Soldier Dog Page 6

  ‘Big silly,’ Stanley said. ‘Sit.’ Bones sat, growling sporadically at the guns, chains of saliva swinging greedily from his jowls. Stanley fed him a titbit. ‘Good boy,’ he kept whispering.

  On and on went the hurricane of ear-scorching fire. Only Bones among the fretful, unsettled animals sat firm, head up, highly conscious of his own majesty and dreaming of raw liver.

  After another week, Stanley and Bones moved on to Bomb Drill. As they joined the circle of men and dogs around a deep pit, Richardson addressed the keepers.

  ‘This is the third exercise in preparation for No Man’s Land, and is designed to accustom the dogs to mortar bombs. At my first whistle, the orderlies will throw raw meat into the pit. At my second, they’ll throw dummy mortar bombs on to the surrounding area. At my third, you will release your dogs. This training will be very gradual. Don’t speak roughly to your dogs. If a dog fails, take him back to try again, and if he does it well, if he eats from the pit, reward him.’

  Stanley eyed the vicious-looking grenades the orderlies held. He looked at Bones sitting statue still. Next to Bones were Trigger Doyle and his dogs, keeping, like everyone else, a respectful berth around Bones. Stanley liked Trigger, liked that Trigger took everyone as they came, not minding that Stanley didn’t talk much. Trigger said he worked as a ghillie, but Stanley wasn’t sure, thought there was something raggedy, perhaps, about Trigger’s morals. More poacher than ghillie, Stanley thought to himself. Still, he liked Trigger.

  A whistle went and the horseflesh was thrown into the pit. At once, the circle of dogs, though still to heel, grew restless. Bones’s snout quivered but he remained sitting, awaiting Stanley’s command. A few minutes passed and now he began to lose his self-control, half rising and turning, half sitting. He looked at Stanley, reproachfully cocking his head and turning another circle, still crouching, saliva glittering in the sun and swirling out like the chains of a merry-go-round. It was taking all Stanley’s strength now to hold him back. Trigger watched Stanley, laughing, but Stanley thought that Trigger was perhaps a tiny bit jealous, too, of the majestic Bones.

  ‘Sit, Bones.’

  Richardson was speaking. ‘The older dogs will do the training and you’ll again see the pack instinct at work. Your dogs would rather brave the unknown – in this case, the grenades – than let other dogs get all the meat.’ He smiled, put his whistle to his mouth and blew.

  The orderlies, standing between the keepers and the pit, lit their fuses and threw the grenades.

  ‘Get on,’ Stanley whispered to Bones, slipping his collar. The fuses took no more than five seconds to burn, then came the ear-splitting noise – no smoke, no flashes, just noise. Bones was halfway to the pit when he whipped round. Stanley raised a hand to stop him.

  The dog’s ears were pricked, his tail lifted like a sabre, his coat bristling at the neck. Already the experienced dogs were through the grenades, hurling themselves into the pit, flinging themselves on to the meat; some of the new dogs, too. Trigger ’s deer-hound, Gypsy, was in already, others following more cautiously.

  Bones growled again in the direction of the explosions, placing himself firmly between his master and the bombs.

  ‘They won’t hurt me. Don’t worry about me. Get on, Bones, get on . . .’

  Bones hesitated, then started forward on his catlike paws, his springy step turning to a bounding run, like the bouncing gait of a thoroughbred horse. The dog was fearless; it was just his instinct to guard that formed his biggest challenge.

  Later that afternoon Stanley scrubbed the kennel as Bones waited outside, muscular as a prizefighter, proud as a peacock, surveying his field. Everyone else had three kennels to clean while Stanley only had the one. Trigger would say cheerfully that there’d be more dogs along soon for Stanley, but Trigger didn’t really know.

  Stanley looked at Bones and wondered about the breeding that had produced such a specimen. Perhaps Da had been right after all to value pure-bloods above all else? Of a sudden, Stanley felt guilty that since having Bones he’d thought so little of Soldier. Now visions came racing back – Soldier cavorting in Trumpet’s stable – the sable eyes and porridge coat – and, flooded with raging anger, Stanley vowed he’d never, ever forgive what Da had done.

