by Sam Angus
‘If you fail your training there, you will be returned here.’
I will not, Stanley thought, watching the gleaming moustache twitch, ever come back here; I will never fall into your hands to be bullied again.
Monday, 7 January 1918
Essex
Ten new recruits sat on a series of wooden benches ranged round a dais in front of a window, waiting for the Colonel. Their rough hands, frugal speech and broad faces suggested they were countrymen, ghillies maybe, or farmers or huntsmen.
Through the window, in the last of the day’s light, Stanley saw two fields striped with orderly rows of wooden kennels. The Messenger Dog School was bounded to the east by the sea, to the north by the river. An immense sky dominated the low-lying land, all reclaimed salt marsh, interrupted by hedgerows of scrub elm, ditches and dykes and then the tidal mudflats.
A red admiral, early to arrive, was resting on the window ledge. On its folded wings Stanley saw the flashes of orange red. Stanley would let it out – could do it quickly before the Colonel came in. He rose and moved towards the window. He captured the butterfly, feeling, in the bowl of his palm, its furry thorax and the panicked batting of its powerful wings.
Brisk steps sounded along the corridor. Stanley lifted the sash window and stretched out his arm. The door opened and closed. There were footsteps behind him and Stanley was joined at the window. He opened his palm and glimpsed the black and white tracery of the admiral’s wings as it looped and curved away.
‘Do you know, that tiny wingspan’s no more than seven centimetres . . .’ The voice was entranced and gentle. ‘He weighs perhaps less than two rose petals, but if he hasn’t overwintered here, he’ll have been all the way to Spain or France.’ Stanley turned to face a silver-haired man with a noble nose and stern, periwinkle eyes. He saw too, the Colonel’s smile waver, his eyes sharpen and his arms fall in a gesture of anger and despair. The Colonel turned abruptly. Stanley remembered Quigley’s taunts about his age, remembered the McManus brothers and their fatherly watchfulness, and realized, hurrying to his bench, that they all knew at a glance that he was underage.
Colonel Richardson took the dais and began to speak, his manner courteous but firm. ‘Gentlemen, you are here on probation. I accept only men of the highest character. It is your solemn obligation to display only the qualities you’d like to see in your dogs, because a dog that lives with a man of pluck and courage will itself become plucky and courageous . . .’
The Colonel’s eagle eyes scanned the room, boring into the heart of each recruit, weighing him and assessing him, but always overlooking Stanley. Stanley sat up straight, defiant and intent.
‘I’ll be training you and you’ll be training the dogs. You must forget anything that you’ve ever learned. I don’t want experience . . . I simply want a natural love of dogs.’
Stanley watched the Colonel, challenging him to meet his eyes. He, Stanley, more than anyone here, had a natural love of dogs. He would not be treated as a child . . .
‘Your dogs are new here too. Since arriving, they’ve had twenty-four hours’ isolation and forty-eight hours’ rest. They’ve been dipped and disinfected by Macy, our veterinary head nurse. They’ve been given a leather collar, a tin message-cylinder, a brass tag engraved with “WAR MESSENGER DOG” and a number.’
As the Colonel paused, Stanley heard the thudding of heavy guns from the nearby Artillery practice ground.
‘You’ll each be allocated three dogs. Each dog will have one master. One man and only one man will be his master. You will make each and every thing about his working day a pleasure and a joy to him. You’ll teach him to be a soldier, to have discipline and sang-froid. If a dog is lazy, greedy or cowardly, if he lacks focus or concentration, he will be returned home. Those of you that do well will, when the time comes, serve a fortnight at a time, twelve hours a day, in the front-line trenches with your dogs.’ Still the Colonel was avoiding Stanley, though the boy kept his eyes firmly fixed on him, willing the Colonel to meet his gaze.
Colonel Richardson faced the line of keepers, at his heels a bewildered rabble of dogs, some scrawny, some stout, some tall, whimpering like new children on their first day at school. In the field beyond, chained to their kennels, the experienced dogs, the old hands, snouts held high, surveyed the new recruits – both the men and the new dogs – with silent scepticism.
Stanley would be the last to get his dogs. Starting at the far end of the line, Lance-Corporal Birdwood, known to the men as Birdie, had begun to distribute them.
