‘Soldier . . .’ he breathed, seeing there, on the shining slime, the dog lying like a rag doll, broken limbs sprawling. Stanley turned away, gripping the wooden post, but Hamish was pulling him, turning him back to face the Front.
‘Look, laddie, look.’
Soldier had raised his head. He was up, up on three legs, forelegs shaking, the slender jaws open and panting, one hind leg trailing. What Stanley couldn’t see with his eyes he could feel in his heart – the pain and fear and the reproach with which those eyes would surely be filled.
Soldier was moving forward, pulled still, despite the trailing limb, by the mysterious magnetic tug to his master. On he limped up the slope, tentative as he balanced on his shattered leg.
‘Come, boy, come.’ The closer Soldier drew, the further out of range he’d be. Only a hundred yards or so up the steepest incline and he’d be safe.
Stanley was trembling from top to toe with fear for Soldier, shivering too in his sodden, unwieldy coat. He yanked the Queen Anne’s lace aside, getting a sharp burst of its rank stench.
‘Keep going, laddie, keep going,’ whispered Hamish.
There was another whip crack from the Mauser, then another. Mud spurts burst up. Stanley gripped Hamish’s hand – bullets whipped the ground around Soldier, sending up spurts of mud and earth in a radius around the dog. Where was the sniper? Stanley scrabbled at the slithering, crumbling walls of the trench, trying to get higher, to see better. Where was the sniper with the deadly aim, the sniper with the deadly Mauser?
‘Five rounds – he’s fired five. He’s reloading. Keep moving, doggie, keep moving. Keep moving while he reloads.’
On he came, valiant forelegs sinking and sliding at every step, the uneven uphill gallop – beyond bearing. Stanley’s own left hand was on his hip, pressing as though to subdue the pain of a shattered leg. On either side men were screaming for Soldier. Grown men, the same men who’d with dry eyes watched their companions die – these men who’d been so long from women or children or any kind of tenderness – were brought to tears by a dog trailing his broken leg through a storm of fire.
‘Keep moving, keep moving . . .’ Stanley’s eyes were blurred with tears, his fists clenched in a prayer. ‘Soldier, Soldier . . .’
The Mauser cracked into fire – one – two – three – Soldier’s step faltered – four – five – His right flank was quivering now like the surface of a stream – He fell.
Soldier’s slender forelegs were aligned to his course, the tortured, twisted right haunch hideous and askew as though wrenched from its socket. Both haunches had now been hit, right and left.
‘Oh, laddie!’ Both Hamish and James were ashen, devastated, beaten, all hopes of receiving word from the men in the wood now lost.
Seconds passed. An unending, breath-held eternity. The men who had been screaming were silent, their faces constricted and ashen. Stanley watched Soldier’s head, praying for even the flicker of an ear. Beyond Soldier, amidst the darker tangle of wire and weapons, a torn cloth fluttered in the wind, like a hand waving, but the slate-grey body, the pole star of Stanley’s hope, lay still. The shiny slime caught the slanting sun in a halo around the motionless form. Nothing else on earth existed for Stanley, only that twisted, fallen body.
‘Call him, Stanley, call him,’ said Fidget. Stanley shot round to Fidget – had he seen the dog move? But Stanley couldn’t call until he’d rid his throat of the stone that was lodged there. He tried.
‘Soldier!’
There was no movement.
‘Louder, Stanley, call louder,’ urged Fidget.
‘Soldier!’ Stanley’s voice rang out like a bell.
Soldier’s ears pricked, his snout lifted perhaps an inch above the ground and his head turned, like a heliotrope towards his master’s voice.
‘Call, laddie, call again,’ urged Hamish.
Stanley lifted his head above the parapet. He scrambled for footholds in the slithery, cascading wall, and again he called. Soldier rose on his forelegs, jaws open and panting. He took a gallant double leap forward, but he was mired by the dead weight of his useless hindquarters, couldn’t heave his rump onward. Stanley watched, agonized, the heartbreaking gallantry, the forelegs shaking with strain as again they pounced forward, but still his rump didn’t shift. He pawed the ground with a defiant tilt to his head, pawed it again as though the steep slope itself perhaps had to answer for all this, then he lifted his head and barked and stretched out and again jumped his forelegs onward as though to split himself in two, all his longing to reach his master expressed in his extended neck and shaking legs.
Stanley put a fist in his mouth to stop the scream of pain that was rising inside him.
Soldier pawed the ground.
Seconds passed. Soldier’s head and chest sank to the ground.
‘It’s too much, aye, too much. Half his body weight . . .’ said James.
The Company of Signals Staff huddled around Stanley began to look away, their faces haunted.
Hamish put an arm around Stanley and dipped his head, turning the boy away from the parapet.
Minutes passed. The first star was lit. The silver discs of craters began to spangle the ground like sequins. On each disc rose a blood-red moon, a thousand crimson globes on a thousand silver seas.
‘Up on my shoulders. Let him see you,’ said Hamish, and he and James laced their fingers as though helping a toddler to mount a pony.
Stanley balanced on the four large McManus hands and pulled himself up. He wasn’t high enough, Soldier wouldn’t see him; he must stand clear of the parapet, stand on the ridge. Stanley jumped up, the squelching, sucking sound of the mud beneath his boots enough to wake the Kaiser’s whole army.
‘No, laddie, no! Down – the sniper.’
Stanley stood on the ridge, all fear for himself lost in fear for Soldier, and called, ‘Soldier!’ and again, ‘Soldier!’ Standing tall and exposed, the slope and the plain laid out below him, he called one last desperate time, ‘Soldier!’
There was no movement. He must whistle. If there were breath in Soldier, he’d remember that whistle and lift his head. Stanley fumbled in his pocket, found the box, pushed it open with clumsy, shaking fingers, put the reed to his mouth and blew.
The luminous notes danced in a bright stream over the desolate plain. A single ear flickered and turned. Stanley blew again. Both ears pricked. Stanley blew once more. Soldier lifted his head, rose on his forelegs; his chest and head were up and he was pawing the ground.
‘Soldier!’ Stanley called.
There was the smack of a rifle shot and a hammer-blow to his arm. He clenched it below the elbow, half conscious of the seeping wetness, the ferrous smell of blood where the bullet had grazed his arm.
‘Get down, laddie!’ Hamish cried out.
Still standing, swaying a little, Stanley let go his arm, raised his whistle once more and blew. Soldier moved one foreleg. Then the other. He’d inched forward, he’d dragged his rump on. The right foreleg, quivering with strain, moved again, then the left.
Time expelled everything but the dog from its orbit, and slowed to a standstill, as Stanley watched Soldier fight beyond the limits of endurance, of duty and of love.
Stanley crouched. Step by step the valiant, trembling forelegs hauled the mutilated rump over the mutilated ground, inch by dreadful inch, till Stanley could bear no more and threw himself to the ground.