There’s a silver lining
Through the dark clouds shining
Turn the dark cloud inside out
Till the boys come home.’
Keep them home fires burning for me too, he thought.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Someone’s flaming well singing!’
‘He’s got a donkey. Some blighter’s got a donkey!’
Jack peered into the trench. He grinned at the men below. ‘Hullo, cobbers. Anyone for a ride down to the seaside?’
‘He’s got water!’ Men crowded round him, men with cracked lips and muddy faces, eyes dark with tiredness and horror. They dipped their mugs into the tins of water and filled canteens. ‘Oh geez that’s good!’ Within a few minutes both tins were empty.
A big man with a scratch of dried blood down his cheek and crooked teeth the colour of old lettuce lifted one of the tins and drank the last drops. His breath stank like a dunny. ‘Bloody hell, I needed that. Any more, mate?’
Jack shook his head. ‘I’ll bring more on me next trip up. Mebbe the mules’ll be this way with the water barrels soon.’
The big man shook his head. ‘Not with the shelling like this, they won’t. Miracle you made it this far, mate.’
‘Nah, they haven’t made the bullet with my name on it yet. What bloody fool decided to invade dry gullies, eh?’
‘A Pommy, that’s who. Always rains in Pommyland. Ain’t that right?’
Jack grinned. ‘Near enough.’ He glanced up at the tight blue sky. Already the light bounced off cliffs and hills.
He knelt by the nearest man, who was lying moaning at the edge of the dugout. Nothing he—or anyone else, most likely—could do for him. But he pushed the guts back into the wound and wrapped a bandage around the worst of it—no iodine; that would just be extra agony. The bandage was at least a sign that he hadn’t been forgotten. ‘All I can do for thee, cobber. But some of me mates’ll be along soon with a stretcher.’ He looked along the row of battered, bleeding men waiting for evacuation, then knelt by another. Leg wound, bound up in a bit of rag torn from a shirt. He peeled away the sodden bandage carefully.
‘Here, where’s tha iodine?’
The boy reached shakily into his pocket, where each man kept an ampoule of iodine in a cardboard container, and held it out to Jack. Jack snapped off the end and dabbed on the yellow iodine.
The boy gritted his teeth. How old was the poor lad? wondered Jack. Fourteen, mebbe? Thirteen more like. Mebbe he was one of the Borstal lads. He’d met a few of them on the ship coming here. Wee scraps of lads, most of them—twelve or thirteen sometimes, half starved, with scars on their backs from beatings either from their da or the wardens, or even both mebbe, and eyes like a whipped dog’s—shoved in the army instead of the boys’ home.
He’d wanted to take ‘em home. Give ’em a good feed o’ Ma’s treacle tart and custard, aye, and a cuff around the ear too, if they didn’t mend their ways. He reckoned a few months with Ma would take the anger from their hearts and put flesh upon their bones.
But there was no chance o’ that. They was here till the war ended. And when they got back, their crimes would be wiped from the record.
If they got back. Ee, lad, he thought, I’ll do me best for thee. I’ll get thee home if I can.
He patted the boy’s shoulder. ‘Good lad. Now, I’ll get thee up on Duffy here.’
‘Duffy?’ The boy tried to stop his teeth chattering. Cold, in heat like this? Loss of blood or shock or both most like, Jack thought.
‘Someone told me once it were a grand name for a donkey. And a grand donkey this one is an’ all. Yes, upsadaisy, that’s the way.’
‘Ain’t never ridden on a donkey afore.’
‘Then me an’ Duffy got a treat for thee.’
The donkey looked carefully at his hooves as the three of them headed down Shrapnel Gully.
CHAPTER 17
Hasan, the Turkish Sniper
Gallipoli, 27 April 1915
He was the best shot in the village. As a boy he could bring down a sparrow two hills away with his slingshot. None of his brothers or friends could match him.
Now, with a machine gun, he was the best of the best. You could kill so many with a machine gun, with only one sweep of your arms. He smiled in his trench in the hill above the gully, as he watched yet another of the enemy try to scuttle to the safety of their hastily erected walls.