  Macy, the head nurse, was on his evening round, inspecting the condition of each dog. Bones rose, growling, high-set ears pricked.

  ‘Shh. It’s only Macy, come to check you over.’

  Before Macy began his inspection, Stanley would ask him the question that mattered so much.

  ‘W-will the C-colonel give me another dog, Macy? He won’t send me to France with only one dog, will he?’

  Macy hesitated, sighed and interrupted his examination of Bones’s forepaw. ‘If Russia and Germany sign a peace treaty, Keeper Ryder, we’ll be vastly outnumbered – those troops from the Eastern front all free . . . it’ll be no place—’

  ‘I have to go, Macy. I have to go—’ The desperate note in his own voice stopped Stanley short and made Macy look up sharply.

  ‘The Colonel will have reasons of his own for not wanting you to go to France, Ryder . . .’

  Bones was half growling, half purring, losing the battle for self-control, his tail poised to wag but his hackles prickling too. There behind Macy was the Colonel.

  Stanley rose and faced the Colonel. They were the same height and Stanley met him eye to eye. ‘I want two more dogs, sir.’

  The Colonel paused, taken aback by Stanley’s anger. When he answered it was with anger of his own. ‘We’re short, Ryder. Now the officers have seen the dogs in action and know they can save the lives of human runners –’ the Colonel’s blue eyes sparked – ‘now they’re crying out for them. But it’s too late, I can’t get any more. I’ve been waiting three weeks . . . nothing. I’ve put calls on the wireless, in the newspapers. We had twelve thousand dogs handed in, but there are so few left . . . so many were shot, put down, abandoned.’

  Stanley was thinking of Da’s rant, about hounds being shot.

  ‘I’ve placed a new advertisement.’ The Colonel handed Stanley a cutting from his pocket. ‘We’re doing everything we can . . .’

  A photograph of Richardson led the news item, followed by the words, ‘THE WAR OFFICE REQUIRES A FURTHER GIFT OF DOGS FOR MILITARY PURPOSES.’

  Our women have given their husbands, their sons, their fathers, their brothers – and now, their dogs. Twelve thousand dogs have been handed in so far, an overwhelming response. But still more are needed. There have been several calls on the wireless for the public to donate their dogs. We have already taken dogs from the Dogs Homes at Leeds and Battersea—

  Stanley looked up impatiently, handing the cutting back.’ Will you send me to F-France with only one dog?’ The Colonel was silent a moment. When he answered, it was with more sorrow than anger. ‘No, Ryder. With only one dog, I won’t, if I can help it, send you to France. And if I do, I can assure you that it will be against my every instinct. I’m under pressure to provide six dog sections at the end of next week but . . . well, however short we are of men, I cannot see that it is right to send boys so young.’

  ‘I can do the job, sir, I can do it as well as any man.’

  The Colonel was nodding as he knelt. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Yes, I know you can.’ He reached to stroke Bones. ‘My son loved dogs. He too was a fine boy . . . They told me afterwards that he went over the top and on forward. When he lost his companions, still he went forward. As he was bringing prisoners home, he was hit by his own shells . . . Falling short, they told me.’

  Stanley was defeated, silenced by the Colonel’s raw, open grief.

  ‘He, too, was so very young, Stanley.’

  Thursday, 7 March 1918

  Shoeburyness, Essex

  Once again Stanley walked up and down Shoeburyness High Street. Two hours every afternoon, for four weeks, he thought, while other men rest or swim in the estuary. How much point is there when we might be stuck here forever? The Colonel is protectin
g me, he thought, but I have only a brother, and that brother is in France, and France is where I should be.

  Still, it was good to be out in the sun with Bones, and they’d made steady progress. Bones rarely showed aggression or suspicion, so far today hadn’t growled once.

  Stanley’s thoughts turned to Thornley. Had anyone worried where he was? What had Miss Bird done when he’d started missing school? Who did Joe play cards with now? Stanley sighed. Had Da done nothing when he’d found him missing? Did he not care?

