“I did.” Bill nodded. He leaned closer. “Did you get sick?”
“I didn’t.”
“Me neither.”
They looked at each other with respect as the rain began to fall once more.
A question tiptoed inside Winnie. “Are you scared? Of the War?”
The goat paused. “I wouldn’t be alive if I wasn’t.” His nostrils blew a plume of steam into the drizzle. “But there is no bravery on this earth without fear. I shall stand with my men till the end, as they would do for me.”
Harry and Dixon came back and untied Winnie. Before they led her away, she raised her chin to Bill, who butted the air with his horns. “Good luck,” they told each other.
Your Bear never saw Bill again.
“You made that up!” complained Cole. “There wasn’t a goat like that.”
“Oh yes, there was. There was a billy goat from Broadview, Saskatchewan, who came to England on the same convoy as Winnie and trained on Salisbury Plain and fought with the Fighting Fifth in France. He once got court-martialed for eating the master list of soldiers, but they forgave him when they found him standing guard over a Prussian fighter in a bomb crater. He was promoted to the rank of sergeant. Later in the War, he butted three soldiers into a trench a split second before a shell exploded on the spot where they’d been standing. He could hear it coming; he saved their lives. Sergeant Bill received the Victory Medal before returning home to Canada.”
“No way,” said Cole.
“Winnie’s isn’t the only incredible story, you know.”
Winnie sat before Harry and Brodie in one of the long ditches where the soldiers of Salisbury Plain practiced living in trenches. Looking down at them from the edge of the pit was Colonel Currie, who was standing beside a large man with hooded eyes shaded by a peaked cap with a medal on it. His upper lip was hidden by a mustache that looked like a giant caterpillar.
“We’re going to play a little game of hide-and-seek for the General, Winnie,” said Harry nervously. He shook the wet from his hands, squatted in the mud, and gave her neck a good rub.
He plucked a soiled gray sock from his pocket and handed it to Brodie, who dangled it before Winnie’s nose. “Mmmmm,” Brodie said in an exaggerated way.
Winnie wagged her tongue.
“I’m going to hide this,” said Brodie, twirling the sock through the air. “And you’re going to find it.”
Winnie flattened her ears to say she understood.
Harry held Winnie’s leash as Brodie backed away slowly, swinging the sock in one hand. At the end of the trench, he turned and ducked into an opening in the wall that looked like the mouth of a cave and was gone.
“Wait now,” Harry told Winnie quietly. “We need to give him time to get away.”
The General coughed with impatience. “I assure you, Colonel Currie,” said the British commander, “there is only one bloodhound in the animal kingdom.”
The Colonel took the words in with a brief nod. “I agree, General Alderson. But there is also only one Winnie the Bear.”
Harry clapped his hands together. “Go find it, Winnie! GO!”
Off she ran into the underground tunnel. On the uneven walls, some men had already carved their names.
When the tunnel forked, she went one way, where she found an empty condensed milk tin and licked it clean. But then she realized she’d lost the scent of the sock, so she went back and tried the other way. She came to a widening in the tunnel, where a group of four soldiers were playing cards by the light of a lantern. They scooted back against the walls in alarm as she sniffed at their feet.
Having assured herself that none of them had the sock, she moved on. But on second thought, she returned. “Is one of you chewing toffee? I like toffee.” Before they could respond, she remembered: The sock!
She raced along on her hunt. A dim light appeared up ahead, and she came out into a trench much like the one where she’d started.
Winnie stopped. She breathed in and out deeply. She scrambled up the ladder leading out of the trench and looked around, lifting her nose carefully to pick through the scents of the night one by one. There it was!
And off she went, winding between tents and under the water trough where the men washed.
But then, without warning, the scent was gone. She retraced her steps, her nose just above the ground, and went back and turned around. She smelled Harry and the Colonel and Brodie and the General. There they were, peeking out from behind a nearby tent.
She had an idea and returned to where the smell stopped, near the camp flagpole.
She dug but found nothing. She sat down to have a think.
