Winnie's Great War

by Lindsay Mattick

  October 6, 1914

  In hospital.

  In the ship’s hospital, your Bear made her rounds.

  The room was packed tightly with bunk beds, and every one of them held a seasick man. A sharp odor tickled her nose.

  Winnie went from bed to bed, attending to each patient with a sniff of their blankets and letting them pet her if they wanted.

  Once she made her rounds, she returned to the corner farthest from the door, paused to rub her side against Brodie sleeping in the bottom bunk, and climbed up to where Harry lay miserably. He was shivering, so she curled up with her back pressed into his belly to warm him.

  The ship lurched, and ugly sounds spurted from throats throughout the hospital room.

  A new man in a white smock and spectacles came to check on Harry. When he saw your Bear, he said, “What is—Shoo! Out of here!” and swatted at her with his clipboard.

  “Let her stay,” said Harry. “She’s our mascot.”

  “She could be the King of England,” said the doctor. “Absolutely no animals in hospital!”

  “Are you calling the King of England an animal?” Brodie cracked from the bottom bunk, earning a few weak chuckles from the other patients.

  The last thing your Bear saw was Harry sitting up, watching helplessly as the doctor chased her out the door.

  October 7, 1914

  In hospital.

  At dusk on deck Winnie took a break from her puddle-splashing to lick the sea’s saltiness from her fur. Seeing a light glowing from inside the control tower, she went to prowl its window ledge.

  Two officers were inside, one tall, one short, their faces lit by a lantern. When the short one noticed Winnie, his muffled shout sounded through the glass. The tall one leaned forward and banged the window with his fist. Bang! Bang! Bang!

  She lifted her paw and tapped the glass back. Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!

  She always liked playing games, your Bear.

  The man banged harder. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Winnie countered. Thwap! Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!

  But neither of the men looked amused. In fact, the short one grabbed a long hook from beside the door and rushed outside to meet her.

  Game or not, Winnie knew by now that it was a good idea to stay clear of angry people waving things over their heads.

  She fled from the shouting men, bounding across the deck and diving through an open hatch, scrambling down one ladder and then another, racing along a curved wall, shooting through a portal, and skittering around a corner—

  Winnie stopped with upright ears and nose alert; she couldn’t hear the men’s voices or smell them any longer.

  She stretched her front and back paws and started exploring. She’d never been to this part of the ship before.

  The walls had given way to angles of bolted metal. Fat pipes and square ducts crossed overhead.

  Still drenched from outside, Winnie shook herself, and the drops that flew from her fur hissed against hot metal. Down a corridor of machinery, some men with their sleeves rolled up above their elbows were shoveling coal from wheelbarrows into small metal doors. The fire inside was blazing so hot that Winnie could feel it from where she stood.

  Something rustled nearby. “Hey!” a tiny voice called.

  Winnie’s eyes searched. The men shoveling coal hadn’t looked up from their work. There appeared to be no one else around.

  “Hey, you!” squeaked Whatever-It-Was. Winnie glimpsed something small and black flit past where a pipe dropped through the floor.

  “Who’s that?” Winnie had known many animals, but not one other than Harry had ever spoken to her first.

  “Tatters is my name!” A small rodent darted right up to Winnie’s paws and gazed up at her with bugging eyes. His fur was exactly the same color as hers.

  “I’m Winnie.”

  “I didn’t know rats could be as big as you!” squeaked Tatters.

  Winnie was about to point out that she was a bear when Tatters asked, “How old do you have to be to get that big?”

  “I don’t think I’m old.”

  Tatters ran up Winnie’s side and poked his nose in her ear. “When were you born?” he asked.

  Somehow it already seemed too late for Winnie to mention that she wasn’t a rat.

  But what does it matter if we’re different? your Bear thought. Why should that stand between us?

  “I was born in winter,” said Winnie, remembering the warmth of the den in the Woods.