  No new dogs had arrived, despite the Colonel’s calls. If more dogs did come, Stanley would have to spend another six weeks training them, but at least he’d know for sure that he’d get to France. There were four days to go until the next batch of keepers and dogs were to report at Folkestone. There’d be a final Homing Run test tomorrow, after which the Colonel would announce who would be draughted out. Bones would do the test, but for what? Stanley sighed and stopped in front of a news-stand carrying the headline of the Daily Express, looking for a distraction from these thoughts.

  The peace talks between Germany and Russia had finally been concluded. Germany would have more men, more money, more ammunition than ever before. Where was Tom? What would this mean for Tom?

  That night Stanley lay awake in his bunk. Around him, the men who’d been given three dogs each were all asleep. Rain rattled on the iron roof like the rat-a-tat-tat of machine-gun fire.

  Listening to the rain, Stanley fell into an unsettled sleep. In his dream, water dripped from the tin roof and collected in dark puddles on the floor. The puddles grew and coalesced and began to rise and fill the hut. The water was rising inside Stanley. He couldn’t speak and he couldn’t breathe because the water was in his throat and he was drowning, while above him danced fragments of golden straw. He reached upward through the raven water to them, but his fingers grasped only shreds of sacking.

  The next morning the keepers sat in the lorry, ready for the Colonel’s address.

  ‘Can you hear that?’ said someone. The eerie echo of gunfire was drifting on the wind across the narrow sea from the Western Front.

  ‘I can’t wait – can you? – for the cavalry, for the beating drums . . .’ said Trigger Doyle. Stanley looked at Trigger aghast. He’d never longed for war, didn’t like to think of one man killing another. France was no more and no less to Stanley than the land where Tom was and Da wasn’t.

  Trigger looked at Stanley expectantly. ‘Not one for a natter, are you, Stanley Ryder?’ But he didn’t wait for an answer and shrugged his shoulders, ‘’S all right. We’ll stick together, you and I, and I’ll do the talking.’ Trigger saw it as his job, perhaps, to jolly Stanley along and he never seemed to mind that Stanley didn’t say much.

  Bones was good at the Homing Run, fast and with iron stamina. Each afternoon of the last three weeks the dogs had been taken by the Colonel’s orderlies a distance away from their keepers and had had to find their way back alone over ground they didn’t know. First they’d been led away on foot, then in motor cars. Now, for the first time, they were to be taken off in a closed box trailed behind the motor car. At their destination the orderlies would unload them, put a message giving the time of release into their cylinders, slip their collars and instruct the dogs to get on.

  The Colonel began to speak. ‘The safe arrival of a message from the back line to the front, or the front to the back, can mean the success or failure of an offensive. Telephone lines can be easily tapped. Wireless communication can be tuned into. A dog, unlike a pigeon, can work at night, in fog, in rain, can swim across a river or a canal or a shell hole. Using a dog as messenger can prevent the tragic and unnecessary death of a human runner. That is why the homing skill has been at the heart of all our training here and today we’ll see which dogs are ready for this most dangerous and vital duty.’

  The dogs were driven away. The keepers moved towards their posts. The light changed minute by minute as clouds scudded across the vast mackerel sky. Stanley buttoned his greatcoat to the neck, stamped his feet and blew on his hands, his eyes trained on the horizon and a distant church spire. He could see all the arable land between this estuary and the next. Bones would be eight miles away by now, there, below the church spire. At exactly three o’clock he’d be released. Kennel staff were scattered along the route, ready to watch each dog’s self-control, ability to avoid temptations, to navigate traffic. The Colonel himself would be watching from a sort of raised hide on the salt marsh, so he could see as much of the course as possible.

  Stanley checked his watch. Three ten. They’d come into sight any minute, the faster ones first, then the rest in dribs and drabs.

  Even when Bones had been taken further away, had to cross higher gates, wider dykes, denser barbed wire, still he’d come back, not taking the road he’d travelled outward, but in a beeline. Yes, Bones was good at homing, but this run would include the Firing Drill, the test he’d found so difficult. Still, Stanley said to himself, it made no difference really, if Bones did well or not.

  The minutes inched past. Stanley anxiously scuffed the broad flat leaves of the cord grass at his feet. There, almost beneath his left boot, was the spotty head of a dotted chestnut moth. That was the first dotted chestnut of the year. Stanley beckoned to Trigger. Trigger liked moths too. Chestnuts didn’t like the cold but now it was warmer. The catkins, Stanley was thinking now, might be out on the hazel at Thornley.

