Soldier of the Horse

by Robert W. Mackay

  Tom laced the fingers of both hands together to give Simpson a leg up, and the nineteen-year-old scrambled up the dirt wall. He was new to the regiment, having been assigned to Tom’s section only three days before. He had impressed Tom with his keenness and even more, his intelligence. They had all been briefed on the situation, but Tom figured it didn’t hurt to remind Simpson this was not an exercise. It was real.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  A boot scraped the side of Tom’s helmet, and he looked up from his perch on a splintered table they had found in the dugout. Against the barely lighter sky he saw Simpson beckon him. Tom climbed up, rifle in hand.

  “Heard something,” Simpson whispered.

  Tom listened and heard only distant shelling. A light breeze from the direction of the German lines carried the faint scents of torn earth and cordite. A half moon was covered by a gauzy layer of cloud, leaving the slightly rising land in front of them dappled with impenetrable shadows.

  He stayed with Simpson for ten minutes, then sent him down for a break, and Bruce Johanson climbed up beside Tom. “Simpson thought he heard something a few minutes ago. Make bloody sure you stay awake.”

  “Okay, Tom. Heck—new guy, Simpson. Probably hearing things.”

  Tom wasn’t so sure. Something didn’t feel right.

  Flowerdew had briefed Tom’s section personally and told them the Brits they relieved had conducted a trench raid against the Germans. If the Hun was true to form, he’d counter with an aggressive patrol of his own.

  Johanson leaned close. “Hope the bastards do come. I want to get one for Lindman.” Lance-Corporal Lindman, a popular noncom, had been shot through the neck two weeks before. He had moaned without letup for three hours before they could get him out of their trench; it had taken him another two days to die.

  The section was heavily armed with rifles, bayonets, and Mills bombs, the British hand grenades. In addition Tom had a Webley .455 revolver. If they detected the enemy, it was their job to phone headquarters and keep their heads down. A large enemy patrol could wipe them out.

  Johanson covered the left front, while Tom scanned the front and to the right.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Tom felt Johanson stiffen. He nudged Tom in the ribs and pointed right. Tom held his breath and turned that way. Maybe Bruce had heard something; he knew his own hearing wasn’t as good as it had been before he encountered the brutal, explosive sounds of war. He slowly swung his head left to right and back, thinking his peripheral vision might pick up something otherwise missed. He looked back to his right, and thinking he saw a shadow move, he unfastened the flap on his holster, drawing the Webley.

  A scraping noise made Johanson bring his rifle to his shoulder. Tom swung the Webley, cocked it. A figure loomed over him, and he started to squeeze when, against the grey sky, he saw the outline of a British helmet.

  “Who goes there?” he hissed, and reached up to grab at the front of the figure’s jacket. He pulled, rammed the muzzle of the Webley at where the face would be and connected with flesh and bone.

  “I’m Canadian, damn it.”

  Tom thought he recognized the voice of Lieutenant Tilley, one of the regiment’s junior officers. “Who goes there, goddamnit?”

  “Rocky Mountain House,” came the whispered and, mercifully, correct response.

  Tom lowered his revolver, while, beside him, Johanson kept his rifle at the ready. Tom could now make out that it was, indeed, Lieutenant Tilley. He uncocked the Webley, hand shaking and heart pounding. He and the lieutenant slid down into the dugout. The men all had weapons in their hands.

  “I came out to see how you were coping,” said the lieutenant. “Quite efficiently, I see.” He pulled out a handkerchief to wipe away the blood that trickled down his forehead, black in the low light.

  “We weren’t expecting you, sir.”

  “No, I dare say you weren’t. The major felt we shouldn’t ring you on the phone—too noisy. Nothing going on, I take it?”

  “No, sir. But you came from the wrong direction, off to the side.”

  “Got lost. Not much of a trench to get here in, is there? But I’m going to leave you to it. And Macrae—glad you gave me the benefit of the doubt.”