  “Winter!” Tatters squeaked, slipping back down and running in a circle around her. “That’s almost all the seasons ago! You’re an old lady! I’m only three moons old!” He scratched one ear with a hind leg. “You remind me of my cousin Bobo. She was plumpish.”

  “Is she here too?”

  “No.” Tatters’s whiskers wavered. “She got killed.”

  “She did?” Winnie blinked. “My Mama got killed.”

  Both of them silently chewed something inside their cheeks.

  The small rat’s tail swiped the floor in a changing-the-subject sort of way. He looked sideways at Winnie. “Hungry?”

  Winnie’s tummy answered, “Always!”

  They had a lot in common, those two.

  Down the corridor, two of the men looked up suddenly as if they’d heard something.

  “Let’s go!” squeaked Tatters. And together they climbed up the pipe.

  October 8, 1914

  In hospital.

  Scurrying in the gaps between walls and squeezing beneath floors, Tatters showed your Bear all the ship’s finest spots: Salted Cod Corner. The Valley of Fallen Peas. Crumb Alley. The Bin of Sticky Tins. Leaky Faucet Falls. Rubbish Row.

  Now Tatters led the way down a wall.

  “Do you smell that?” His tail wriggled.

  “I sure do.” They crawled under the webbed shadow of an empty hammock.

  Tatters sniffed. “I think there’s something in here.” Delicately, he chewed through one corner of a soldier’s canvas kit bag.

  Winnie nudged her new friend aside and tore the whole thing open with her claws.

  “Nice work,” Tatters remarked.

  They picked through the contents until they discovered a large chocolate bar, which they shared.

  Shortly after, Winnie got a terrible tummy ache.

  “Because she ate too much?” asked Cole.

  “No, because she ate that chocolate bar. Bears can’t eat chocolate. It makes them sick.”

  “Really?” said Cole, annoyed. He looked at his Bear. “No more Halloween candy for you.”

  Tatters took Winnie to his nest, a mess of straw, cloth scraps, and paper shreds at the back of a storeroom shelf. There, he rubbed the softest part of his ears against Winnie’s belly until she fell asleep.

  When your Bear woke up the next morning, she felt much better.

  Tatters held a crust of bread out to her doubtfully. “Hungry?”

  “A little.” Winnie pushed forward her lips and took it in her mouth.

  After that, your Bear and the little black rat were inseparable.

  October 9, 1914

  In hospital.

  They were grooming each other in Tatters’s nest.

  “Nobody’s done that for me since my Mama.” Winnie wriggled cozily as Tatters carefully picked through the fur behind your Bear’s ears.

  “How did she die?” asked Tatters.

  Winnie remembered that day in the Woods: the fur-chilling fear, the look in Mama’s eyes, the thundering shots from the rifle. Be brave, my Bear! “She got caught in a trap.”

  Tatters scratched the base of Winnie’s neck in an understanding way. Rats know about traps.

  When it was time to switch, Tatters dropped down to sit between Winnie’s paws.

  “What happened to your cousin?” Winnie wondered.

  Tatters shivered a little at the thought. “Bobo was looking for food in the hold where the horses travel. And a mad hoof flattened her.”

  “What an awful accident
!” sniffled Winnie in an understanding way.

  “What?” Tatters spun around. “Horses are monsters! Every rat knows that. They’d just as soon crush your skull as look at you.”

  “Some horses are nice,” suggested Winnie, thinking of Maggie and Sir Reginald and the other good horses she knew.

  Tatters’s eyes flashed red. “Horses are evil!” he squealed. “They murdered my cousin and countless more!”

  Shaken, Winnie backed away.

  “Animals kill animals,” Mama had told her. It was how animals were.

  It took a long time before Tatters calmed down enough to let your Bear finish grooming him.

  October 10, 1914

  In hospital.

  “Let’s have something special for supper,” suggested Tatters.

  “Okay!” Winnie waddled after her friend’s swinging tail. They jumped up and walked across a chain that hung high over the men shoveling coal.

  This would have been their seventh supper that evening.