“Do you concede defeat?” announced the General.
It must be here somewhere, thought Winnie. That’s when the memory of the Colonel, searching their tent in Valcartier, sprouted into her head.
And so your Bear looked straight up.
At the top of the flagpole was the flag of Great Britain. But beneath it hung something small and droopy, barely visible against the night sky.
Winnie scaled the flagpole like a shot and snatched the sock in her mouth.
It’s Higher Than Any Sock Has Ever Gone! thought your Bear.
Down below, Harry and Brodie were jumping up and down in a happy way.
“I win,” said the Colonel to the General. “It appears you owe my men fresh socks.”
The General’s caterpillar of a mustache was very excited. “Colonel, do you know what we could do with a nose like that? We could sniff out explosives! We could hunt German spies—”
“Sir!” Harry said as Winnie took her place at his side. The General scowled at the interruption. “I’m sorry, sir. She’s not that sort of bear.”
Instead of speaking to Harry, the General turned to his commanding officer. “Is that so, Colonel Currie?”
The Colonel looked briefly at Harry, then at Winnie, then back at the General.
“Presently,” he sputtered, “as you can see—”
The General cut him off. “Where we are going, the bear will not have a choice.”
Darkness on Salisbury Plain came earlier and earlier, and the wind grew colder still.
“What do you mean, all movement has stopped?” said Brodie, warming his hands over a stove outside while Winnie rolled around in the mud nearby.
Edgett’s impassive face was all angles and shadows in the stove’s firelight. “Both armies have been racing north all fall, trying to outflank each other. The Front is four hundred miles long now, and there’s no place else to go without falling into the sea.”
“It’s like we put a giant crack down the middle of Europe,” said Dixon. “We can throw ourselves down it or stare at each other over it, but no one can cross it now. Seventy-five thousand men fell at Ypres this month and we didn’t gain an inch.”
“Neither did they,” said Edgett. “That’s what’s important.”
“They should let us have a go at it,” said Brodie, lifting his cap and smoothing his dark hair. “The horses are ready. We’re no good to anyone sitting here.”
The men looked over at Harry, who hadn’t said a word. He was gazing down at Winnie in a far-off way.
Dixon said, “What do you say, Captain? Isn’t it time we had our orders?”
Harry lifted his pale eyes. “Soon enough.”
On a rare rainless morning, the boys lined up to have their pictures taken with your Bear.
Dixon stood beside Winnie and forced a smile, but the man with the camera wasn’t ready. Dixon exhaled. “When I moved to Canada to find work, I left my love behind in Maidenhead, not two hours from here,” he told Winnie while they waited. “I don’t know why I haven’t written Louise since we landed. I hate to worry her, is all. But now I’ll send her this picture, Winnipeg, and when she sees it, she’ll have a good laugh and know not to worry.” He grimaced and shifted in his boots. Then he shouted, “Take the blasted picture!” Winnie startled and the camera clicked.
Edgett sat stiffly
on the ground and took her in his lap. “You’re not afraid, are you?” he whispered into her neck, so quietly that only Winnie could hear. “You’re going to be just fine; you’re going to live through this War and make it home to sleep in a warm bed and eat roast beef for breakfast. Isn’t that right?” The cameraman called, “Hold still!” Click. Before he got to his feet, Edgett briskly rubbed one forearm up and down on Winnie’s back three times. “I’m not superstitious,” he said.
Brodie knelt before her with an apple and two stones. He pretended to hold the fruit out to her but snatched it back, took a bite, and started juggling. She batted frantically at the air with her paws until the two stones fell in the mud. But the apple was still held aloft in Brodie’s hand. He handed it over.
“Very funny.” Winnie took a bite. They were both smiling in that photo.
Colonel Currie, Major Onions, and some officers Winnie had never smelled before came and sat on wooden chairs. The Colonel held her leash in his gloved hands while Major Onions tried to get Winnie’s attention with a stale biscuit. She averted her nose.
Harry stood in the back.
