another patrol.

  For another hour nothing happened. The rain exhausted itself. Disagreements within the High Command filtered down as counter-commands.

  ‘Stay where you are. Hold the line. There’ll be no attack.’

  A Lieutenant-Colonel appeared. ‘You’re going into action at once.’

  He was met by a Brigadier-General with a rugged and honest face.

  ‘Brigadier-General Glasgow,’ whispered Fidget.

  ‘All our artillery is out of action and the enemy has all his guns in position. We’ll be annihilated by the machine-gun emplacements in the Monument if we try to attack.’ The Brigadier-General’s voice was deep and calm, his Australian accent exotic and strange to Stanley. ‘If it was God Almighty who gave the order, we wouldn’t do it in daylight.’ It was good, thought Stanley, to be commanded by such a man.

  In the mid afternoon the sun appeared fully. Stanley’s sodden uniform began to steam. The sump water of the trench gave out a rank sweat.

  Had Tom escaped? Stanley raised his field glasses and scanned the maze of ridges and pits below, seeing only shovels, water bottles, tin hats, maps, flares, stretchers, petrol tins, bully tins and groundsheets. Was Tom out there, washed up amidst the relics of things that had once been? Stanley saw a figure wriggling, like a worm, out of one shell hole into another. The man didn’t stand a chance, couldn’t even steady a gun in that mud.

  For the moment there was to be no attack, the High Command still arguing among itself, the Australians refusing to obey English orders to counter-attack in daylight. Some sort of rations had come up and a queue was forming by Cook. Cook must be relieved, Stanley thought, to put down his bayonet and find himself back in charge of his kitchen. Stanley stayed where he was, his thoughts still with Tom, with
Da, his fingers worrying at Pistol’s ears.

  Fidget appeared, holding his army biscuits in one hand, in the other a letter. Fidget handed over the biscuits, then, as a thing of infinitely lesser value, the letter. Stanley saw the stamp ‘ON ACTIVE SERVICE’ along the top, saw the stilted hand on the envelope – Da. His heart racing, his palms sweaty, he saw the APO S11 stamp: Cross Mail, the stamp of the Stationary Field Post Office at Etaples – Da was still at Etaples! Stanley took a deep breath, opened the envelope, unfolded the sheet, saw the careful letters and the hand that had laboured over the unwilling words. Warily, he began to read.

  Out here? Had Da taken leave of his senses? Had he not—? Soldier not dead – out here? Alive and out here? Stanley raced on.

  Stanley gulped and froze. Da hadn’t done it, he’d never done it – he’d taken Soldier to the Home, hadn’t drowned him – Soldier was alive – where? Stanley charged on, scrambling and tripping over words.

  Where is he, Da? Tell me where he is.

  2176? Stanley’s heart vaulted – blue twos and ones and sevens and sixes shimmered and jumped on the white page. With fumbling fingers, Stanley clutched at Pistol’s collar – he knew the number – but – no – something was wrong – Pistol was 2176. Stanley stared at the tag. The digits leaped and jumped and disordered themselves. Stanley’s fingers released the tag. Stanley began to shake. 2176, Pistol was 2176. Feverish and clumsy, Stanley took up the letter. 2176 it said – Da was wrong – had got the number wrong – Pistol was 2176. Stanley turned from the letter to the collar again and looked, still uncomprehending into Pistol’s troubled eyes. Stanley caught his breath – those dark eyes – his gut lurching with doubt and shock and wondrous hope – those eyes . . . Was it possible – were they Soldier’s? The milky pup he’d held in the palm of his hand, the tiny bundle Rocket had dropped on his lap – was it possible? – Could he have grown so tall? Soldier would be five months now, almost six – Soldier’s tripping, coltish legs – had they grown so long, so fast? Stanley held fistfuls of Pistol’s grey coat. Was this Soldier’s – had the porridge deepened to silver?

  Tears streaming down his cheeks, Stanley caught at Soldier’s ears, his tail, his legs, in a fever of amazement.

  ‘Soldier,’ he choked. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’ With bemused and narrowed laughing eyes, Soldier opened his jaws and grinned back at Stanley. ‘You knew as soon as you saw me, you’ve known all along, but I, I didn’t . . .’

  Stanley threw himself on Soldier, held the whole dog in his arms, rocking him back and forth, a sunburst of wonder and warmth erupting in the wounded centre of his heart, unravelling its dark knot of grief. Adrift and weightless on a surge of joy, Stanley leaned back against the sandbag, pulling the dog closer, breathing the warm wet smell of his coat, feeling the quiet tears on his own cheeks.

  ‘Was it me,’ he asked, ‘me that you were trying to find when you broke free from the home?’

  Soldier’s tail flipped to and fro with pleasure at his master’s sudden and unexpected show of affection. That feathery tail and coat – that was the Laxton dog in Soldier, that was Jake, the hound Stanley had met on Rocky Brow the afternoon he’d lost Rocket; but Soldier’s lightness and speed were all Rocket’s.

  Holding Da’s letter behind Soldier’s head, Stanley read on.

  ‘God willing’? What had Stanley done? He stared with blurred eyes at the rumpled, trembling sheet. Drips fell through the trench cover, splodging the ink. Da was out here.

  Stanley swung from the dizzy tiptop of joy to the hollows of fear. What had he done?

  ‘Da must go home, Soldier, this is no place for Da.’ Stanley leaped up. ‘He shouldn’t be here. We must find him, tell him we can all go home now.’

  What did the boy want? Soldier’s arched, flickering brows asked.

  ‘We must find Da and we must take him home.’

  His mind racing, Stanley snatched up his pack, clipped a lead on Soldier. He’d tell James that he and Soldier were leaving.