Birdie and the Colonel were nearing the end of the line. There were two men left to go – Trigger Doyle and Stanley – but only four dogs left in the Colonel’s hands. Were there not enough dogs to go round? Perhaps they’d each have only two dogs. A racy-looking Airedale was still there, along with two very tall dogs and a teddy-bearish sheepdog. Which would be his, and which would be Doyle’s? Stanley glanced sideways at the short, wiry Doyle. His complexion was rough but despite that, and his confidence, he was perhaps as young as Stanley himself. Watching him, Stanley wondered if perhaps Doyle had stood on a pile of books in the recruiting office. Last night he’d introduced himself as ‘Trigger – Trigger Doyle’, and he’d winked at Stanley with a complicity that Stanley didn’t quite like.
‘Dog number 2154,’ said Richardson. The Colonel cast a paternal eye over the sheepdog Birdie was giving to Trigger. ‘Pharaoh . . . He’s got brains – that big square skull has plenty of room for brainpower.’
Stanley looked at the rough-and-tumble dog, at the intelligent beam of his eyes beneath the grizzle fringe, and felt a prick of envy. He looked at the remaining dogs. What would be left for him? Not the Airedale – Birdie was already handing him to Trigger – but the huge brindled dog was still there, and so was the tall wheaten one.
‘This is Bandit. An Airedale,’ the Colonel was saying. ‘He’ll be a soldier through and through, spirited, loyal and ridiculously brave.’ Stanley glanced at the gallant, dashing Bandit then his eyes shot back to the Colonel, his heart in his mouth.
Birdie was giving Trigger another dog – the handsome, bearded, wheaten one. Stanley bit his lip. There was only to be one for him – the brindled one, striped like a tiger in brown and gold. There were not enough dogs to go round and the Colonel had picked Stanley to receive only one. That truculent giant had been picked especially for him. His chance of getting to France would be hopeless with just one dog. With that dog.
Richardson moved along to Stanley. Stanley straightened up and squared his shoulders, defying the Colonel to look at him. The Colonel read from his ledger. ‘Bones.’
‘Dog number 2153,’ said Birdie.
‘Bones . . . A great Dane . . . a headlong mountain of a dog, this one. Well, do your best . . . It’ll be hard to win his trust – he was a guard dog. Then he was abandoned – like so many others – because of rationing, because his owners couldn’t feed him. He’s a suspicious animal, mistrustful. He’ll be a difficult case but try to channel that ferocity of his.’
The Colonel’s eyes finally rose from Bones to Stanley, then shifted to the middle distance. Birdie handed Stanley a lead as the Colonel continued, ‘You see, I’m forced to take whatever comes. I just can’t get enough good dogs.’ He took a long sad breath. ‘I’m still applying for more and, well, they might still come in.’ He looked again at Bones and said, ‘Bones might well be unsuitable for this kind of work. Danes make better tracking dogs than messenger dogs, but, well, let’s see – you know, if a dog loves you, he’ll do anything for you.’
The Colonel was on the point of saying more when he looked again directly at Stanley and paused. With a sorrowful shake of his head, he thought better of whatever he was going to say, turned to Birdie and, as they walked away, Stanley caught the drift of his whispered words.
‘It’s not right . . . so young . . .’ Still shaking his head, the Colonel made his way back to the centre of the line. ‘Fidelity. Courage. Honour. These are the qualities we hope to find in
a dog, these and the homing instinct. Now, this instinct exists in all dogs, but the cultivation of it will form the kernel of your training here.’
Stanley looked at Bones. The showy black and brown brindle of Bones’s coat had the dangerous sheen of a savage and unpredictable jungle animal. Headstrong, thought Stanley, seeing the deep jaws, the incisors that could rip anything to shreds. Stanley wondered whether he did, after all, have a natural love of dogs, because if he had, it seemed to have deserted him now. It was the bulk and heft of Bones that was so off-putting. Da’s dogs had always been as light as shadows and he could feel nothing but revulsion for this drooling giant.
As the Colonel spoke, a self-important young plover with browny-grey winter plumage trotted urgently across the sand a few feet away. Bones cocked his large head, brows raised appealingly, ears pricked, all that surly truculence suddenly evaporated. He raised a stout forepaw as if to play. The dog had no more sense than a skittle, thought Stanley, exasperated, watching Bones paw the ground in invitation to the plover. The bird trotted off. Bones’s head drooped, his eyes blinking mournfully in the direction of the now distant plover. It amused Stanley that Bones looked marvellously ferocious but was really so gentle.