  The lieutenant crept off toward the Canadian lines. Tom was shaken. If he hadn’t recognized the voice, he might well have shot the man. Two fresh men went up to the platform, and Johanson came down. Tom was restless, but he stayed below for a few minutes to let his nerves settle down before climbing back up with the sentries.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  It was two hours before dawn, the darkest part of the night, and all was quiet. Even the distant artillery had packed it in. The moon was playing peek-a-boo behind scattered clouds brought in by a chilly breeze, and Ferguson and Simpson had just taken over as lookouts. Tom had them change around every thirty minutes, to reduce the fatigue and boredom of staring at the dark landscape. There was no room to pace in the crowded dugout, but he stood and stretched. He checked for the hundredth time that his Webley was not cocked but ready, his rifle at hand. Just as he crouched to flex his knees, he heard a distinct metallic clank.

  Tom looked up and saw Ferguson, his right arm extended horizontally and palm down, clear against the murky sky. He already had his rifle in front of him and lowered his head to press his cheek against the stock as if aiming. As Ferguson’s right hand went to the pistol grip and trigger, Tom put one foot on the rickety table, now propped against a side wall, and started up.

  There was a flash and a bang as Ferguson fired. Tom sprang to the firing step, Webley in hand.

  “To the east,” Ferguson yelled, as he worked the bolt on his rifle. He fired again.

  Tom jammed the Webley into his holster, jerked a Very flare pistol out of a bag at his waist, cocked it, and fired. In the flash of brilliant light he saw the ground swarming with enemy soldiers who leapt to their feet and ran, screaming, toward the Canadian line. Only forty feet away, some of them looked in his direction and swerved toward the dugout. The fading light of the flare flickered off bayonets.

  “Everybody up,” Tom shouted, and threw himself forward, prone on the ground outside the dugout, to make room for the men hurrying up from below.

  They fired as fast as they could work their bolts, pointing their rifles at the closing Germans with no time to aim. Tom pushed himself up to one knee, threw down the flare pistol, and grabbed his Webley. A screaming figure charged toward him, only feet away, and fell as one of the men climbing from the dugout shot him. The German got up again, and charged at Tom, who shot him at pointblank range. As the man collapsed, his bayonet pierced Tom’s left shoulder. He sagged, gagging with pain, but hung on to his revolver.

  Thirty feet out another German dropped to one knee and aimed. Tom, shoulder searing, swung the Webley with both hands and fired, but saw no reaction. The man’s rifle flashed, and the bullet zipped past Tom’s head. The German dropped to the ground and frantically worked the bolt on his rifle. Tom fired at him and missed, fired again and the soldier collapsed, face down in the dirt.

  Somewhere behind the Canadian lines a howitzer banged, and a moment later a starshell burst over the scene, its brilliant light revealing a long line of Germans, momentarily frozen by the light, in a shallow depression east of the dugout. The phosphorous flare floated slowly downward. A fusillade of rifle and machine gun fire roared from the length of the Canadian trench, and the Germans rushed forward into it, bypassing the men at the listening post.

  A second starshell burst into life before the first one hit the ground, and the attackers staggered to a halt just short of the trenches. The leading men went down, cut to pieces by a hail of bullets. The second wave threw grenades and were shot down in their turn. Some turned and ran, and a few might have tried to surrender, but the Canadian blood was up, and the slaughter continued until the light faded.

  Tom saw a straggler or two crawling back toward the German lines, weapons abandoned, despairing. “Cease firing,” he ordered. His voic
e sounded as though it came from far away. “Simpson, Johanson, take lookout. Everybody else below.”

  The men clambered down and fell silent, gathering around a dark form on the floor of the dugout. It was Reynolds. He groaned, still alive. Two of the men checked him quickly, finding blood on the front of his tunic. Ferguson cut away the uniform and located a bullet hole in the junction of his neck and shoulder. Tom helped Ferguson with first aid, applying iodine and dressings.

  Reynolds was conscious. “Hurts, Lance. Can’t move my arm.”

  “Doesn’t look bad, Reynolds. We’ve stopped the bleeding. Just have to get you back and the docs will take care of you, boy. Get on the blower,” Tom said to Ferguson. “We don’t have to worry about being quiet now. Tell them we need stretcher-bearers.”

  While Ferguson cranked the phone Tom took stock. The light had improved with the approaching dawn. “Anybody else hit?”

