CHAPTER 5
IN THE FEW SHORT WEEKS BEFORE I WENT OFF TO WAR, I WAS to be changed from a working farm horse into a cavalry mount. It was no easy transformation, for I resented deeply the tight discipline of the riding school and the hard hot hours out on maneuvers out in the fields. 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.
But it was my rider that I disliked more than anything in my new life. Corporal Samuel Perkins was a hard, gritty little man, an ex-jockey whose only pleasure in life seemed to be the power he could exert over a horse. 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.
He would never beat me or lose his temper with me; indeed, sometimes when he was grooming me I think he quite liked me, and I certainly felt for him a degree of respect, but this was based on fear and not love. In my anger and unhappiness, I tried several times to throw him off but never succeeded. His knees had a grip of iron, and he seemed instinctively to know what I was about to do.
My only consolation in those early days of training were the visits of Captain Nicholls every evening to the stables. He alone seemed to have the time to come and talk to me as Albert had done before. Sitting on an upside-down bucket in the corner of my stable, a sketchbook on his knees, he would draw me as he talked. “I’ve done a few sketches of you now,” he said one evening, “and when I’ve finished this one, I’ll be ready to paint a picture of you. It won’t be Stubbs—it’ll be better than Stubbs because Stubbs never had a horse as beautiful as you to paint. I can’t take it with me to France—there would no point, right? So I’m going to send it off to your friend Albert, just so that he’ll know that I meant what I said when I promised I would look after you.” He kept looking up and down at me as he worked, and I longed to tell him how much I wished he would take over my training himself and how hard the Corporal was and how my sides hurt and my feet hurt. “To be honest with you, Joey, I hope this war will be over before he’s old enough to join us because—you mark my words—it’s going to be nasty, very nasty indeed. Back in the mess hall, they’re all talking about how they’ll get the Germans, how the cavalry will smash through them and throw them clear back to Berlin before Christmas. It’s just Jamie and me—we’re the only ones that don’t agree, Joey. We have our doubts, I can tell you that. We have our doubts. None of them in there seem to have heard of machine guns and artillery. I tell you, Joey, one machine gun operated right could wipe out an entire squadron of the best cavalry in the world—German or British. I mean, look what happened to the Light Brigade at Balaclava when they took on the Russian guns—none of them seem to remember that. And the French learned the lesson in the Franco-Prussian War. But you can’t say anything to them, Joey. If you do, they call you a defeatist, or some such rubbish. I honestly think that some of them in there only want to win this war if the cavalry can win it.”
He stood up, tucked the sketchbook under his arm, and came over toward me and scratched me behind the ears. “You like that, boy, don’t you? Under all that fire and brimstone, you’re an old softy at heart. Come to think of it, we have a lot in common, you and I. First, we don’t much like it here and would rather be somewhere else. Second, neither of us ever been to war—never even heard a shot fired in anger, have we? I just hope I’m up to it when the time comes—that’s what worries me more than anything, Joey. Because I tell you, and I haven’t even told Jamie this—I’m frightened as hell, so you’d better have enough courage for the two of us.”
A door banged open across the yard and I heard the familiar sound of boots, crisp on the cobbles. It was Corporal Samuel Perkins passing along the lines of stables on his evening rounds, stopping at each one to check until, at last, he came to mine. “Good evening, sir,” he said, saluting smartly. “Sketching again?”
“Doing my best, Corporal,” said Captain Nicholls. “Doing my best to do him justice. Is he not the finest mount in the entire squadron? I’ve never seen a horse so well put together as he is, have you?”
“Oh, he’s special enough to look at, sir,” said the Corporal of Horse. Even his voice put my ears back; there was a thin, acid tone to it that I dreaded. “I grant you that, but looks aren’t everything, are they, sir? There’s always more to a horse than meets the eye, isn’t that right, sir? How shall I put it, sir?”
“However you like, Corporal,” said Captain Nicholls somewhat frostily, “but be careful what you say, for that’s my horse you’re speaking about, so take care.”
“Let’s say, I feel he has a mind of his own. Yes, let’s put it that way. He’s good enough out on maneuvers—a real stayer, one of the very best—but inside the school, sir, he’s a devil, and a strong devil, too. Never been properly schooled, sir, you can tell that. He’s a farm horse, he is, and farm-trained. 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.”