‘Silly Bones.’
The triangular ears collapsed, downcast against his cheeks. That head was so expressive, the fleeting changes from surly suspicion to playfulness to disappointment, all so easily read, and Stanley was surprised to feel a glimmer of affection for this clumsy, playful giant.
Richardson was still speaking.
‘Dogs are four times faster than humans. They can swim across shell holes and canals. They can find their way at night and run as fast at night as by day. They are not shell-shy. They can exercise the homing instinct within only one week of arriving at a new area, picking up one individual scent and following it – despite thousands of competing smells – across ground that is impassable for horse, man or machine.’
Stanley smiled to see yet another sudden change in Bones, now sitting as tall and still as an imperial statue. Stanley noticed the surprising majesty of him, the acute sense he had of his own dignity.
‘Bones,’ whispered Stanley.
The dog’s high, close-set ears tightened so that they touched each other, twin sails atop his square skull. He smacked his jowls and blinked up at Stanley, then shuffled his haunches back, to sit on Stanley’s toes, nestling against Stanley’s legs.
‘The dog must want to be with you. If he wants to be with you,’ Richardson was saying, ‘then he will be faithful, courageous and honourable. Not only that, but he’ll be pulled, as though by magnetism, through falling bombs, through hurricanes of fire and fields of rolling tanks, by his longing to be with you. If he loves you, he will rush home to you, even through blizzards of flying steel.’
‘Flying steel.’ Stanley took a deep breath, and whispered to Bones, ‘We will do it together, and show them all, you and I.’
The dog cast his head around, saw Pharaoh, set his jaws and began a deep, grumbling growl. A little intimidated, Pharaoh’s large, soft paws edged backwards. Stanley smiled – Bones was guarding him, all of his great weight now leaning as heavily and defensively as a bulwark against Stanley’s legs. Stanley braced himself against the weight of the dog, a little charmed by the dog’s ready acceptance of his new master, and his determination to protect him.
‘Yes,’ he breathed, ‘you will be faithful, courageous and honourable.’ He looked up at the Colonel, and added, with a flint of anger, ‘Or we will never get to France and to Tom.’
The days raced by.
Each day the six-thirty reveille was followed by roll call at seven, then breakfast. At eight the keepers groomed the dogs. At nine there was a general parade of staff, trainers, orderlies, keepers and highly excited dogs. The rest of the day was spent on fitness exercises and the Homing Instinct run with only one hour free before the evening lecture.
After three weeks of fitness training, the first of the war training exercises, the Firing Infantry, had been introduced. This would accustom the dogs to rifle fire. Two days ago there’d been just one gun, yesterday two. Today there’d be six infantrymen. Stanley joined the line of keepers standing a couple of hundred feet away from a row of infantry. The Colonel’s orderlies approached to lead the dogs away to their far side. At Birdie’s whistle the dogs would be released, the infantry would fire blanks, and the dogs were to run into the firing line and through to their keepers.
Bones’s rumbling purr cranked up. The closer the orderly came, the louder his growl. Stanley cuffed him round the ears. Bones looked up briefly, clamping his jaws in injured pride before turning again, unable to suppress a final warning growl.
‘You big silly,’ Stanley said grinning. ‘Don’t be so suspicious.’ Bones’s round eyes shot up to his master, confused, then back to the oncoming danger.
‘No, Bones. No. We’re going to walk through the village again this afternoon, and we’ll keep on and on, until you learn not to guard me but to come home to me.’ Bones shuffled back against Stanley, rump on Stanley’s feet, head against his hip bone, intermittent rumblings still escaping. Stanley handed the lead over to the orderly.
‘Leave,’ Stanley commanded. Bones looked up, mystified. Was Stanley really sure, those chestnut eyes asked: was it not madness to go off with someone else?
‘Leave.’
Bones leaped up good-naturedly and loped away with his springy, easy gait to take his place beyond the infantry.
Stanley scuffed the grass with his boot. Yesterday Bones had advanced, then reversed, casting around for a way to Stanley which avoided the infantry. When he’d found none, the pack instinct had tugged him forward with the other dogs into the storm of blanks. Bones was wilful, but he must do what was asked of him, not what he thought best.
