A Soldier's Friend

by Megan Rix

  Arthur picked up a stick and waggled it in front of him. ‘Here, Sammy, look, what’s this?’ he said, and he threw the stick as far as he could. ‘Fetch it, fetch,’ he said, pointing at where the stick had landed. Sammy just gave him a look. He had no intention of chasing a stick. He looked over to where the boy with the ball was heading off into the distance and whined.

  ‘We know you want to play with the ball,’ Lizzie said, ‘but it isn’t ours.’

  Arthur picked up another stick. ‘Come on, Sammy,’ he said. ‘Chasing a stick can be just as much fun as chasing a ball.’ He threw the stick and then ran after it himself while trying to encourage Sammy to copy him. ‘Come on, Sammy, this way, this way.’

  ‘Like this, Sammy,’ Lizzie said, and she chased after the stick too.

  Sammy went with them, but he had none of the same enthusiasm for the stick that he’d had for the ball. The sky darkened and there was a rumble of thunder in the distance. Sammy heard it and started to tremble.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Arthur said.

  Lizzie didn’t know. ‘We’d better take him back,’ she said.

  They hurried back to the Dogs Home, both worried that something was seriously wrong with him.

  ‘Have a nice time?’ Kenneth asked them when they got back. Amelia was with him.

  ‘We did. Sammy found a football and he loved playing with it only –’ Lizzie started to say when suddenly there was a flash of lightning outside and Sammy whimpered with fear. He crouched down and covered his face with his paws.

  ‘It’s the storm. Lots of pets don’t like thunder and lightning. You just hold him and tell him it’s all going to be fine. That’s it now,’ Amelia said as Lizzie bent down and cuddled the puppy to her.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Arthur told him as he stroked Sammy’s head. ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of.’

  The rumble came again and now Sammy was panting as well as trembling. He gave a little whine that was almost like a cry.

  ‘He sounds just like some of my patients,’ Amelia said, shaking her head. She’d popped in for a quick cup of tea on her way to work. ‘Simply terrified. More and more badly wounded soldiers are arriving back from the front every day. Many of them are reliving the horrors of what they’ve seen …’

  Kenneth gave his sister a look. There was no need to worry Lizzie and Arthur. He knew their friend Oliver was at the front.

  But Amelia didn’t notice his glare. ‘I really think that if the hospital would just allow me to take in the calmest of the dogs and cats, and let the traumatized soldiers stroke them and spend time with them, it’d really help,’ she said. So far she hadn’t been given permission to do so, but she wasn’t giving up.

  ‘I think that’s a great idea,’ said Lizzie. ‘I know whenever I’m sad that stroking Mouser always makes me feel better.’

  Lizzie and Arthur stayed with Sammy until the storm had almost passed, but then Lizzie remembered her promise to her mother – they could volunteer at the Dogs Home so long as they didn’t miss any school.

  ‘Come on, Arthur, we’re going to be late!’

  Before the war, boys and girls over the age of ten had been taught in separate buildings at the school. But so many teachers had joined up and gone off to fight in the war that all the children were now taught together.

  ‘You’re late!’ Miss Hailstock said when Arthur and Lizzie ran into the classroom, breathless.

  ‘We’re sorry, miss,’ Arthur said, and he and Lizzie told their teacher about volunteering at the Dogs Home.

  ‘Some of the dogs and cats are being sent off to help with the war,’ Lizzie explained.

  Miss Hailstock’s fiancé and her brother and her father were already at the front.

  ‘Well, just make sure you’re not late again,’ she told Lizzie and Arthur as they hurriedly took their seats on the long wooden bench.

  Chapter 9

  Mouser had been bumping around in the cage at the back of the horse-drawn cart for far too long. The muddy lanes the overloaded horse clipped down were uneven and the cage was bouncing around, flinging the cats together.

  ‘Whoa there!’ the driver shouted every time the horse stumbled, before urging it onwards again.

