Soldier of the Horse

by Robert W. Mackay

  And maybe never will, Tom thought, as the general paused.

  “In fact, our Canadian comrades-in-arms, the rest of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, have been in a heated battle since their deployment in Belgium. Most recently, when attacked with poison gas, they stood steadfast and beat back the enemy. The Canadians are establishing a reputation as superb fighting men. But they are in the fight of their lives, and they need help.”

  Where is he going with this? Tom didn’t like the sound of it. Soggy breakfast eggs twisted in his gut.

  “Mounted men are not currently required. Help in the trenches is. Strathconas, I believe we have a job to do. Your brothers and cousins are in the thick of it.” He turned to the colonel.

  “We are calling for volunteers,” said Macdonell. “We will have to leave our horses behind for now. I want us to go immediately to the continent to join our Canadian brothers in the trenches.” In the sudden silence, Tom heard the gentle soughing of the wind. “All those who volunteer take two paces forward.”

  Tom’s mind raced. He knew of men who had gone overseas into battle, men who had come back wounded, shattered . . . or who never would come back. He had no intention of joining that ghostly cadre. But in that instant the world slowed. He saw clearly the faces of the men around him—Johanson, Ferguson, Hicks, Windell, and all the rest—and he knew what they would do.

  The mass of men surged ahead, Tom with them, as a great roar rose from the ranks. The colonel, not able to totally conceal a smile, called them to attention.

  The hubbub died down, and General Seely stood like a rapier before them. “I told the commander-in-chief that would be your response.” He nodded. “Carry on, colonel.”

  “Three cheers for General Seely,” shouted the colonel.

  Cheers rang out, defiant in the face of a cold wind that had begun to blow; rain closed in once again when the men were dismissed. As Ferguson and Tom sloshed through the mud, Johanson ran up behind and jumped between them, whacking them across the shoulders.

  “Here we go, boys, here we go! No horses, but that’ll come. We’ll get a crack at Fritz after all.”

  Lord save us, thought Tom. We’re in for it now.

  FRANCE

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  It was May 22, 1915, only days since the Canadian Mounted Brigade had volunteered to go into the mud of Flanders. A flash of lightning behind a cloud to the northeast lit the night sky and for an instant, Tom saw the long, sinuous line of poncho-covered, hump-backed men ahead of him, burdened with haversacks, bedrolls, and rifles. It snaked toward the front to disappear into a communication trench. Then the image was gone and he was left with the murky shadow of the man in front of him. Tom could too easily imagine Germans peering over machine gun sights—sights that were aligned on him.

  The 1st Troop leader, Lieutenant Tilley, had addressed his thirty-two men before they set out to replace troops in the trenches, but Tom couldn’t bring the lieutenant’s words to mind, try as he might. He knew they were full of admonitions to do their duty, to stand firm. But what everybody knew, and nobody talked about, was that this night, or the next, or the next, some of them would be dead. It stood to reason. The front, with its trenches now hundreds of miles long, was where battles were fought in this modern war, and that was where men died. The Strathconas were going into the trenches and some of them would die. Maybe all. Maybe Tom.

  Slimy mud caked his boots, making every laborious step a challenge. He became aware of a panting sound and realized it was his own breathing. He hitched up his shoulders to settle his pack and without warning bumped up against the man in front of him. He could just make out a clump of men huddled together in the darkness and the rain.

  “What’s going on?” he whispered.

  “Don’t know,” someone replied.

  Everyone had stopped. Tom couldn’t see anything beyond the length of his arm. Then the rustle of wet ponchos from ahead signalled that those in front were on the move again, and one by one the men in the little knot resumed their march.

  For some reason Tom thought of a time when he had drifted in a canoe over white sandy shallows on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg. An inkblot of black had appeared, several feet across, then expanded so he could see it was a mass of tiny minnows. At some unknowable signal they coalesced once more into a dark mass. From one side a two-foot-long pike suddenly appeared and shot through the ball of fish, leaving an empty streak that quickly closed. The pike struck again, and again, then drifted off. Tom had watched the reformed, amorphous school of minnows until they disappeared into deeper water. Maybe he’d be one of the lucky ones. He gripped his rifle tighter and vowed for the hundredth time to do whatever it took to survive.

