by Sam Angus
The going was heavier now, the mud thick and greedy; Soldier’s butterfly legs would be sinking in the evil, foul-smelling slime, but there round his neck, in the tin cylinder, was the precious message, the message that might save Tom.
Like quicksilver Soldier ran on. Around him lay scattered the bodies of the dead. There’d been no time to clear the dead, to collect the wounded. Stanley watched, Hamish watched – James, Fidget, Cook, the line of Australians, a row of hats cresting the parapet for as far as the eye could see, all watching as Soldier hurled himself into the glimmering disc of a shell hole, hitting it at full speed, with a rainbow shower of droplets. He was out – back in the open – would now climb the exposed bank.
There was a stutter of machine-gun fire.
Hamish’s hand rose in horror to his face. He shook his head. ‘A light Maxim. Four hundred rounds.’
But Soldier was running onward, unflinching, open-jawed, grinning. He’d been out of range. There was silence from the deadly Maxim. Stanley pictured the evil rounds on their fabric belt, feeding into that gun, knew that its range was four thousand yards. Where was the Maxim? Was Soldier coming into or going beyond the gunner’s range?
‘There’s one gunner – only one on the Maxim,’ whispered Hamish, adding, ‘Run, doggie. Run, while he reloads.’
In which chink of this malevolent swamp was the Maxim hidden? The machine gun gave a second savage cackle of fire. The gunner had sharpened his aim. Bullets, the size of marbles, fell like hail, whipping and tearing up the ground around Soldier. Was the Maxim on the railway line?
‘Come on . . . Come on . . . Hurry, Soldier, hurry . . .’
Stanley could think of nothing, hear nothing, see nothing, only that mercury thread, only the grey form that skimmed the ground like a rushing shadow. A trench festooned with barbed wire lay ahead. Soldier raced towards it and hurdled, joyous, and effortless as a stag, hind legs tucked up. It would be harder going now, the ground a soupy morass – a porridge Hamish called it – but the dusk was deepening and Soldier could use the runnels for cover if they weren’t full of water.
There was a single crack of fire from the right – not the Maxim, a rifle.
‘A Mauser, there, right below,’ said Hamish. ‘Enemy outposts everywhere.’
Stanley’s head swung wildly – where, where was the gun, where was Soldier?
At the bottom of the slope to Stanley’s right, unearthly shades of grey and green and brown mingled.
‘Jerry’s all around and everywhere,’ said Fidget.
Still Soldier ran on unhurt and Stanley breathed again. The line of hats cresting the parapet were all watching, screaming, shouting and cheering the dog on.
There were two, perhaps three rifle shots. Where was he? Soldier had disappeared – No, he’d dropped into the dyke, the flooded dyke, which ran perpendicular to the trench at the bottom of the slope. He was taking cover – No, he was out – forced out by the choking mud, perhaps – back out into the open.
There was not an ounce of cover now. Only the shards of things that had once been. Only them and this valiant grey dog. Beyond Soldier, the smouldering village was silhouetted against an ever-changing backcloth of light. The sky, scintillating over the village, was hung with ribbons of light.
The rifle gave a single brutal crack. Stanley’s blood ran cold. Where was he? Where was Soldier?
‘He’s up, laddie – he’s up,’ said Hamish.
There . . . There! He’d fallen but he was up on his feet again the instant he’d landed – it was just the impact that had thrown him, that was all, just the impact. Stanley’s fist was in his mouth.
Soldier stopped and uttered an unearthly, spine-chilling shriek of pain. Soldier had been hit. He’d stopped. His right flank was shuddering, crumpling. Stanley heard, as though blurred, the screams of the men who watched over the parapet, saw Hamish’s large hands fly to cover a face that was harrowed with pain, saw him turn aside from a sight that was beyond bearing. He saw as if at second hand, or in a dream, Soldier fall . . .
‘Soldier, Soldier,’ he breathed.
He took up his glasses, scanning the waste of slime, his hands shaking, legs buckling beneath him, his field of vision jumping from one point to another. He saw torn cloths that fluttered in the wind and dead men lying like wreckage brought in on a tide. Where? Where was Soldier? Stanley saw tangled wire, tins, weapons. He saw the dead and the wounded – but where was Soldier?