  The trundling horse ride felt much worse than the slow rocking she’d got used to on the boat. Every so often the cart stopped and soldiers got off it and supplies were removed. Occasionally the cage door opened and a hand reached inside. Mouser made sure she backed as far into the corner as she could, far away from the large hand that reached in to grab one of her companions.

  The ginger cat went first and then the other two moggies. Once Mouser was left in the cage by herself, she claimed it completely as her own and hissed and spat any time a hand came near.

  Hours and hours later the cart stopped dead with a final jerk and jolt. Mouser crouched low in the cage, alert and watchful.

  ‘Is this cat for here?’ a soldier’s voice asked the cart driver as the last of the supplies were passed down and a large bucket of water was brought for the carthorse to drink from.

  ‘Yes – take the cage down the communication trench, would you?’ The driver looked at his orders. ‘Cat’s to go to the front-line trench.’

  Mouser hissed at the soldier as he lifted her cage out of the cart.

  ‘Don’t put your fingers too close,’ the driver warned as the soldier carried Mouser’s cage into a muddy tunnel.

  The cage bumped far worse than it had done on the back of the horse-drawn cart as the soldier carried it. Every now and again he’d groan with the effort of carrying the awkward cage.

  ‘It’d be much easier if I could just let you out,’ he told Mouser.

  Mouser snarled at him.

  The soldier put the cage down with a bump when they reached their destination.

  ‘Not one I’ll be missing,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness. If there’s one thing we need here, it’s a cat to keep the rats down,’ said the young officer when he saw Mouser’s cage behind the supplies that were being delivered. ‘The trenches are full of them.’

  The young officer had only been at the front for two weeks, but he’d seen far more rats than he wanted to in his whole life. ‘We’ve tried everything from rat traps to hitting them with our shovels, but they’re so fast – and so clever.’ He didn’t like to tell the soldier delivering the cat that last night he’d had a nightmare about a giant rat, so he was very glad to see the cat, very glad indeed. ‘This cat’s going to have its work cut out. Here, puss!’

  The young officer slowly unlatched Mouser’s cage. Mouser saw her opportunity and, quick as a flash, she was out and away.

  ‘Stop, come back,’ the desperate officer cried as he ran after her. ‘You’ll like it here, I promise.’

  At first, the other soldiers nudged and grinned at each other as they saw the officer chasing after the moggy, but then they realized what having no cat would mean – even more rats!

  ‘Quick! Stop it – stop the cat!’

  ‘It’s headed your way …’

  ‘Try and corner it!’

  ‘Blasted cat …’

  ‘Here, puss.’

  Large hands reached out to grab her, but Mouser evaded them all as she ran along the wooden duckboards that had been placed over the muddy earth floor of the trench. Soldiers ran after her, stumbling over each other as they tried to catch her. But Mouser was too fast for them.

  Two burly soldiers launched themselves at her in a flying tackle. One came away with a handful of snatched muddy fur. The other grabbed for Mouser’s tail as she nimbly leapt up the side of the trench and swished her tail away just in time.

  ‘Well, we can’t stop her now. I’m not going over the top to catch a cat.’

  Over the top of the trench was no-man’s-land and nobody wanted to go there in daylight. It was the strip of land that belonged to neither the Germans nor the Allies, but lay in between their two sets of trenches. A strip of land that was so dangerous that, if a soldier
went into it and was seen by a sniper from the other side, he’d more than likely be shot. It was too risky even to put your head above the top of the trench and so they used periscopes to look across to the German trenches and the Germans did the same.

  But no one shot at Mouser and she was small enough to slip under the barbed wire that surrounded the final trench to stop the enemy from getting too close.

  ‘Fritz’ll probably eat it for breakfast,’ the disgruntled soldier said, and chuckled to himself. They’d heard all sorts of rumours about the nasty things the Germans, or ‘Fritz’ as they’d started to call them, were supposed to have done.

  Once Mouser realized she was free of the hands that had tried to grab her, she slowed down and looked about her.

  There were no trees like the ones that blossomed in the park back at home, only barren trunks, if they stood at all. What little grass there was, was brown and patchy, and there weren’t any birds to chase.