  More lightning flashed, and there was a rumble of thunder in response. Tom was concentrating on his footing when a screaming arc of sound slashed across the sky. The high-pitched shriek of the shell faded as it passed overhead and terminated in a flash of light and an ear-shattering blast behind them.

  Tom sensed rather than saw the men ahead of him flinch, and they increased their speed as more shells landed. Now a new sound met them—a brutal chatter they recognized as machine gun fire. They had heard machine guns before—the regiment had Hotchkisses of their own, and many of the men were trained to fire them—but this was new. This was the enemy: Germans armed with Maxims that spat five hundred steel-jacketed slugs a minute. Stray bullets whined and ricocheted around them.

  At last Tom made it into the communication trench. He followed the man in front of him, keeping in contact with an outstretched hand as the landscape was blotted out by the six-foot-high sides of the zigzagging ditch. Not deep enough, he muttered, wishing, for the first time in his life that he were shorter. If he craned his neck to look up he could see the bitter sky with its low clouds and competing lightning and shell bursts.

  The men reached the reserve trench, which ran parallel to the front. An officer directed them a short distance to the east into another communication trench, which deposited them into the front line, the forward trench. To Tom’s searching eyes this glorified ditch seemed deeper, perhaps eight feet. There was a foot of mud and water in the bottom; the sides were alternately slick with slime or gritty with sandbags. His stomach clenched at the stench of animal and human excrement and rot, and the smell of death, his feet already wet and cold.

  Sergeant Planck posted Tom’s section of eight to a short, straight section of the fighting trench. It was already populated by ghostly infantrymen of the 1st Canadian Division, dirty-faced and stinking. The newcomers instinctively pressed themselves up against the front of the trench, hoping the earth would protect them.

  “Got a smoke?” asked a dark figure. His eyeballs reflected flickering light from the flashes of exploding shells.

  Tom produced a package of Players and the two of them bent low to shield the flame of the man’s match. “Where you from?” asked Tom.

  “Toronto.”

  “How long have you been in here?”

  “Two weeks. Glad to see you horse soldiers. We need a break.”

  Tom was glad the infantry were getting a break. He was only sorry he had to be part of giving it to them.

  The soldier’s name was Clark, and he told Tom he had enlisted as soon as war was declared. Now he just hoped to survive to see his new wife again.

  Tom hesitated, then asked, “Have you been attacked while you were here?”

  “Twice in the last week.”

  Tom’s heart sank.

  An infantry sergeant came through, giving his troops a warning. The foot soldiers would be withdrawing immediately.

  “Not bad compared to what came before. But it’s the boredom that gets you,” Clark continued.

  Tom knew these men had seen brutal action at Ypres in Belgium. “Wipers,” they called it. They had taken huge losses, in spite of being trained infantrymen, not cavalry troopers who had undergone instant transformation.

  Behind his cupped hand, Clark took a last drag on his cig
arette and ground the butt into the side of the trench.

  Tom was nervous. What good would all those months of training on horseback do him now? The Straths had been trained to attack with horses, swords, and the Ross rifle. Now they had been handed Lee Enfield rifles and bayonets, and were up to their knees in mud and shit in the trenches, with no horses in sight.

  An infantry officer passed behind Tom on his way to the communication trench with a string of indistinct other ranks trailing him, sloshing and stumbling in his wake. They moved like sleepwalkers, dark figures in deep shadows.

  Clark moved off to join them. He turned to Tom. “Good luck, soldier of the horse. See you in Berlin.”

  Tom waved in salute as the infantrymen rounded a corner in the trench and the sound of their passing faded. He shivered, and a shell buzzed overhead. He was a long way from Winnipeg.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Sergeant Planck detailed Tom as a sentry for the first two hours. He stood on a low platform so his head was just below the top of the trench, peering through a slot between two sandbags. He felt exposed, but tried to convince himself that the enemy couldn’t see any better than he could.