‘Soldier . . .’ he breathed, seeing there, on the shining slime, the dog lying like a rag doll, broken limbs sprawling. Stanley turned away, gripping the wooden post, but Hamish was pulling him, turning him back to face the Front.
‘Look, laddie, look.’
Soldier had raised his head. He was up, up on three legs, forelegs shaking, the slender jaws open and panting, one hind leg trailing. What Stanley couldn’t see with his eyes he could feel in his heart – the pain and fear and the reproach with which those eyes would surely be filled.
Soldier was moving forward, pulled still, despite the trailing limb, by the mysterious magnetic tug to his master. On he limped up the slope, tentative as he balanced on his shattered leg.
‘Come, boy, come.’ The closer Soldier drew, the further out of range he’d be. Only a hundred yards or so up the steepest incline and he’d be safe.
Stanley was trembling from top to toe with fear for Soldier, shivering too in his sodden, unwieldy coat. He yanked the Queen Anne’s lace aside, getting a sharp burst of its rank stench.
‘Keep going, laddie, keep going,’ whispered Hamish.
There was another whip crack from the Mauser, then another. Mud spurts burst up. Stanley gripped Hamish’s hand – bullets whipped the ground around Soldier, sending up spurts of mud and earth in a radius around the dog. Where was the sniper? Stanley scrabbled at the slithering, crumbling walls of the trench, trying to get higher, to see better. Where was the sniper with the deadly aim, the sniper with the deadly Mauser?
‘Five rounds – he’s fired five. He’s reloading. Keep moving, doggie, keep moving. Keep moving while he reloads.’
On he came, valiant forelegs sinking and sliding at every step, the uneven uphill gallop – beyond bearing. Stanley’s own left hand was on his hip, pressing as though to subdue the pain of a shattered leg. On either side men were screaming for Soldier. Grown men, the same men who’d with dry eyes watched their companions die – these men who’d been so long from women or children or any kind of tenderness – were brought to tears by a dog trailing his broken leg through a storm of fire.
‘Keep moving, keep moving . . .’ Stanley’s eyes were blurred with tears, his fists clenched in a prayer. ‘Soldier, Soldier . . .’
The Mauser cracked into fire – one – two – three – Soldier’s step faltered – four – five – His right flank was quivering now like the surface of a stream – He fell.
Soldier’s slender forelegs were aligned to his course, the tortured, twisted right haunch hideous and askew as though wrenched from its socket. Both haunches had now been hit, right and left.
‘Oh, laddie!’ Both Hamish and James were ashen, devastated, beaten, all hopes of receiving word from the men in the wood now lost.
Seconds passed. An unending, breath-held eternity. The men who had been screaming were silent, their faces constricted and ashen. Stanley watched Soldier’s head, praying for even the flicker of an ear. Beyond Soldier, amidst the darker tangle of wire and weapons, a torn cloth fluttered in the wind, like a hand waving, but the slate-grey body, the pole star of Stanley’s hope, lay still. The shiny slime caught the slanting sun in a halo around the motionless form. Nothing else on earth existed for Stanley, only that twisted, fallen body.
‘Call him, Stanley, call him,’ said Fidget. Stanley shot round to Fidget – had he seen the dog move? But Stanley couldn’t call until he’d rid his throat of the stone that was lodged there. He tried.
‘Soldier!’
There was no movement.
‘Louder, St
anley, call louder,’ urged Fidget.
‘Soldier!’ Stanley’s voice rang out like a bell.
Soldier’s ears pricked, his snout lifted perhaps an inch above the ground and his head turned, like a heliotrope towards his master’s voice.
‘Call, laddie, call again,’ urged Hamish.
