War Horse: Chapters 5–7

Back at home with Albert, I had reveled in the long rides along the roads and over the fields, and the heat and the flies had not seemed to matter; I had loved the aching days of plowing alongside Zoey, but that was because there had been a bond between us of trust and devotion.

Now there were endless tedious hours circling the school.

Gone was the gentle snaffle bit that I was so used to, and in its place was an uncomfortable, cumbersome barbed bit that pinched the corners of my mouth and infuriated me beyond belief.

He was universally feared by all troopers and horses alike. Even the officers, I felt, went in trepidation of him, for it seemed he knew all there was to know about horses and had the experience of a lifetime behind him.

And he rode hard and heavy-handedly. With him, the whip and the spurs were not just for show.

If he’s to be a cavalry horse, sir, he’ll have to learn to accept the disciplines. He has to learn to obey instantly and instinctively. You don’t want a prima donna under you when the bullets start flying.

But Albert, his face and his voice, stayed clear in my mind despite the unerring routine of the work that was turning me imperceptibly into an army horse.

Then, with the evening sun spreading and dying along the flat horizon, the entire regiment lined up in echelon for the charge, the climax of our last maneuvers.

The walk moved into a trot and then into a canter.

Topthorn and I looked warily at each other at first.

On the way back to the barracks that evening, the two officers debated the virtues of their respective horses, while Topthorn and I plodded along shoulder to shoulder, heads hanging, our strength sapped by the sun and the long gallop.

All about us on the ship, there was an air of great exuberance and expectancy.

The soldiers were buoyant with optimism, as if they were embarking on some great military picnic; it seemed none of them had a care in the world.

And we were to need their confidence around us, for it was a stormy crossing and many of us became overwrought and apprehensive as the ship tossed wildly in the sea.

My comfort, however, came not from Corporal Samuel Perkins, who came to hold my head through the worst of it; for even when he patted me, he did it in such a peremptory fashion that I did not feel he meant it.

The horses recovered their composure with solid, still land under their hooves once more, but the troopers fell silent and somber as we walked past unending lines of wounded waiting to board the ship back to England.

They tried to put a brave face on it, but even the jokes and quips they shouted out as we passed were heavy with gloom and sarcasm.

No sergeant major, no enemy barrage could have silenced a body of soldiers as effectively as that terrible sight, for here for the first time the men saw for themselves the kind of war they were going into, and there was not a single man in the squadron who seemed prepared for it.

Once out into the flat, open country, the squadron threw off its unfamiliar shroud of despondency and regained its jocular spirits. The men sang again in their saddles and laughed among themselves.

Once out into the flat, open country, the squadron threw off its unfamiliar shroud of despondency and regained its jocular spirits. The men sang again in their saddles and laughed among themselves.

We had plenty of fodder morning and evening, a generous ration of corn from our nose bags, and we grazed whenever we could.

It was a slow baptism of fire for me, but without Topthorn I think I should never have become accustomed to the guns, for the fury and the violence of the thunder as we came ever nearer to the front line seemed to sap my strength as well as my spirits.

“Squadron, right shoulder!” came the command, and we walked in line abreast into the woods.

His body was taut and for the first time he felt heavy on my back.

A cluster of gray-uniformed prisoners had been taken and they huddled together now under the trees while the squadron regrouped and exchanged extravagant reminiscences of a victory that had happened almost by accident rather than by design.

Only the occasional coughing and stamping of the sentries broke the still of the night.

It was just after reveille the next morning, and we were rummaging around in our nose bags for the last of our oats, when I saw Captain Jamie Stewart striding along the horse lines toward us.

Trooper Warren was not a good horseman—I could tell that the minute he mounted me. He was always tense and rode me heavy in the saddle like a sack of potatoes. He had neither the experience and confidence of Corporal Samuel Perkins nor the finesse and sensitivity of Captain Nicholls.

He was meticulous and kind in his grooming and attended at once to my frequent and painful saddle sores, chafings, and leg swellings to which I was particularly prone.

It was during these long, stifling marches and during the cold nights that followed that Trooper Warren began to talk to me.

He did not want to join up, he said, but the squire of the village had spoken to his father, and his father, who rented his house and his blacksmith shop from the squire, had no option but to send him off to war, and since he had grown up around horses he volunteered to join the cavalry.

Topthorn and I spent the winter sheltering each other as best we could from the snow and the sleet, while only a few miles away we could hear the guns pounding each other day and night incessantly.

We saw the cheery soldiers smiling under their metal hats as they marched off to the front line, whistling and singing and joking as they went, and we watched the remnants struggling back haggard and silent under their dripping capes in the rain.

Trooper Warren broke the terrible monotony of that winter. He lifted my spirits and I could see that Topthorn too welcomed every visit he made to the horse lines.

Like all army horses, our coats were clipped like hunters so that all our lower quarters were exposed to the mud and rain. The weaker ones among us suffered first, for they had little resilience and went downhill fast.

It was Captain Stewart who saved him, feeding him a hot mash and covering him as best he could in the bleakest weather.

The troopers talked of the battle ahead and all the frustrations and irritations of imposed idleness vanished as they sang in the saddle.

We passed the field hospitals and the light guns before trotting over the support trenches to catch our first sight of the battlefield. Desolation and destruction were everywhere. Not a building was left intact. Not a blade of grass grew in the torn and ravaged soil.

The singing around me stopped and we moved on in ominous silence and out over the trenches that were crammed with men, their bayonets fixed to their rifles.

They gave us a sporadic cheer as we clattered over the boards and out into the wilderness of no-man’s-land, into a wilderness of wire and shell holes and the terrible litter of war.