  Planck appeared and explained that an attack would be carried out before dawn, but not by the Strathconas. They were to lie low and be prepared for an expected German counterattack.

  At the end of his watch Tom shook Gordon Ferguson, who took over on the lookout platform. Tom wrapped himself in his bedding and poncho and squeezed into a shallow cave carved in the forward wall of the trench. There was just room for him to scrunch into a semi-sitting position, his left side to the enemy and his right exposed to the men passing by in the trench. He tried to relax but his eyes wouldn’t close. He had been concentrating for too long, trying to see where there was nothing to be seen, and his eyelids refused to stay shut.

  The German shelling increased. Most of the explosions were well behind the trench, and Tom hoped he was safe so long as he kept his head down.

  An hour later a series of explosions echoed from the direction of the German lines. Shouts and screams drifted back to the men in the trench, overlain by a sudden, nearly continuous stutter of machine guns. Everybody was up on their feet, and some of the men climbed to the lip to peer into the night. Artillery fire increased to an ear-splitting crescendo that seemed to go on for hours, much of it now coming from behind the Canadian lines. As the anxious men strained to hear through the roar of shelling, Tom pictured grey-clad Germans, firing wildly, pouring into the trench, a death trap for its occupants.

  Ferguson, up on the parapet, yelled, “Who goes there?”

  The men in the trench froze.

  “Hold your fire,” came a shout. “We’re Canadian. We’re coming in.”

  “Keep your hands where I can see them,” Ferguson yelled back. They had been warned that the Germans sometimes impersonated Allied soldiers.

  Tom leapt to the platform to stand beside Ferguson. Gordon had his rifle levelled at what Tom now saw was a private supporting an officer who stumbled, barely able to keep moving. Tom reached out, grabbed the officer’s jacket at the shoulders, and helped him over the parapet. Other Strathconas eased the wounded man to the bottom of the trench, holding his head and shoulders above the water and mud. The private slid down the side of the trench and collapsed in a heap, breathing hard. His face was blackened, his uniform caked in mud.

  Sergeant Planck sent for medical help and he and Tom knelt over the officer, a lieutenant, who was wounded in the shoulder. They cut away his tunic, exposing an entry wound in front and a larger exit hole in the back. A shaded lantern showed what had looked black in the darkness to be dark red blood, oozing from the officer’s wounds. Planck applied iodine and a field dressing while they waited for stretcher-bearers. The wounded man’s face was still blackened to facilitate night operations, but deathly pale under the burnt cork, and he mumbled incoherently.

  Tom saw the insignia of an Ontario infantry regiment. “What happened out there?” he asked the private.

  “We were on a raid. We got across No-Man’s-Land okay, but there’s a row of barbed wire in front of the German trench. So far, so good. The lieutenant found a way through the wire and waved the rest of the raiding party through, but the machine guns caught us before we could get into the trench. We got cut up pretty bad.” Then he added, “I got all turned around on the way back. I didn’t know who was in this trench but I’m damn glad it wasn’t Germans.”

  Tom shivered at the thought of crawling across No-Man’s-Land, waiting for the machine guns to open up.

  Stretcher-bearers appeared and carried off the lieutenant, making hard work of it along the dark, cramped trench. The private splashed after them.

  Ferguson was replaced at the parapet by Freddie Martens, the youngster who had been kicked in the balls by Sergeant Planck back at Fort Osborne Barracks.

  By now Tom figured there wouldn’t be much sleep for him, but he hunkered down in a corner, his Lee Enfield propped beside him, and forced his eyes to close. Luckily, the German gunners were concentrating their fire farther back in the Allied position, and he dozed, in spite of the enemy artillery.

  He awoke with a start, his neck sore from the way his head dangled, weighed down by his sopping wet cap. Something was wrong. There was total silence outside the trench. He stood, stiff with cold but fully awake. The members of his section were still huddled in cramped postures, jammed into corners and shallow dugouts in the side of the trench. Martens remained at his post, standing on the platform, but as Tom watched, his head bobbed forward then snapped back up. Christ, Tom thought, he’s asleep.

