All around there were confused shouts and yells. A stream of men poured along the communication trench, the remnants of a whole division surging past in headlong retreat. Stanley leaped up and spun around. A stretcher – he must find a stretcher. Senselessly he looked over the parapet. Trailing shadows morphed into men, tattered and ghoulish figures that stumbled towards the communication trench in heavy boots and huge helmets, rifles for crutches. Where the trench was too congested, men clambered into the open, scrambling over crumbling ridges and pits, past broken carts and wagons. A heavy-gun team ploughed uphill, the terrified gunners whipping and cursing their mounts onward. One infantryman was pushing another, purple-faced, with red-rimmed bulging eyes, in a wheelbarrow. A wheelbarrow! Stanley could move Bones in a barrow – where – where could he find another barrow?
‘Stanley. Quick.’
It was Fidget. Fidget with a stretcher. Stanley was overwhelmed with relief and gratitude.
‘Quick, Stanley. Get him on. Quick.’ Fidget was strapping his pigeon basket to his back.
Beyond the parapet someone shouted, ‘Where’s the front line?’
‘There isn’t one.’
Stanley unravelled the stretcher on the platform and together they lifted the helpless dog on, while all around them, men shouted and cursed. ‘Keep moving backwards. Hurry. Out of the way. Into the reserve lines. Move on. Move on.’
Stanley and Fidget forced their way into the rush of men flooding back to the support lines, reached the intersection with the communication trench, and – within seconds of turning – heard a confusion of bursting shells and crashing walls.
There were alarmed yells and screams from scattered men running towards the back line.
‘It’s in enemy hands – the front line – all in enemy hands!’
‘The Hun’s got posts and bits of trench a hundred and fifty yards away!’
‘The enemy’s following behind—’
Another savage crash made Stanley leap out of his skin as dirt and earth rained into the communication trench.
‘Oh God,’ said Fidget as he and Stanley turned to each other in horror, blinking away dust and debris, wiping sweat and grime from their faces. Both glanced backwards with the same fear.
‘Here, take this.’ Stanley thrust his end of the stretcher into the nearest hands and leaped up. The roof of the Signal Station had fallen in. Smoke was pouring out. Hunter would have been in there destroying equipment before abandoning it. Stanley saw a tall figure reach the fire step, stagger two paces and fall, writhing. ‘Hunter,’ he breathed.
Hunter’s body gave a sudden, short spasm, then went rigid. There was another explosion. Insensible with shock, Stanley dropped back into the communication trench, looked at Fidget and moved his head slowly from side to side. ‘Hunter,’ he said. ‘They got Hunter.’
The Devon man holding the stretcher shoved it back into Stanley’s hands.
In the support line an officer was holding up a rifle to stop runaways, bellowing, ‘Halt! Stand firm. Take that section!’
He let Stanley and Fidget pass, waving them in the direction of a Veterinary First Aid Station. They weaved their way past labour units digging fresh graves, past a queue of the walking wounded wrapped in blankets at a Regimental Aid Post, between stretcher-bearers, carts, ammunition stores and columns of fresh men, all the while Stanley whispering over and over to Bones, ‘Bones, stay with me, Bones, stay. Hang on. You’ll be all right, you’ll be all right . . .’
‘There.’ Fidget pointed to a horse-drawn cattle float, by the side of which a pair of men were treating a wounded dog on a small wooden table. An AVC officer with a thin, hunted face approached and cast a weary eye over Bones.
‘Gas . . . bad case.’
Mutely Stanley guided the man’s fingers to the barbed wire in Bones’s belly. The officer looked up and said, ‘It’s not a case for the Mobile Units.’
Dizzy with the compounded terror and horror of the day, Stanley covered his eyes as he spoke.
‘Is there n-no hope?’
The vet took his hand. ‘We treat hundreds of animals – every day – and seventy per cent or so are got fit enough to return to the front line.’
‘What h-happens to – to those not fit enough to return?’
There was heartache in the officer’s voice as he answered. ‘We’ve orders to shoot animals that can’t be released fit for active service.’
With a gentle squeeze he released Stanley’s hand and directed him to a motorized horse ambulance and Veterinary Hospital number 10. Fidget helped load Bones into the truck and turned to leave.
‘Good luck, Stanley,’ he said. ‘God bless your dog.’
Alone in the ambulance, Stanley wept openly for Bones, who’d run blindfold through a battle so many worlds beyond his comprehension.
The night of 4 April 1918
Veterinary Hospital number 10, Neufchâtel, near Etaples
Together, Bones and Stanley travelled alone a short distance through the night, the driver picking his way without headlights along a glimmering, potholed road, passing infantry, cavalry and endless ammunition limbers until they arrived at what looked like a big white circus tent. A white flag with a blue cross flapped from a mast.
Orderlies collected Bones from the ambulance and carried him past dimly lit mess buildings, dipping vats, isolation huts with latticed windows, pneumonia wards, mange wards, to an operating theatre.
An officer wearing a white apron over his khaki, his eyes circled with dark creases, approached.
‘Lieutenant Fielding, Jolyon Fielding.’ He stuck out his hand. Behind Fielding stood rows of horses, in splints or bandaged, being cleaned and dressed.
Fielding put a hand on Bones’s heart, studying Stanley as he did so. He pulled the blanket down. In the yellow lantern light they both saw the striped coat gleaming like candlelit velvet, and below, the pink and white guts, the metal barbs.
‘Oh . . .’ Fielding looked up. ‘Did he – did he run home like this?’
Stanley nodded, voiceless. Fielding held his gaze for a second or two, then shook his head.
‘There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.’ Fielding took Stanley’s hand, ‘He’s very little time left. You must stay with him to the end.’
Still mute, Stanley nodded again. Fielding watched as Stanley climbed up on to the table and lay beside the dog.
‘Good boy, good,’ said Stanley, and he laid his head next to Bones, his hand on the dog’s flank, feeling its faint rising, faint falling. Fielding pulled the blanket over them and said he’d be back before long.
‘Good boy . . . good. Go, go, boy, let go,’ whispered Stanley, caressing the tall ears, the deep muzzle. ‘Let go.’ Silent tears coursed down his cheeks, ‘Go, boy, go.’
An hour or so passed before Stanley felt the quiver of a single ear against his own cheek, gentle as the beat of a wing.
Etaples
The next morning
Drunk with exhaustion, disembodied with grief, Stanley walked unseeing, unhearing, past tents, past troops, towards Central Kennel HQ, no soft padding at his heels, no large head to rest a hand on. He had one single idea in his head: to go home, to go to Lara Bird, to Nethercott. He’d collect his pay, tell them he was underage and he’d leave.