“Fortunately, Corporal,” said Captain Nicholls, “fortunately this war will be fought out of doors and not indoors. I asked you to train Joey because I think you are the best man for the job—there’s no one better in the squadron. But perhaps you should ease up on him just a bit. You’ve got to remember where he came from. He’s a willing soul—he just needs a bit of gentle persuasion, that’s all. But keep it gentle, Corporal, keep it gentle. I don’t want him soured. This horse is going to carry me through the war and, with any luck, out the other side of it. He’s special to me, Corporal—you know that. So make sure you look after him as if he were your own, won’t you? We leave for France in under a week now. If I had the time, I’d be schooling him myself, but I’m far too busy trying to turn troopers into mounted infantry. A horse may carry you through, Corporal, but he can’t do your fighting for you. And some of them still think they’ll only need their sabers when they get out there. Some of them really believe that flashing their sabers around will frighten the Germans all the way home. I tell you, they have got to learn to shoot straight—we’ll all have to learn to shoot straight if we want to win this war.”
“Yes, sir,” said the corporal with a new respect in his voice. He was more meek and mild now than I had ever seen him.
“And, Corporal,” said Captain Nicholls walking toward the stable door, “I’d be obliged if you’d give Joey a little extra food sometime. He’s lost a bit of condition, gone back a bit I’d say. I shall be taking him out myself on final maneuvers in two or three days, and I want him fit and shining. He has to look the best in the squadron.”
It was only in that last week of my military education that I began at last to settle into the work. Corporal Samuel Perkins seemed less harsh toward me after that evening. He used the spurs less and gave me more rein. We did less work now in the school and more formation work on the open fields outside the camp. I took the Weymouth bit more readily now and began to play with it between my teeth as I had always done with the snaffle. I began to appreciate the good food and the grooming and the buffing up, all the unending attention and care that was devoted to me. As the days passed I began to think less and less of the farm and old Zoey and of my early life. 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.
By the time Captain Nicholls came to take me out on those last maneuvers before we went to war, I was already quite resigned to, even contented in, my new life. Dressed now in field-service marching order, Captain Nicholls weighed heavy on my back as the entire regiment moved out onto Salisbury Plain. I remember mostly the heat and the flies that day because there were hours of standing about in the sun waiting for things to happen. 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 order was given to draw swords and we walked forward. As we waited for the bugle calls, the air was electric with anticipation. It passed between every horse and his rider, between horse and horse, between trooper and trooper. I felt inside me a surge of such excitement that I found it difficult to contain myself. Captain Nicholls was leading his troops and alongside him rode his friend Captain Jamie Stewart on a horse I had never seen before. He was a tall, shining black stallion. As we walked forward I glanced up at him and caught his eye. He seemed to acknowledge it briefly. The walk moved into a trot and then into a canter. I heard the bugles blow and caught sight of his saber pointing over my right ear. Captain Nicholls leaned forward in the saddle and urged me into a gallop. The thunder and the dust and the roar of men’s voice in my ears took a hold of me and held me at a pitch of exhilaration I had never before experienced. I flew over the ground way ahead of the rest of them except for one. The only horse to stay with me was the shining black stallion. Although nothing was said between Captain Nicholls and Captain Stewart, I felt it was suddenly important that I should not allow this horse to get ahead of me. One look told me that he felt the same, for there was a grim determination in his eyes and his brow was furrowed with concentration. When we overran the “enemy” position, it was all our riders could do to bring us to a halt, and finally we stood nose to nose, blowing and panting with both captains breathless with exertion.
“You see, Jamie, I told you so,” said Captain Nicholls, and there was such pride in his voice as he spoke. “This is the horse I was telling you about—found deep in Devon—and if we had gone on much longer, your Topthorn would have been struggling to stay with him. You can’t deny it.”
Topthorn and I looked warily at each other at first. He was half a hand or more taller than me, a huge sleek horse that held his head with majestic dignity. He was the first horse I had ever come across that I felt could challenge me for strength, but there was also a kindness in his eye that held no threat for me.
“My Topthorn is the finest mount in this regiment or any other,” said Captain Jamie Stewart. “Joey might be faster and, all right, I’ll grant you he looks as good as any horse I’ve ever seen, but there’s no one to match my Topthorn for stamina—why, he could have gone on forever and ever. He’s an eight-horsepower horse, and that’s a fact.”
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. We were stabled side by side that night, and again on the boat the next day we found ourselves together in the bowels of the converted ocean liner that was to carry us off to France and away to the war.