Stanley lifted his head above the parapet. He scrambled for footholds in the slithery, cascading wall, and again he called. Soldier rose on his forelegs, jaws open and panting. He took a gallant double leap forward, but he was mired by the dead weight of his useless hindquarters, couldn’t heave his rump onward. Stanley watched, agonized, the heartbreaking gallantry, the forelegs shaking with strain as again they pounced forward, but still his rump didn’t shift. He pawed the ground with a defiant tilt to his head, pawed it again as though the steep slope itself perhaps had to answer for all this, then he lifted his head and barked and stretched out and again jumped his forelegs onward as though to split himself in two, all his longing to reach his master expressed in his extended neck and shaking legs.
Stanley put a fist in his mouth to stop the scream of pain that was rising inside him.
Soldier pawed the ground.
Seconds passed. Soldier’s head and chest sank to the ground.
‘It’s too much, aye, too much. Half his body weight . . .’ said James.
The Company of Signals Staff huddled around Stanley began to look away, their faces haunted.
Hamish put an arm around Stanley and dipped his head, turning the boy away from the parapet.
Minutes passed. The first star was lit. The silver discs of craters began to spangle the ground like sequins. On each disc rose a blood-red moon, a thousand crimson globes on a thousand silver seas.
‘Up on my shoulders. Let him see you,’ said Hamish, and he and James laced their fingers as though helping a toddler to mount a pony.
Stanley balanced on the four large McManus hands and pulled himself up. He wasn’t high enough, Soldier wouldn’t see him; he must stand clear of the parapet, stand on the ridge. Stanley jumped up, the squelching, sucking sound of the mud beneath his boots enough to wake the Kaiser’s whole army.
‘No, laddie, no! Down – the sniper.’
Stanley stood on the ridge, all fear for himself lost in fear for Soldier, and called, ‘Soldier!’ and again, ‘Soldier!’ Standing tall and exposed, the slope and the plain laid out below him, he called one last desperate time, ‘Soldier!’
There was no movement. He must whistle. If there were breath in Soldier, he’d remember that whistle and lift his head. Stanley fumbled in his pocket, found the box, pushed it open with clumsy, shaking fingers, put the reed to his mouth and blew.
The luminous notes danced in a bright stream over the desolate plain. A single ear flickered and turned. Stanley blew again. Both ears pricked. Stanley blew once more. Soldier lifted his head, rose on his forelegs; his chest and head were up and he was pawing the ground.
‘Soldier!’ Stanley called.
There was the smack of a rifle shot and a hammer-blow to his arm. He clenched it below the elbow, half conscious of the seeping wetness, the ferrous smell of blood where the bullet had grazed his arm.
‘Get down, laddie!’ Hamish cried out.
Still standing, swaying a little, Stanley let go his arm, raised his whistle once more and blew. Soldier moved one foreleg. Then the other. He’d inched forward, he’d dragged his rump on. The right foreleg, quivering with strain, moved again, then the left.
Time expelled everything but the dog from its orbit, and slowed to a standstill, as Stanley watched Soldier fight beyond the limits of endurance, of duty and of love.
Stanley crouched. Step by step the valiant, trembling forelegs hauled the mutilated rump over the mutilated ground, inch by dreadful inch, till Stanley could bear no more and threw himself to the ground.
Using his good arm, nose to the brackish, vile-smelling mud, he dragged himself across the flat ground in front of the parapet and down. Inch by inch, seeping scarlet into the shining slime, boy and dog clawed their way towards each other.
There were only yards between them now. Stanley was trembling uncontrollably, each deafening squelch rattling his nerves. His hand clenched a torn bit of clothing, a sleeve perhaps, that made him start as though he’d seen a ghost. Stanley reached forward and with one last desperate stretch he had Soldier’s head in his hands, was pulling him close.
Soldier wrenched free. With the last of his strength he rose, his forelegs slithering as he tried to sit, lift his chest, raise his head to his master. The slender jaws were open and grinning, his eyes brilliant. Senseless with pain and love, Stanley could not move to retrieve the message. Soldier raised his snout a little higher. Still the boy made no move. Soldier pawed the ground, his tail flipping. Stanley’s gut convulsed, his words strangled and choked.
‘Good boy, good . . .’