A whistle blew. The infantry burst into fire. It was hard, in the smoke and confusion, to see what was happening, but there – there was the first dog – already on the nearside. Stanley searched the flurry of dogs tearing home. No Bones. Now that the smoke was beginning to lift, Stanley could see the line of orderlies beyond the riflemen. Bones wasn’t among them, nor among the rush of tail-wagging dogs greeting their keepers. Stanley felt a flicker of irritation that all Doyle’s dogs had arrived home. Where had Bones gone? Stanley whirled round and Bones hurled himself at him, breathless and slobbering and frantic with pride, looking as though he might vault into the boy’s arms. Bones had gone the long way round behind the shed, avoiding the gunfire, coming up at Stanley from behind, but Stanley saw the pride in his shining, black-rimmed eyes, and his exasperation melted at the sheer charm of the dog, at his child-like exuberance.
‘Sit,’ commanded Stanley with his hand only. Bones chomped and slathered, and reluctantly sat, waiting for his reward. Stanley kept his hand raised; there’d be no reward this time. Bones snuffled Stanley’s pocket for his titbit.
‘No,’ said Stanley. ‘You’ll go back and do it again, until you get it right.’
Bones was taken forward again and again, but each time avoided the guns. Stanley’s tone grew firmer. Once again Stanley signalled for an orderly to collect Bones. All the other men and dogs had finished, leaving only Stanley, the orderly, Bones and the infantry in the gathering dusk.
‘Wait,’ Stanley called, racing up behind the orderly. ‘I’ll go with him. I’ll walk through the guns with him, I’ll show him myself what he must do.’
‘Are you sure, Keeper Ryder?’
Stanley braced himself as he looked towards the sinister barrels of the rifles, and nodded. He didn’t want to but he would – to show Bones. They took their place beyond the infantry. The orderly blew a whistle, released Bones’s lead.
‘Come, Bones, come. Follow me.’ Stanley started off at a run. The blanks and the noise wouldn’t hurt him any more than they’d hurt Bones. Stanley tensed as the guns burst into fire, but forced himself onward into the red flashes of red, and the noise, Bones loping cheerfully along at his side.
‘Last time,’ shouted the infantry officer, checking his watch, as the orderly collected Bones. The dog took his place. Stanley kept his eyes on him, willing Bones to do what was asked.
‘Come, Bones, come,’ he breathed. The whistle blew and Bones was released. Bones paused, forepaw raised and hesitant, his expressive head cast in an unusually thoughtful attitude. Bones, thought Stanley smiling, was not a dog much given to thoughtfulness. Bones was loping forward now, not step by trembling step as the other dogs had run into the guns, but with playful, headlong nonchalance.
That evening the Colonel sought Stanley out in the canteen and told him that he must continue for another week on the Firing Drill, while other men progressed to the Heavy Guns. Bones had to be very clear, the Colonel said, what was expected of him. After all they’d gone through that day, Stanley gritted his teeth.
‘Yes, sir,’ Stanley said as gamely as he could manage. He wouldn’t be beaten, he would do whatever it took.
Stanley’s personal frustration was echoed in the prevailing mood of the country. The New Year had brought new depths of gloom and despair. The Hun had come back after Cambrai with a tiger’s pounce and now those church bells looked premature and foolish.
Day after day went by in this way until the Colonel signalled, with a forced and silent nod, to move them on to the Heavy Guns. Bones was used to the distant thundering of the guns, but today he’d be no more than twelve feet away from them and must remain calm and still as they pounded away.
Stanley stood waiting with Bones, his pockets full of chopped liver, ready to distract the dog if he took fright at the heavies. Bones was alert, his close-set ears pricked high. Stanley eyed the eighteen-pounders nervously. At a signal the gunners burst into fire, and Stanley held his hands up against the deafening roar. Bones launched his entire bulk at Stanley as though to leap into his arms. Boy and dog fell together, tangled on the damp grass, Bones trying to bury himself beneath Stanley, the ground rattling under them, but now Bones was snuffling at the liver in Stanley’s pocket. Stanley laughed despairingly, disentangled himself and sat up. Bones let a distracted growl escape in the direction of the guns, then nosed again at Stanley’s pockets.