  Mouser looked out on to the bleak landscape before her and uttered a loud miaow. She was all alone.

  Chapter 10

  ‘Right, now check on those sandbags and then join the rest of the men,’ Oliver’s sergeant told him and Patrick.

  The sandbags were at the front of the trench, known as the parapet. Both the front and the back of the trench were protected by two to three feet of sandbags and beyond that there was barbed wire for added protection.

  Oliver and Patrick stacked back up the sandbags that had fallen, while being careful not to lift their heads too high in case they were spotted by a German sniper.

  ‘It’s dangerous enough doing this here,’ Patrick said. ‘But I wouldn’t like to be doing it with the Germans shooting at us on the front line.’

  They’d been in the support line for three days and they both knew they’d be sent to the front line soon.

  ‘Check on those duckboards too,’ the sergeant yelled to them.

  The wooden slatted duckboards were laid along the muddy ground of the trenches to form a dry passageway to walk over. But with everyone on them all day long they often needed replacing.

  Oliver took out the two that were split and Patrick went to fetch new ones.

  At dusk every night Oliver and the rest of the soldiers in the trench were ordered to climb up on to the firing step with their bayonets attached to their rifles to practise guarding against an enemy raid.

  ‘Stand to!’ Sergeant Wainwright shouted, and the soldiers stood, ready and alert.

  ‘Stand down,’ he told them, half an hour later. ‘Right, lads, dinnertime next. This way.’

  The soldiers lined up behind him.

  ‘What have you got for us?’ Sergeant Wainwright asked the cook.

  ‘Maconochie All-in,’ he was told.

  ‘Lads, you’re in for a treat.’

  Oliver looked down at the watery stew made from vegetables and beef in his food tin.

  ‘What’s in it?’ one of the soldiers said.

  ‘What it looks like,’ said someone else.

  ‘Beef, potatoes, carrots, onions, beans, stock, flour, lard and salt,’ the cook said in one breath. He was asked the same question every day.

  Once night fell, there were more chores to be done under cover of darkness. Food and medical supplies needed to be taken down the communication trench to the front-line trench and the barbed wire surrounding the trenches had to be checked and repaired.

  ‘It’s not what I expected,’ Patrick said as he rewound the wire.

  Oliver didn’t exactly know what he’d thought it would be like.

  ‘All over by Christmas,’ he said cheerfully as they went back to their trench and tried to get some sleep while sitting up.

  Christmas wasn’t that far away.

  Chapter 11

  Lizzie and Arthur ran all the way home from school to see if Mouser was waiting for them on the window sill.

  ‘I’d let her have all my pillow to sleep on if she’d just come back,’ Lizzie told Arthur.

  It had been days and days since Mouser had gone and the house felt all wrong without her there.

  But Mouser wasn’t on the window sill or in any of her usual hiding places.

  Arthur knew how worried Lizzie was about their cat, as was he. They now went to the Dogs Home every morning before school and most days after school too to play with Sammy and to see if Mouser had been handed in, but there was no sign of her yet.

  Arthur went to fetch Oliver’s football. ‘Come on,’ he said to Lizzie. ‘I’ll show you how to head the ball.’ He hoped it might help to take her mind off worrying about their missing cat, and he knew how much Lizzie secretly liked playing football.

  She’d always avoided heading the ball before as it looked too painful, but Arthur insisted it wasn’t. He threw the ball directly at her and she managed to knock it away.

  ‘That’s it.’

  But as they practised the sky darkened.

  ‘Looks like there’s going to be another storm,’ Arthur said.

  ‘Sammy will be so frightened,’ said Lizzie. ‘I wish there was something we could do to help him. Maybe a blanket …’

  But suddenly Arthur knew just what Sammy needed to make him forget about the storm. He looked down at the football he was holding.

  ‘Oliver told us not to leave it on the shelf and you saw what Sammy was like with that one in the park,’ he said.

  Lizzie nodded her head, but she was a bit doubtful. Oliver had given them the ball to look after while he was gone. It wasn’t theirs to give away.