  Nobody spoke up. Tom counted heads, needing to know if anybody was lying up top, unable to move. All accounted for. “Okay,” he said. “Somebody look at this for me.” He eased off his jacket and pulled his sweater and shirt back from his neck to expose the wound from the German bayonet.

  “Not deep. Looks clean,” said Simpson, and sloshed iodine on the gash, making Tom wince.

  Ferguson spoke up. “Got the lieutenant on the line. He wants you. Says he can’t get body snatchers out here until dark.”

  Simpson pressed a dressing to Tom’s neck as he bent his head to the earpiece and took the microphone from Ferguson. The line crackled. Tom thought he heard someone talking but wasn’t sure. “Say again,” he yelled into the box, and waved for silence in the dugout.

  The static eased, and the voice of Lieutenant Flowerdew came through. “Well done, Lance-Corporal. The brigade commander says well done.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll pass that on.”

  “You’ll be relieved by Section Two after sunset tonight. They’ll bring a stretcher for your casualty so you can bring him in.”

  “I’d like to get him in now, sir.”

  “No can do, Lance-Corporal. Not in daylight. He’ll just have to wait.”

  Tom replaced the receiver on the wooden phone box. He straightened and looked around the cramped quarters at his men. “General Seely says well done, and I second that. Good work, boys.”

  “Bastards will be licking their wounds after that little effort,” said Ferguson in his soft burr. The others nodded agreement.

  Tom knelt by the recumbent form of Private Reynolds and put a hand on his good shoulder. “Hold on there, trooper. We’ll get you out of here as soon as the sun goes down.”

  Reynolds nodded. “Pain is worse, Lance.” His teeth were chattering.

  Tom turned to Ferguson. “Break out the morphine. Use as much as he needs.” While Ferguson looked after Reynolds, Tom gathered bedrolls and greatcoats to bundle up the wounded man.

  The only sign of activity during the day was the mutter of faraway artillery. The men brewed tea and heated bully beef in tin mess kits. Tom kept two men on watch at all times but did not anticipate problems before nightfall and their scheduled relief. He fingered his bandaged neck. Not enough to get me out of here, he mused. Not like poor Reynolds.

  By blind chance, the German attackers had all been to the east of the dugout, just abreast of it, when the careless sound that Ferguson heard gave them away. It had been like shooting fish in a barrel for the alerted Strathconas in the main trenches, Tom’s listening post having done its job. In the aftermath, Tom shuddered at the thought of what might have happened had the enemy attackers been a hundred yards farther west, centred on the dugout.

  Tom took his regular turn at lookout, up on the firing step. German bodies were scattered where they had fallen. They looked small, shrunken, as though they had never lived. Except for the man who had bayoneted Tom. His body was splayed with arms outstretched, its opaque, lifeless eyes only two yards from the lip of the dugout.

  Bodies were plentiful in the country of the trenches, a country that snaked across Belgium and northern France, only hundreds of yards wide. In the eighteen months the Canadians had spent in and out of that blasted territory Tom had seen plenty of bodies: lifelike bodies; shriveled and putrified bodies; cold, clammy bodies. They were dragged back for burial when they were your comrades and it was possible to do so. But hundreds—no, thousands—were out there: torn and ripped, half or fully buried, apt to be stepped on or crawled over in the dark, slowly becoming part of the blood-soaked earth.

  Tom could see pale eyelashes and stubble on this particular body, that of a very young man, probably under twenty. He was reminded of his own younger brothers. Somebody, somewhere, would hear of this boy’s death and would grieve.

  It didn’t seem right, leaving the body exposed to its enemies, even in death. Tom looked carefully around and warned Johanson, who was beside him. He slipped out of the dugout and, squirming flat to the ground, dragged the German body twenty feet farther away, toward the German line. He pressed its eyelids shut and crawled back to where his section waited and watched for the enemy.

  RAIDING PARTY

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  In the fall of 1917 the regiment moved to their winter quarters. They had settled into a relatively pleasant existence, considering they were living in tents in miserable weather far from home. For the time being, at least, they were out of the firing line and back in reserve. The brigade still hoped in its collective heart that a hole would be blasted in the German lines and the cavalry would come into its own, but it looked unlikely, given the terrible losses and total stalemate that were the legacy of the Battle of the Somme. Twinned, parallel lines of nearly static trenches still zigzagged from the Swiss border to the English Channel.