“Are you sure you won’t change your mind, Captain Colebourn?” said Colonel Currie as the photographer held up his hand. “It seems a shame to carry on without our mascot.”
“I’m sure, sir,” Harry said.
Winnie jerked her head away from Major Onions so the photographer caught only her side, while Harry looked on without a smile.
Your Bear knew something wasn’t right. The boys were unusually quiet as they gathered outside Harry’s tent before dawn.
No one would even look at her.
Harry pulled up in the driver’s seat of the Colonel’s motorcar. He covered the backseat in a horse blanket and held the door open for her, but she wouldn’t get in.
“I’m not getting in,” Winnie said by lying down in the mud.
When Dixon tried to pick her up in his hands, she struggled. It took both he and Brodie to force her inside and Edgett to slam the door.
“No!” Her claws scratched wildly at the window as Harry started the engine. Winnie butted the glass with her head as she watched the boys recede down the road, their heads bowed, their hands in their pockets.
Now the car was passing the muddy field where the horses were, and Winnie’s nose pressed against the streaked glass. “Sir Reginald! Black Knight! Alberta! Victoria!” She willed the mounts to look at her.
Only Sir Reginald’s great dark eyes found hers, and he nodded a proud salute. Then he shook his tail sadly and dropped his gaze as Harry sped up and drove out of camp.
Winnie was very upset. She crashed from the backseat to the front as the car made its way across the flat plain. Finally, she snapped at Harry’s ear and clawed at his face, and he nearly ran off the road. “Winnie!” Harry cried. “Stop it!”
The motorcar pulled over with a jerk and a screech, and Harry yanked her after him by the leash out of the car.
They were in front of a great broken circle of giant stones.
“Do you know what Stonehenge is?” I asked Cole.
“Yes,” said Cole, smoothing the blanket around his stuffed animal. “But I’m not sure Bear does.”
“It’s an ancient, mysterious place. It was built thousands of years ago on Salisbury Plain and no one knows how or why. How did they get such big stones there? Why are they set up the way they are? Some people think it was for looking at the sun and the stars. Maybe it had healing powers. That’s where Harry and Winnie were.”
“It’s not safe for you where we’re going, Winnie,” Harry said as the ancient stones loomed in the gloom. “It’s not safe for anyone.”
Winnie growled in an angry way, but Harry shook his head. “I didn’t rescue you in White River to endanger you now,” he told her. “I’m taking you someplace safe.”
The top of the sun’s head was peeking up yellow and red through the gathering of stones. And all at once, the energy left your Bear.
She rubbed her side against Harry’s boot. “I’m scared of losing you.”
Harry’s hand came down to stroke her neck. “You have to be brave,” he told her. “We all have to be brave.”
As the sun’s first rays spilt onto the plain, memories lit up inside Winnie. She had climbed the white-trunked tree, and spoken to squirrels, and carried on after Mama died, and trusted the boy, and left the Woods, and gone on the train, and befriended the horses, and faced the Colonel, and helped stop the stampede, and crossed the ocean, and made peace between horses and rats.
But the Great War demanded more bravery still.
They walked to the middle of the stone circle, and sat together in the center of Stonehenge, where Harry scratched the special place on her neck, and they watched the sun come up, both of them gathering the courage to do what must be done.
December 9, 1914
Took Winnie to Zoo. London.
As they drove into the City, the tall buildings looked down on them.
People in buses, children waving madly, the heavy eyes of a policeman peering in. They passed Buckingham Palace and drove beneath Marble Arch, but Winnie didn’t care where her journey was taking her now. She rested her head beside Harry’s leg on the front seat, her nose just touching his knee.
Harry stopped the car, and they walked through Regent’s Park down the middle of a broad gravel pathway lined by trees. The jumbled scents of countless strange animals closed in around your Bear.
And there they were: the entrance to the gardens of the Zoological Society of London.
A slender woman in a dark purple dress came out to meet them. Her hat looked like it was made of dark blue straw, and a large blue handbag hung at her side.