  ‘We’re not giving it to Sammy for good,’ Arthur said. ‘We’re just lending it to him so he can snuggle up to it when he gets frightened by the storm. But we won’t let him take it with him if he goes to live somewhere else.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t want him to live anywhere else. Unless he came here, of course. I wouldn’t mind if he came to live with us.’

  ‘Nor would I,’ grinned Arthur. ‘I’d love it if he did, and I bet Oliver would be totally crazy about him because they both love football so much. And Mouser would like it too, once she comes back.’

  ‘Mum would never let us adopt a stray dog though,’ Lizzie said. ‘Especially not with Mouser still missing.’

  ‘She might,’ Arthur said. ‘Sammy is Mouser’s friend after all. He might even be able to help us find her.’

  They decided to ask their mother about it when she came home from work, but in the meantime they hurried back to the Dogs Home with Oliver’s football.

  ‘Hello again,’ Kenneth said when he saw them. ‘I thought it was only going to be once today.’

  ‘We thought Sammy might like to borrow this,’ Arthur said, showing Kenneth the football.

  In the distance there was the rumble of thunder.

  ‘He was so frightened of the storm before …’

  ‘And he so liked a football he found in the park …’

  ‘He could keep it,’ said Lizzie, ‘only it isn’t really ours to give. It belongs to Oliver, our friend who’s gone to war. But we think he’d be happy for Sammy to play with it.’

  Sammy raced over to them and stood on his back legs with his front paws poking through the bars as soon as he saw them.

  ‘Hello, Sammy,’ Arthur said, and he crouched down and showed Sammy the ball. ‘Look what we’ve got for you.’ Sammy’s tail flicked back and forth very fast. Arthur looked up at Lizzie and smiled. He knew they’d done the right thing. ‘Shall we tell Kenneth we’d like to adopt him?’ he whispered.

  But Lizzie thought they should wait until after they’d spoken to their mother before they said anything. She might take a lot of persuading.

  Chapter 12

  That night Sammy fell asleep, snuggled up to his football with one paw resting on top of it.

  Kenneth smiled as he looked through the bars at him. The threatening storm hadn’t come to pass and Sammy, and the many other dogs and cats at the home that were frightened of thunder and lightning, were sleeping peacefully. Kenneth stood for a moment, just watching
the puppy’s little chest rise and fall. Then he heard the sound of someone at the gate and hurried out to see who it could be. A soldier in uniform was standing there. He looked agitated.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ Kenneth asked him. ‘We are closed for the night.’

  ‘I have to come in. I need a dog. The colonel told me to get him one, but there were so many things on the list … I’m his adjutant and if I go back without one …’ He raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness and gave a loud sigh. ‘Well, I’ll be for it.’

  Kenneth noted the man’s boots. Only soldiers in the cavalry wore boots.

  He opened the gate. ‘Hold on, son, slow down – you’re not making much sense. What will you be needing this dog for?’ he asked as he led the soldier towards the kennels.

  ‘As a mascot. He, or she, will be very well treated, believe me. More than most of the men. My colonel dotes on dogs. He says a dog will be just the ticket for raising the men’s spirits.’

  They hadn’t even reached the kennels when Toby’s mournful howl tore through the air.

  ‘What in the world is that?’ the cavalry adjutant asked.

  ‘A dog who wants to go home,’ said Kenneth.

  ‘Sounds more like a wild banshee.’

  Toby came running over to the bars of his cage and started barking as they went in.

  ‘I’m looking for a small dog,’ the cavalry adjutant said.

  Toby whined as they continued on past him.

  ‘Now this one looks like a very good candidate,’ the officer said, stopping to look at a Jack Russell two cages further along from the now howling Toby. ‘Let’s see how he walks on his lead.’

  Kenneth clipped a lead to the small dog’s collar. But as soon as the dog was out of its cage it started pulling like mad on the lead and then twisted round and started biting at it.

  ‘I need a dog who’s good on a leash. One we can take out on parade and be proud of,’ the cavalry adjutant said as Kenneth returned the Jack Russell to its cage.