  Tom had managed a shave and wash in a rudimentary bathhouse set up in an abandoned factory and was on his way back to his tent when he saw Bruce Johanson approaching.

  “Hey there, Corporal Tom,” Bruce said with a grin. “Are you still associating with the hoi polloi? Or is it just other noncoms you hang around with now?”

  Tom knew his recent promotion had a lot to do with casualties and promotions in the ranks above. The troops were being thinned out. Only a few of his original troop of reinforcements were still in one piece and in the regiment.

  Bruce didn’t expect an answer and didn’t wait for one. “I’ve got good news, which I’ll even share with a corporal. Our leave has come through. Paris, here we come!” He did a little jig, incongruous in muddy boots and puttees.

  Tom clutched his friend and the two of them sashayed in a circle, yelling and laughing. They stopped to catch their breath.

  “How soon? When do we go?”

  “This coming Saturday. What I’m thinking is, there are going to be lots of those little French mademoiselles skipping around, with nary a French soldier to be found. We probably won’t even have to parley-voo the French to have one on each arm.”

  Ferguson appeared and hurried along the line of tents to where Tom and Bruce stood, grinning. He was waving a letter. “I see you’ve both heard the news. Anyway, here’s some mail. Nothing for you, my boy,” he said, clapping Bruce on the back, “but one for His Majesty’s newest corporal,” and he bowed, sweeping his hand with the letter in it to Tom. “Let’s you and me, Bruce, go and see if the cooks have dinner ready yet in the dining lounge and leave lover boy to his mail.”

  Tom watched the two of them wander off, then sat on the remains of an abandoned garden wall. Ellen’s familiar handwriting on the envelope made his heart leap as he ripped open the envelope.

  Dear Tom,

  I haven’t heard from you for two weeks, but there are always delays. Perhaps I’ll get another bundle all at once, just like last time. This will be the shortest letter yet. I don’t know where to start.

  Tom, I have met someone else. It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I don’t know what to do. You have been gone so long. Why couldn’t the army have sent you home like they have some others? What if somethi
ng happens to you? I don’t know what to do. I am going to mail this, no matter what.

  I’m sorry, Tom, but you have been away so long. I feel I’ve waited half my life. Whatever happens, I will always care.

  Ellen

  Tom doubled over in agony, feeling as if he had been kicked by a mule. The pain was worse than when Alton had caught him with that low blow, way back on the trip to England. He sat frozen, the letter crumpled in his hand. He didn’t believe this was happening to him. To other men, maybe. Their wives or sweethearts were unfaithful or simply fell out of love due to the passage of time and the ongoing temptations of life at home. But not Ellen; not him.

  How could she do this to him? A sudden rage flared. He ripped the letter, shredded it again and again until it was like confetti. Confetti, he thought in a detached portion of his mind: that’s a good one. He squeezed the scraps of paper in one fist, and threw them into the air. The wind swallowed the fragments, whipping them away as if they were dandelion seeds on a blustery day.

  In a daze, he stumbled to his tent and sat on his cot, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He rubbed his face, sitting still as someone walked by outside the tent, then got to his feet, threw on his tunic, and went out.

  Blind to where he was going, he walked. At times he staggered like a drunk, at other times he charged up grassy brown hills and down the other side, oblivious to the dark groves of beeches and shrub-choked gullies that surrounded him. Why wouldn’t the earth open up and swallow him? Anger fading, he wallowed in self-pity, even while another part of his mind commented that it was a good thing the regiment wasn’t on the front line or he’d have been felled by a sniper by now. He found himself on a dirt road and walked for miles into the countryside.

  He eventually made his way back to camp, the searing pain easing. So she thinks she’s found someone better, does she? He shook his head. He would not accept that; he could not. When he got home he’d sort this out in short order, by God. In the meantime—what? What could he do? He suddenly regretted tearing up Ellen’s letter. What would he hold on to now? Did it matter whether he lived or died?