“You must be Captain Colebourn. I’m Silvie Saunders, the new zookeeper.” She shook Harry’s hand.
“You’re new?” asked Harry.
“Since Keeper Graves enlisted.” She bent down. “And you, young lady, must be Winnipeg,” she said, holding out her hand. Winnie looked at it: Her palm was as pink as tinned salmon.
Harry got down on both knees to talk to your Bear. “This is going to be your home for a while, Winnie. It won’t be long, just until the fighting’s done and I can take you back to Winnipeg.” His dimple quivered, and he took her head in his hands and brought his nose close to hers.
“Don’t worry,” he said in a voice turning husky. “No matter what happens, you’ll always be my Bear.”
Winnie breathed in his scent before he cleared his throat and suddenly stood and handed her leash to Miss Saunders. “Take care of her.”
“You have my word,” said Miss Saunders. “Though I don’t think she’s the one whose safety we need to worry about, Captain Colebourn.”
Winnie’s heart gasped for breath like a fish on dry land as Harry started to walk away, but Miss Saunders stopped him with her voice. “When are you coming to visit?”
Harry seemed surprised by the question. He glanced up at the cloudy sky, then brought his pale, clear eyes back to your Bear. “On my next leave. Though I don’t know when that will be.”
Miss Saunders placed her hand gently atop Winnie’s head.
“We shall be waiting,” she said.
“I think you’ll be pleased with your lodgings, Winnie,” said Miss Saunders, leading her past the duck pond inside the entrance to the Zoo. “We’ve got you a place on the Mappin Terraces. They just opened last year, and I think you’ll find them quite roomy and natural.”
Winnie found herself blinking up at a small jagged mountain that didn’t smell anything like real rock. Cut into it were tiers called Terraces. And along the outside of each Terrace was a walkway with people strolling along.
Miss Saunders sang, “Good afternoooooon, beauties!” to the hot-pink flamingos in the pond at the bottom of the Mappin Terraces. “I’d like you to meet your new neighbor. This is Winnie the Bear. Winnie, meet our fabulous flamingos!”
The birds strutted gracefully before her. But instead of saying hello, Winnie
lay down on the ground and put her muzzle on her paws.
“Brighten up, love,” one blinked. The others wiggled their necks in agreement.
“You’re a lucky bear,” flapped another, who had just lifted her head from underwater. “Until last year, the bears lived in a pit, with nothing to do but climb a pole and eat scraps off a stick.”
Miss Saunders said, “Let’s go up and have a look at the dens, shall we?” They climbed a staircase and turned onto the third walkway on the right. Across from them, on the other side of an empty moat, the Terrace was open to the sky and divided by walls.
The middle of the walkway was clogged by a crowd of people. Miss Saunders squeezed through with Winnie to see what they were all looking at. No one paid much attention to your Bear, because they were too riveted by the antics of the polar bear couple across the way.
The bigger one was pacing back and forth near the back of the den. Above him, a visitor with red cheeks and a feathered hat was leaning over the rear wall, waving a frilly umbrella and calling “Yoo-hoo!” to get his attention. Lazily, the polar bear stuck a claw in one ear and rolled his eyes.
Meanwhile, his female companion sat in a puny puddle of water near the moat, scrubbing her armpits.
With a sudden powerful spring, the male bear rose to his full height—Winnie was stunned because, apart from being white all over, he was more than three times as tall as Mama—and snatched the visitor’s umbrella, stripped the fabric from its frame with a sweep of his claws, and pranced about on two legs while holding the mangled umbrella overhead. The crowd roared with laughter.
“Sam,” called Miss Saunders in a warning sort of way. “Are you behaving yourself?”
The polar bear dropped to all fours and kicked the umbrella’s skeleton away. “Who, me?”
“Sam, Barbara,” said Miss Saunders, “I’d like you to meet Winnie. She’s from Canada! Sam and Barbara are what you might call celebrities here at the Zoo. Sam likes to steal people’s umbrellas.”
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