  Through his binoculars, Stanley could see the first dogs – there! – pouring like rolling surf through the narrow gate on to the railway track. In a wave, breath held, as tense as if it were Derby day and their shirts staked on the outcome, the keepers abandoned their cigarettes and their chatter and pressed their field glasses to their eyes. Birdie was setting fire to the bales. The dogs were clambering on to the bank of the watercourse that bounded this side of the village. That was one dog there – now on the far side of the first field – Bones – his height so distinctive – hurling himself into the water. Stanley pictured him disappearing in the current, surfacing, spluttering, head just above the water, muscular legs scrabbling in the froth.

  There he was, the first up on the near bank by the coppiced elm, kingly and calm, loping easily towards the wires which stretched, five high and each a foot apart across the belly of the field. The two largest dogs, Bones and Trigger’s dog Gypsy, were level-pegging it towards the wires – No! – Bones was a nose ahead – enough to make a man burst with pride – now soaring the wires in a swift, smooth stream. Stanley felt a vaulting rush of joy as the pack, all shapes and sizes, breeds and colours, ages and abilities, raced for the field gate, now onward to the hurdles, snouts raised like pointers after game. Bones jumped the first hurdle, and the next, and the next with increasing height and ease.

  Flames leaped from the top of Birdie’s bales, danced around the edges. Smoke rolled and billowed out. It was becoming difficult to see but there at the front of the pack was Bones – pausing – head tilted indignantly at the smoke – now flying into the smog – appearing – a gold brown streak, on this side. He was so fast – airborne, sailing, floating – four legs off the ground, on, off, the astonishing reach of his forelegs striking the ground so far in front of his nose.

  The dogs had reached the broken marshland, the worst lay ahead. There in the marshland, concealed in the reed and the sedge, lay the ambush, the line of firing infantry with their rifles and the kennel men with their mortars. Bones and Gypsy were nose to nose again – No, now Bones was ahead, fiercer in his longing to come home. Trigger was forgetting himself, waving his cap, woolly black hair flying, pink-faced with shouting. The guns burst into a shattering blizzard of fire and noise. Sparks flew. Swelling puffs of black and grey smoke billowed out. Acrid fumes dispersed on the breeze. What would Bones do? Would he come straight through the storm of blanks?

  There he was – he’d pulled up mid-gallop the instant the guns had opened fire. The rest of the field surged past in a frothy torrent. Still Bones hesitated, with that fami
liar, considering-my-options pitch to his head.

  ‘No, Bones. Straight through. Straight on. Just go straight on.’

  Bones half turned from the guns. Trigger was jumping up and down, victory within his reach. Stanley bit his lip and breathed, ‘Come, Bones, come. Straight to me. Come straight through.’

  Bones took a step forward and stopped. He took another step and stopped.

  ‘Come, Bones, come.’

  Bones was pawing the ground. He raised his head at the guns and barked, then loped forward a couple of easy paces, more like a thoroughbred horse in a show ring than a dog. He drew up, surely, now very close to the guns, lowered his head, lifted his tail and moved into a long striding run.

  ‘Come, Bones, come, boy, come.’

  The dog disappeared from view.

  ‘Come, boy, come.’

  Where was he? Stanley’s eyes ached from the strain of trying to see.

  There! He’d done it – he’d gone through the firing line, was gathering speed, making time on the dogs at the front, racing with every fibre in his body, jaws set, legs converging, long striding gait the very image of purpose and intent, near the front now, a flurry of dogs in his wake. Trigger was caught off balance as Gypsy hurled himself at his master in a frenzied muddle of tail and leg and tongue. Bones vaulted forward, and Stanley was on his knees, head against the striped velvet coat, arm around the muscular neck.

  ‘Good boy,’ Stanley whispered. Bones pulled himself free, shook himself, scattering sunlit spray like diamond confetti, then remembering his duty he assembled himself into an untidy sitting position, hind legs awry and sprawling, flanks heaving. Breathless and panting, he lifted his head for the cylinder to be opened.