He snapped the cylinder off the collar with a sharp twist. ‘Down, boy, down. Lie.’ Stanley turned to the row of slouch hats cresting the parapet. He raised his good arm and hurled the cylinder over, saw Hamish catch it, then turned and slipped a soggy biscuit fragment into Soldier’s jaws.
Early evening, 24 April 1918
Aquenne Wood
Cursing the pain that seared his arm, he eased his coat off and spread it out. Gently he inched it under Soldier, pulled the dog and coat under him, knotting the sleeves behind his back. Carrying the dog in a hammock beneath him, Stanley crawled towards a shallow runnel that lay a few feet away.
‘Adjust your sights to the hollow tree trunk to the forward right,’ he heard someone yell to the gunners. Stanley crawled on. Soldier’s message would have identified the hollow trunk that hid the sniper with the deadly aim. Cradling the wounded dog, Stanley edged into the runnel.
‘Blast it. Give it all you’ve got,’ came the instruction to the gunners.
Five minutes passed. When the firing stopped and Stanley looked out, not a shard remained standing.
‘Adjust your sights. Two o’clock. The eastern edge of the Monument. Give it all you’ve got.’
Stanley heard again the pounding of his own artillery
‘For you, Tom,’ he said. ‘For you.’
The runnel was perhaps three foot deep, just enough to shelter a boy and a dog. They lay side by side, Stanley combing Soldier’s mud-choked coat inch by inch with his fingers. Soldier’s arteries hadn’t been hit, the bleeding was only superficial. There was a bullet wound on the left flank, a round, deep puncture. On the right hind leg another three in a cluster. They must wait here, mustn’t risk moving Soldier till they were rescued.
Stanley rested his head next to Soldier’s, feeling his warm breath, watching as linesmen crawled forward over the slime making hurried repairs. Stanley saw fresh troops saunter up in endless ranks, with a confident swagger, not through the communication trench, but over the top – Australians – their slouch hats silhouetted in the moonlight.
The moon rose higher, a full, red moon. When would he and Soldier be rescued? A wounded dog would be a low priority, Stanley’s own wound a low priority. The counter-attack would go ahead, but still the wounded and the dead would be left where they lay.
At ten to ten, an officer moved along the trench spooning out the rum ration.
‘Open up. Open up. Open up.’ Brigadier-General Glasgow rose and stood, clear against the night sky. ‘There’s no time for reconnaissance and you don’t know the ground but you’ll surprise an exhausted enemy. Don’t stop till you’ve taken the Monument, then hold on, at all costs.’
As far as Stanley could see in either direction, a single file of men rose from the moon-silvered ridges and crests of trenches.
‘Go forward, kill every bloody German that you see. Goodbye, boys – it’s neck or nothing.’
Stanley watched the Australians saunter off, rifles cocked, as casual as if going after rabbits. A Company detached itself from the main body. It drew up in absolute silence and halted level with the runnel. Ever
y head turned. In perfect formation, they raised their rifles.
‘To you, soldier dog,’ they shouted as one. ‘To you, soldier boy.’ As one, each fired a single shot to the sky, lowered their rifles and, again, in perfect formation and with dazzling gallantry began a jog down the stiff slope, to join the main advance.
In an instant a hundred enemy flares shot up like Roman candles making the plain as light as day. The Australians, roaring and running now like a Viking horde, plunged towards the Monument and the burning buildings of the village. More German SOS shells rose. Leaving fantastic firework trails, they arced and stayed suspended before bursting into a brilliant light and floating dreamily to the ground.
Stanley’s arm was burning hot, yet he was shivering. Soldier was scratching one forepaw with the other, scraping them on the ground. He must feed Soldier more of Fidget’s biscuit. He fumbled in his pockets but Soldier was too distracted, his frantic paws scrabbling and scratching at the earth bank.
Gas! Gas had poisoned the mud between his pads, was burning him like acid. In the brilliant white light of a flare, Stanley saw Soldier’s eyes, gooey and gummed together. He put his head to Soldier’s chest and heard the hissing, crackling breath. The water, the thick, stale air of the runnel, were poisoned. Stanley gulped the damp night air but his head was too heavy, there were stones in his chest. The ditches and dykes and the shell holes, they were all deadly.