War Horse: Chapters 15–21

Wherever I went now, there were great craters in the ground filled with murky, stagnant water.

A long silence followed and I moved gingerly toward the voices, both tempted and terrified at the same time.

I stood at last resting my bleeding leg on a soft, fresh mound of mud beside a foul-smelling, water-filled crater, and I snuffled the ground in vain for something to eat. But the earth where I stood was bare of grass and I had neither the energy nor the will at that moment to move another step forward.

From both sides of me I heard a gradual crescendo of excitement and laughter rippling along the trenches, interspersed with barked orders that everyone was to keep their heads down and no one was to shoot.

I must have crisscrossed no-man’s-land for much of that morning, and found, at long last, in the middle of this blasted wilderness a small patch of coarse, dank grass growing on the lip of an old crater.

All this time there was much argument and noisy consternation from the other side, and soon a small, helmeted figure in a flapping khaki overcoat climbed up into no-man’s-land.

By now the cheering from both sides had subsided and both armies looked on in total silence as the two men talked together beside me.

The German held the coin up in the sun and then turned a full slow circle before spinning it high and glinting into the air. As it fell to the ground, the Welshman called out in a loud, resonant voice so that all the world could hear, “Heads!”

"...The horse is yours. Take good care of him, my friend,” and he picked up the rope again and handed it to the Welshman. As he did so, he held out his other hand in a gesture of friendship and reconciliation, a smile lighting his worn face. “In an hour, maybe, or two,” he said, “we will be trying our best again each other to kill..."

But out on the long, rattling roads I was very soon shaken off my balance and fell in an ungainly, uncomfortable heap on the floor of the wagon.

The wagon was drawn by two stocky black horses, both well groomed and immaculate in well-oiled harnesses.

I could just see over the side of the wagon a wide, cobbled courtyard with magnificent stables on either side and a great house with turrets beyond.

I found myself the center of anxious and admiring attention in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded by a cluster of soldiers who inspected minutely every part of me, feeling me all over.

“Joey?” he said tentatively, looking into my eyes.

“See?” said David wryly. “What did I tell you? See? Not often wrong, am I?”

In the euphoric days that followed our reunion, the nightmare I had lived through seemed to fade into unreality, and the war itself was suddenly a million miles away and of no consequence.

Even old Thunder, as they called the sergeant, would inspect me overzealously, and when the others were not around he would fondle my ears and tickle me under my throat saying, “Quite a boy, aren’t you? Thundering fine horse if ever I saw one. You get better now, d’you hear?"

Every fiber of me was consumed by a totally inexplicable sense of fear and dread.

He was shaking his head ruefully as he turned to speak to the others.

“Lockjaw they call it. It’s written all over him. That wound of his must have festered before we got him here. And once a horse has tetanus, there’s very little chance, very little indeed.”

"No, sir,” Albert protested, still incredulous. “No you can’t, sir. Not with Joey. We must try something. There must be something you can do. You can’t just give up, sir. You can’t. Not with Joey.”

He’s not to be fed any hay—he could choke on it—just milk and oatmeal gruel.

Major Martin opened up my wound again, cleaned and cauterized it.

His devotion, his unwavering faith that I would indeed recover, gave me the heart to go on.

My convalescence was almost over now, and though still weak from my illness, I was already being used for light work around the veterinary hospital.

Fully recovered now and the pride of Major Martin and his veterinary unit, I was often used as the lead horse in the tandem team that hauled the veterinary wagon back and forth to the front.

When the end of the war did come, it came swiftly, almost unexpectedly, it seemed, to the men around me. There was little joy, little celebration of victory, only a sense of profound relief that at last it was finished and done with.

Since David’s death, Albert had not been himself. I had not once seen him smile or joke, and he often fell into prolonged brooding silences when he was with me. There was no more singing, no more whistling.

From the yard gate we saw the unending columns of fighting men marching jauntily back to the railway stations, and we looked on as the tanks and guns and wagons rolled by on their way home.

There was an air of determined conspiracy in the yard that day. Whispering groups of men in dripping overcoats, their collars turned up to keep the rain from their necks, huddled together, their voices low and earnest.

When we were led out for exercise, we were jumpy and skittish, and Albert, like the other soldiers, responded with impatience, jerking sharply at my halter, something I had never known him to do before.

I had unswerving faith in him as he patted my neck gently and whispered secretly in my ear.

One was old Thunder himself, who would touch the corner of his cap with his stick, almost like a salute, to make his bid, and the other was a thin, wiry little man with weasel eyes who wore on his face a smile so full of consummate greed and evil that I could hardly bear to look at him.

There was a look of resigned dejection on Sergeant Thunder's face as he and Major Martin spoke together with Emilie’s grandfather after the sale.

Albert and his friends stood around me commiserating with one another, all of them trying to comfort Albert.

“They get like that, you know, sir, these farmboys. It’s ’cause they’re raised on cider instead of milk. It’s true, sir—goes to their heads, sir. Must be true, right?”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Albert went on, puzzled by their levity.

I will sell you this horse for one English penny, and for a solemn promise—that you will always love this horse as much as my Emilie did and that you will care for him until the end of his days. And more than this, I want you to tell everyone about my Emilie and about how she looked after your Joey and the big black horse when they came to live with us.

And so I came home from the war that Christmastime with my Albert riding me up into the village, and there to greet us was the silver band from the village and the rapturous pealing of the church bells.

He talked to me of many things after that, of his aging father who doted on me now almost as much as on his own grandchildren, and of the vagaries of the weather and the markets, and of course about Maisie, whose crusty bread was every bit as good as he had said.

He talked to me of many things after that, of his aging father who doted on me now almost as much as on his own grandchildren, and of the vagaries of the weather and the markets, and of course about Maisie, whose crusty bread was every bit as good as he had said.