  “Where are we going?” Winnie wanted to know.

  “Bobo always said if you’re looking for a feast, find the leader of the pack.” Tatters slipped through a jagged hole where the wall had rusted through. Winnie tried to follow, but it was hard to fit more than her nose. She pulled with her front paws, and pushed with her back paws, and then her ears were on the other side, and then her shoulders, and then—

  “I’m too big!” Winnie squirmed. She couldn’t go on and she couldn’t go back! Her view of the room was blocked by a heavy chest—all she could make out was the back leg of a wooden chair, but she could smell the hot food on the table and hear the clanking of forks on dishes.

  “You’re too big!” agreed Tatters. He slipped back to the other side of the wall, and Winnie felt his tiny paws at her side. Frantically the rat scratched at the rusted edge around Winnie’s middle, hoping to loosen its hold.

  Winnie held her breath. The men were talking.

  “Yes, we saved Paris, but a quarter of a million Allied men paid the price.”

  She recognized that voice!

  “Shhhhhhhh! Do you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “That scratching.”

  Winnie began to shake, listening to the men listening.

  The chair leg scraped back abruptly. Big boots thudded toward the trunk as the wall by her armpit crumbled and Tatters poked his head through.

  “I did it!” squeaked Tatters, but his eyes bugged and his face froze as a shadow fell over them.

  Colonel Currie shrieked and jumped into the air at the unexpected sight of your Bear.

  The Colonel was not a man who liked surprises. “Major!” he shouted, instantly regaining control of himself.

  An officer who smelled like onions appeared behind the Colonel. Winnie hated onions.

  “Where is Captain Colebourn?” Colonel Currie demanded.

  “He’s been in hospital for the last three days, sir,” said Major Onions.

  “Well,” said the Colonel. “Take this animal down to the cargo hold where it belongs!”

  Major Onions yanked Winnie out by her front legs, scraping her side. As he hauled her away, she twisted around, partly to get her nose away from his stench and partly to look back at the hole in the wall.

  Your Bear was happy Tatters had escaped. But she was sorry to see him go.

  October 11, 1914

  In hospital.

  Winnie wriggled as Major Onions stomped along with his fist clamped around her neck. Opening a trapdoor with his free hand, he barged down a ramp. He flung your Bear to the floor and leaned down to chain her up, breathing onion gas right into her face.

  “Ewwww!” she howled.

  When he slammed the trapdoor behind him, darkness swallowed the hold.

  Hooves shuffled. “Winnie, is that you?”

  She turned, tripping over the chain that held her. “Sir Reginald?” All around her, the ghostly forms of horses moved.

  “Winnie,” Sir Reginald huffed. “Where is Captain Colebourn?”

  “He’s sick,” she told them. “The sea doesn’t agree with him. Food keeps coming up from his tummy.”

  “If only it was that easy for horses,” said Alberta sadly.

  Victoria made a pitiful noise, and Winnie knew that she was in pain.

  “We need help, Winnie,” Sir Reginald said. “We have been poisoned.”

  “Poisoned?”

  Black Knight shuddered. “Poisoned by rats.”

  “Rats?” Winnie sniffed the air carefully.

  “They put filth in our feed,” Sir Reginald told her.

  Sure enough, Winnie smelled Tatters nearby.

  There was a faint, questioning squeak. Tiny steps pattered closer, stopped, came closer still.

  “They have us surrounded,” Sir Reginald told Winnie.

  “Let them come.” Black Knight shook his mane. “And I will crush every one.”

  Winnie focused on a point in the darkness.

  “Winnie!” Tatters’s nose poked from the shadows and sniffed at Winnie’s chain. “The horses are holding you prisoner!”

  “No, they’re not.” Winnie shook her head. “They’re my friends.”

  “What do you—” Tatters went rigid as Sir Reginald took a step closer to them.

  “Winnie,” the great steed said. “Who are you talking to?”

  “My friend Tatters.”

  “What friend?” Black Knight breathed hotly.