  “Martens,” he hissed, not wanting to wake everybody up. At that instant a rifle cracked and Martens was flung backward, cap falling across his face. Ungodly screams filled the air, and a grenade bounced into the trench, landing at Tom’s feet. He snatched it up and flung it back over the parapet. Instantly, a sharp explosion buffeted his ears and fragments slapped into the sandbags above his head. He looked up to see a dark figure looming over the parapet, rifle in hand, shooting down into the men below.

  Tom swung his rifle up and fired without aiming. The German doubled over and tumbled into the trench. Tom’s ears were ringing as he ejected a shell and cycled another round. Shaking, he kept his eyes on the lip of the trench. He was aware of Johanson, now on his feet beside him, as shots rang out from inside and outside their lair. The German on the ground was trying to get up, reaching for his fallen rifle. Johanson shot him in the back of the head. There was a spray of blood and the man fell across Martens. This time he didn’t move.

  Ferguson was up on the platform, firing as fast as he could work the bolt on his rifle. Sergeant Planck appeared from around a corner and flung a ladder up against the side of the trench. “Up you go, lads,” he shouted. “Give them what for!” He pushed Tom toward the ladder.

  Before he knew what he was doing, Tom was over the top and had thrown himself prone on the ground, his rifle at his shoulder, Planck at his side. In the vague light of a murky dawn he saw grey figures scrambling away. He fired and kept firing, not knowing if he was hitting anything. He emptied his magazine and reloaded, firing again and again until Planck tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Hold your fire, Macrae. They’re gone. Don’t worry, you’ll get another crack at them.”

  A high-velocity shell hit the parapet a hundred yards away, exploding with a loud crack.

  “Come get your head down, son.” Planck slithered into the trench as a renewed barrage opened up from the German side. The British guns to the rear responded and shells whistled overhead. Tom crawled backward until he could get his feet on the upper rungs of the ladder and clambered down into shelter.

  An ugly dawn revealed three Canadian casualties: Martens dead, and two wounded. The dead German remained face down, blond hair crusted with dried blood. He still lay across Martens, their bodies entwined. Two young men on opposite sides, Tom mused, neither of whom had wanted to die. Both of them would have familie
s, loved ones at home. Planck ordered up medical assistance, and the military machine went about its business. Wounded were helped away, bodies carried out.

  Cooks came up the line lugging steel pots of food and gallons of hot tea. Tom was ravenous and wolfed a bowl of porridge and half a loaf of bread, washed down by the tea. He clutched his hands around his tin cup and let the warmth from the hot, sweet liquid spread into his body. Planck conjured up a flask of rum, and gave each man a shot in his tea.

  Poor Martens. No, too late for him. Poor Martens’s family. And because Martens had dozed off, it was damn near poor a whole lot of other people, too. They could all have been killed like rats trapped in a barrel.

  One skirmish, survived. Thank God for Planck, who had been under fire many times. Tom had never liked the man, but now he saw him in a different light. Maybe the Canadians did have a few things to learn. As he finished his tea a light drizzle added to their misery. Tom draped his poncho over his head and shoulders and sat on an ammunition box.

  In 1914 everybody at home had feared that the war would be over before Christmas, and the Canadians wouldn’t get a chance to fight. God, thought Tom. One night so far. One night at the front, with two wounded and one dead, that he knew about. Three men gone. Now, in the spring of 1915, Tom no longer worried about the war ending too soon; he worried about it going on too long. He dozed, his elbows on his knees and his tin cup dangling in one hand. The cup dropped from his fingers. He twitched but let it lie, as rain pattered on the mud.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Lieutenant Tilley led the way out, followed by the twenty-three surviving men of the 1st Troop. They were due for two weeks of relief and training, the pressure of battle off for the time being. Tom hitched his pack higher, and glanced back at the men who followed. His section was last in line, and Sergeant Planck was pushing them along from the rear. They were dirty and they stank, just like the infantry they had replaced two weeks before, their gear and clothing soaked through and caked with mud. Losses had mounted—four killed and eight out of action with wounds. But the noncoms had kept morale high during these first weeks of life in the trenches, and the regiment had given as good as it received.