It was like shooting ducks. Bang. Bang. Bang.
The wind was cold up here on the hill. It smelt of the sea, and freshly dug earth. A good place to grow grapevines, perhaps, once they had pushed the invaders back into the sea where they had come from. He smiled at another burst of fire from the other side of his hill. No, the invaders couldn’t last here long.
And then he heard something. Not the scream of a friend who saw his leg explode into fragments of bone and blood (his mind shut down on the memory). Not a seagull cry, either…His finger tightened on the trigger as another of the enemy came into view.
What was that noise?
His finger froze on the trigger. He stared. Impossible. Insane. He blinked, half expecting that he had dozed, and was dreaming he was back on the hills at home.
A donkey trod carefully down the gully. It was the smallest, most miserable beast he’d seen in years, with skinny ribs and a strange light-coloured nose. A boy clung to its back, one bare and bloody leg showing red stains and white bandage under his cut-off trouser leg. A young man strode beside them, one arm supporting the boy on the donkey. He didn’t duck and weave like the others.
All at once Hasan knew what the sound was. The man with the donkey was whistling.
Whistling, here among the fallen and the wounded. Whistling as he helped a bleeding boy.
The boy could almost be Hasan’s youngest brother. The army had taken all four of his brothers. Armies were always hungry for men.
His finger was still on the trigger. There was no need to hurry. Even old one-eyed Kamal back in the village could shoot the two men and their donkey, and have time to drink a cup of coffee, too. Impossible to miss.
He watched them along the barrel of his gun as the donkey trod carefully down the rocks. But it wasn’t till they had almost reached the bottom of the gully that he knew.
There was no way he could shoot them now.
CHAPTER 18
Jack
Gallipoli, 27 April 1915
The boy leant on him, slumped over the donkey’s neck. Cold sweat beaded his forehead. The hand that clutched his arm was cold as well. Best keep the lad talking then, or he’d faint and fall off.
He tugged on Duffy’s lead rope. The small donkey trod carefully, as though he knew how fragile his burden was. Shrapnel from a stray bomb raked the ground behind them as they plodded through the broken earth past bodies, bits of ammunition cases, and all the wreckage of a war. But at least no sniper fired from above.
Yet.
‘Tha all right there, cobber?’
The boy nodded.
‘That was a very nasty spot we have just passed. Jacko’s snipers are wonderful shots. It doesn’t do to linger in such spots. Now, don’t thou worry. They haven’t made the bullet that has our names on it yet.’
They’d made it halfway down Shrapnel Gully now. The donkey pushed through a stretch of brush, then stopped. An ambulance bearer lay at their feet, his red cross shining like one of the flowers that still bloomed in the crevices. Jack knelt, felt for the pulse at his neck. But he was already cooling. Jack shut the man’s eyes instead.
‘Do you know him?’ The boy’s voice was a whisper.
Jack shook his head. ‘Face is familiar, that’s all.’
One less of us poor bastards to carry the load, he thought. At least the others faced the enemy with rifles and bayonets. All we have is stretchers and iodine, and scarce enough of those to cope with a kiddies’ squabble, much less war like this.
But he couldn’t say that to the boy.
He tugged on the lead r
ope. The donkey’s hooves clinked as they struck the rocks.
There was another wall of sandbags halfway down the gully now. He and the donkey and the wounded boy sheltered there for a few minutes, until all three of them got their breath, then headed down again, through the world of bullets and skidding shrapnel, and then at last to the sandbag wall at the bottom of the gully, and the trench that led to the comparative safety of the beach.
Jack grinned at the boy on the donkey. ‘There, I said Duffy would get you to the seaside.’
‘It’s a miracle. A flaming miracle.’
Jack reckoned he were right. But instead he said, ‘Nah, lad. Duffy knows the way through the bullets, that’s all. Surest feet of any donkey I’ve ever met, and I’ve known a few. Human donkeys, too,’ he added, to try to get the lad to smile. ‘All officers are asses.’