  Tatters’s eyes flashed with confusion. “The horses are your friends?”

  Winnie faltered. “Just like you are.”

  When Tatters squeaked and disappeared into the depths of the hold, Winnie called after him. “Come back! They won’t hurt you!”

  “Stop speaking the enemy’s language, Bear!” Black Knight neighed furiously.

  “Could Tatters and the horses understand what each other were saying?” Cole asked.

  “No. Because if you’re not listening, it’s impossible to hear. If you believe that somebody is so different from you that you can’t possibly have anything in common, you’ll never be able to hear them no matter what they say. That was the way with the rats and horses. And that’s how it is in war.”

  Cole thought. “Is that why Winnie could talk to anybody?”

  “That’s right. She had an open heart. Harry had a heart like that too.”

  “If that’s true,” Cole said, tracing his Bear’s mouth with a finger, “why can’t I talk to animals?”

  I considered the question. “Maybe you can.”

  “Can we get a dog?”

  I went back to the story.

  “Traitor!” Black Knight shook with rage.

  The tip-tap of tiny feet approached again, and Winnie called for Tatters once more. But now the pitter-patter multiplied and spread like the sound of a growing downpour.

  An army of rats descended around your Bear, their eyes glowing red in the darkness. Tatters crawled from between them. “You don’t deserve to be a rat!” His snout quivered.

  Your Bear hung her head. “I’m not a rat,” she admitted. “I’m a bear.”

  “Stay away, you poisonous devils!” seethed the horses, jostling in place.

  “Rat murderers!” chattered the rats in their own way.

  The tension rose until a line of rats charged beneath the horses’ legs. Black Knight reared up violently.

  Winnie strained at her chain. “STOP!”

  At that moment, the door to the hold swung open, and a shaft of light flooded in. Tatters and the rest of the rats scattered at once.

  Dixon came down the ramp and rushed to Winnie’s side.

  “I heard the Colonel locked you down here,” he said, running his big hands through her fur. “Winnie, you’re shaking.”

  Once he’d convinced himself she was okay, he turned his attention to the mounts. “Black Knight, what’s wrong?” Right away, he realized how sick some of them were.

  While Dixon tended to the horses, and discovered what the p
roblem was, and went about changing their feed, your Bear stayed curled up with her face buried in the fur of her chest. Not since Mama died had she felt so hopeless and alone.

  Late that night, Dixon snuck back to the hold, unhooked Winnie’s chain, put a finger to his lips, and whispered, “Shhhh. Don’t tell the Colonel.” Then he threw a burlap sack over your Bear.

  With her balled up at the bottom of the sack, he carried her out of the hold. Her shoulder bumped lightly against his leg as he made his way through the ship.

  Dixon stopped. Someone was coming toward them.

  “Sir!” Dixon said.

  “Are you on patrol, Private?”

  “No, sir!”

  “What are you doing out of quarters? What do you have in that bag?”

  Dixon lifted the sack. “Rats caught in the horses’ feed, sir. It’s swarming with them down there.”

  “Dead or alive?”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “I asked you, Private, whether the rats you have in that sack are dead or alive?”

  Dixon hesitated. “Alive, sir.”

  There was a long pause. Winnie stayed still. “I suppose they’re sleeping,” the officer said. Then, very slowly, he said, “You’re not stealing rations, are you, Private?”

  Something hard—the butt of a gun—jabbed Winnie through the burlap, and in pain and shock, she thrashed all four paws in a wild flurry that made the outside of the sack look like rats were scrambling inside.

  “I wish you hadn’t woken them up, sir,” said Dixon.

  “Get rid of them!” the officer growled. “That’s an order!”

  Dixon opened the sack as soon as the officer had gone. “You okay, Winnipeg?” He felt Winnie’s sides to make sure nothing was broken before cinching the sack up again and carrying on.

  A door swished around them, and the sharp smell of the ship’s hospital seeped through the burlap. Winnie’s heart beat faster as Harry’s scent found her nose.