  They reached the steps to the Signal Station and Stanley came abruptly face to face with Captain McManus. Behind stood Hamish, the pair of them filling the height and width of the trench, men born to larger lands, to deeper valleys and steeper hills than these.

  ‘Oh no,’ breathed Stanley and began to shake his head firmly and slowly from side to side.

  Holding Stanley’s gaze, the Captain’s blue eyes were worried, his face grim and drawn.

  ‘No,’ said Stanley. ‘No. I can’t. I have to find my father.’ The Captain didn’t hear, was speaking at the same time.

  ‘Keeper Ryder, we’ve got to make contact with the men in the Monument. We’ve got to clear the enemy machine-gun positions there before we can counter-attack. Prepare your dog. I’m sending him up by the route under the canal.’

  Hamish stepped forward and put a gentle hand on Stanley’s shoulder. Stanley shook his head.

  ‘No.’

  The Captain stepped closer, lowered his voice, and said urgently, ‘Stanley, only the men in the Monument know the enemy positions. We’ve got to get a message back from them. I can get a runner out there, but I can’t get him back up the slope. There’s no cover, it’s too exposed from below.’

  ‘No. I must find my father.’

  ‘Stanley, I’ve no choice. Your dog is our only hope.’

  You have no choice, but I do, thought Stanley. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head again, ‘I cannot lose this dog, he cannot go.’ Stanley’s words were firm and strong, no dryness, no stammer. ‘No,’ he said again. When the Captain replied, there was anguish in his voice.

  ‘We lost ten runners, Stanley. Ten.’ Behind Hamish, Stanley saw an Australian infantryman waiting. Stanley glanced out over the parapet. Send Soldier? He spun round.

  ‘No,’ he said again. ‘No.’

  The Captain bent forward and hissed, ‘They’re sitting ducks till they get a message back with the position of the machine guns. Keeper Ryder, the Lancs have no other hope.’

  The Lancs. Stanley recoiled as the full agony of his position hit him. Without Soldier’s message, Tom and the men in the Monument could not be saved. Stanley was to lose either a brother or a dog.

  ‘I’ll go. I’ll go. Don’t send the dog, send me.’

  James gave an exasperated shake of his head, stood tall and said in a sharp, clipped voice, ‘I have no other option, and you, Keeper Ryder, have a duty and will obey my order.’

  Hamish intercepted gently.

  ‘You have no choice, Stanley. The dog must go.’

  With mingled fear and horror, Stanley turned to Soldier. He saw Soldier’s watchful, flickering brows, his liquid eyes, swishing tail, the poised and ready foreleg. Stanley bowed his head, knelt in the sump water of the trench, held the long grey head and said, ‘Bring me a message from Tom . . . but . . . come back . . . just come back. With a strangled sound, he added, ‘Go, boy. Go,’ as he held out the lead to the waiting infantryman.

  Two hours later

  Aquenne Wood

  There in that desolate huddle of trees were two of the three beings Stanley most loved.

  On Soldier’s safe return depended Tom’s life, and the life of Soldier himself. On Soldier’s safe return depended too the fate of Villers, the fate of Amiens and of Paris. How strange that the events of Stanley’s own life, the beat of his own heart, should pound in such precise collision with the pulse of the War.

  Hamish, his face lit in a shaft of amber sun, remained at Stanley’s side. His eyes were resting on Da’s letter. ‘Your Father?’

  Stanley nodded.

  ‘He didnae know, did he, your father? Didnae know you were here?’

  Stanley shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Stanley, this is nae place for you . . . even with the Dog Service.’

  ‘No,’ Stanley burst out. ‘This is no place for dogs, or horses, no place for sons or fathers or brothers. But until I’d read Da’s letter, there was no other place for me.’ Hamish stretched an arm around Stanley’s
shoulder. A little while passed. When Stanley was calmer, he said, ‘My brother . . . he’s out there, with the East Lancs.’

  ‘Oh, laddie . . .’

  Hamish was silent as together they both looked out over the parapet, their eyes tracing the route Soldier might run, out of the wood, across a marshy, shelterless belt of land, over the canal and then up the steep slope, leading to the trench in which they stood.

  ‘So much, Stanley, depends on your dog –’ Hamish shook his head doubtfully – ‘Jerry’s all around and everywhere – you can’t say where he is and where he isn’t.’ He was putting the field glasses back to his eyes again when the wary quiet of the twilight was shattered by a sudden splutter of machine-gun fire, a savage shriek, from the right of the Bois.

  A volcano of earth and debris erupted in the Monument. Closer, there was a splutter of machine-gun fire – but from where? Further down the trench where the Devon infantry stood, a shout went up. Fidget appeared out of nowhere, gripping Stanley – something was there in the far distance, hurtling low and fast towards the canal. You couldn’t see a dog at all, just a grey blur, a silver streak. Hamish was yelling for James; Stanley was measuring the land the dog had to cover, the distance, the minutes it might take. Twelve perhaps. Twelve; if Soldier kept up this speed, then twelve.

  Every stump and shard and ridge that lay between himself and the dog he loved, from the tiptop of his head to his toes, looked to Stanley sinister and malevolent. Any hole or ditch might hide a gun. Soldier was almost at the canal. The water would be thick and choked with mud. There he was, out now, on this side of the canal. He had to cross the plain now, cross it from Stanley’s ten o’clock. With gathering speed, Soldier soared over something, perhaps a dyke, perhaps a runnel, and Stanley felt a vaulting rush of joy. The pulse of his own heart was suspended, keeping pace with the unending, coalescing step of those quicksilver legs. All his breath converged on that one body – it was only the silver streak that he saw. With pride and hope he watched the gathering speed, the coiled back, the outstretched neck, the outstretched tail. He saw the smooth liquidity and grace of a dog who raced with every atom of his being towards the boy he loved.