‘Thank you. Thank you.’
‘Glad to be of help. Thou lead a good long life now. All right? Else I’ll be after thee to know why not.’
He half lifted the boy off at the medics’ station, then tugged Duffy away quickly, before Sergeant Hookway could see him and order him back to his unit.
Man and donkey plodded back along the beach.
CHAPTER 19
The Donkey
Gallipoli, May 1915
Days passed. They had rhythm again now. Despite the noise, the shaking ground, the smell of blood—like the time Dimitri had killed a goat and made him carry the bleeding flesh—despite the flashes of strange light, and even though the obvious agony of the humans he carried made him shiver for them too: in spite of all of this it was good to have a routine to his days again, the decisions made by the man in charge. And this man was nothing like Dimitri, this man with his kind and clever hands.
Day after day the donkey watched those hands: hauling hay for him or water in a bucket, drinking tea from his pannikin, or eating the strange smelly stuff called bully beef, or biscuit. Then he’d watch the hands load the makeshift panniers again with tins of water and lead him up the gully, pausing for a rest now and then behind the sandbag walls.
There were more walls now, and strange fences made of brushwood twisted into wire, and more of the new trenches too. The land looked like strange animals had rampaged through it. But the donkey supposed there were no animals stranger than humans.
Often the man left the donkey behind the sandbags, while he went out alone into the world of noise and bodies, reappearing with a groaning man slung on his back or leaning on his shoulder.
There was nowhere to tether the donkey behind the wall, but it never occurred to him to wander off. He had learnt when young that wandering meant a beating. The Man with Kind Hands didn’t beat him, but this world was too frightening to even think of facing it alone.
When the man returned he’d help the stranger onto the donkey’s back, and they would make their way down to the beach again, passing teams of men carrying men who bled and groaned on their stretchers, who screamed or shuddered or, even worse, lay still and white, while the shells spat and pinged around them. The men climbing the gully used the strange bob-and-duck walk that almost all of the men used. Except his man. The Man with Kind Hands walked as though the strange blinks and snortings could never harm him.
Every time they met another man his man would smile, raise a hand and say, ‘Hello, cobber. Reckon Abdul’s a bit noisy today.’ Or ‘How tha going, cobber? Anyone got a brew on down below?’
Sometimes they passed one of the tall men with the white cloth about their heads, leading a mule carrying tins of water—bigger tins than the ones he carried, and heavier. The donkey heehawed politely once or twice. But the mules just looked down their noses at the smaller animal, and plodded after their masters.
Sometimes in the first few days they passed another donkey, led by a man just like he was, carrying a wounded man on her back, too. She was a fine donkey, with long soft hair. She was bigger than him too. But she ignored Duffy, lifting her hooves high and holding her nose in the air.
It didn’t matter. The donkey had been alone most of his life. At least there were animals around, even here in this man-world that men had made, and grass to nose at while he waited for the man, and sometimes even a sweet flower growing in a crevice where men’s feet hadn’t tramped or explosions scarred, or a mouthful of leaves from a shrub along the way.
And always at the end of each journey there were the grateful hands that patted him, and told him he was good.
Only one man was angry when he saw them, the one called Sergeant Hookway. But soon even Sergeant Hookway stopped growling when another man, a tall one they called Colonel Sutton, came and patted the donkey and gave him a biscuit.
A few days later Colonel Sutton brought biscuits again, holding them correctly on his palm so the donkey could mumble up every single crumb. And then the colonel untied the white band with the red cross on it from his own arm and fixed it around the donkey’s head.
‘There,’ said the colonel. ‘Now you are an official member of the unit.’
The men around him laughed and cheered. How good to be so praised and patted. How good to have hay and kind voices.
Colonel Sutton smiled at the Man with Kind Hands too. ‘Just make sure you report in each day, that’s all, to have your name marked off the unit roll. Just so we know you’re still with us.’
The Man with Kind Hands grinned. ‘Reckon me and Duffy here’d be hard to miss,’ he said. He paused, then added, ‘Sir.’
The colonel smiled. ‘Even so.’ He beckoned for another biscuit, and held it out for the donkey to eat, while around them the noise boomed and flared, and moaning men were loaded into boats to be rowed out through the waves.
The donkey took another mouthful of hay. If at times his legs ached even more than they had with Dimitri, if his body so longed for water that he wanted to trot too quickly down the gully to the buckets, no matter what the cost in broken knees or shaken passengers, for the first time in his life the donkey knew he would do anything for the Man with Kind Hands. Not because of a stick or beatings. But from love.
CHAPTER 20
Jack
Gallipoli, May 1915
He had meant to leave Duffy in the shelter of the sandbag wall again, partly because he could move more quickly around this ripped-up land of war without him. But it was also because the tiny donkey drooped with weariness. Many of the men he carried must have weighed more than the small-boned donkey. Yet the little animal kept on and on, always willing.
They worked through half the night now, the gully lit with the yellows and greens of shell fire. Jack thought he’d never willingly see fireworks again, after the war.
After the war…already it seemed an impossible time. The world had filled with war. There were just the gullies, the beach and the hills; the sea with the destroyers; the men, alive, dead and wounded; the enemy like a cat waiting to pounce from above; and the small, weary donkey, plodding on no matter what.
This morning, though, Jack was so tired he knew he could never carry a man the mile or so down to the cove by himself.
The men needed him. And he needed Duffy.
Duffy had been thin enough before. Now, despite the plentiful hay, his ribs were showing and his eyes looked even bigger in his long, thin face. His coat was dull.
He needed rest.
Jack shrugged. What was rest these days? A few hours dozing, half woken every few minutes by the lash of gunfire or the earth shivering from yet another rocket? Even in dreams he saw the colours of the night battles, the greens and reds as the explosions flashed, the yellow of the flares.
It was easier, mostly, to give up the attempt to sleep, to pull on Duffy’s lead rope and hear the steady plod of hooves behind him, to climb the gully by starlight, moonlight, rocket light, or in the damp chill of dawn, like now.
The sun was still below the horizon, the world still drained of daylight colour, a mess of greys and shadows. Shadowed trenches, shadowed piles of bodies. He had learnt to ignore the bodies now.
Most were bloated and torn by crows, or had faces nibbled by the rats. Some were already black from sunlight and decay. Yet the donkey picked his way between the corpses as though he’d go to hell and back, if Jack were there to lead him.
Which, thought Jack, was pretty much what they did already.
He wondered sometimes if the stench would ever leave him. But then the breeze would blow up from the sea again, or with a hint of grass upon the hills. Or he’d breathe the smell of donkey and feel the comfort of his childhood back again.
Even the living men looked like shadows now, with the drabness of their khaki, the dirt on hands and faces, the stain of exhaustion around their eyes.
A body moved over by a torn-up shrub. For a moment he thought the bloke was still alive, despite the blood black across the top of his face. Then he realised it was only maggots moving. They’d eaten through his arm, so some of the flesh dropped to the ground.
For a second he thought he’d vomit.
‘Coo-ee, stretcher-bearer! Over here!’
He put on his smile again. When a man was dying a smile was worth more than all the iodine and bandages in your kit. You could only do your best, no more, no less…
‘Morning, cobber!’ Jack swung his way down the rickety ladder, made from who knows what scavenged wood, into the trench. ‘Would’ve brought thy bread and milk but the baker forgot to call this morning. Anything else I can do for tha?’
‘Blimey, it’s the man with the donkey. Murphy isn’t it?’
‘No, his name’s Simpson.’ A boy further down the trench with a gash down one cheek—half congealed, half dribbling blood still—peered over the lip of the trench. ‘The donk’s Murphy. Ain’t he scared out there? Look at him, he’s found some grass.’
‘Trust him to have a snack when me back’s turned. An’ it’s Simmo or Murphy, whichever thou please. Now who’s coming for a wee trek down to the beach? Thou, lad?’
The boy touched his cheek automatically. ‘I’m all right.’
The Animal Stars Collection Page 6