‘Stanley, the living are more important than the dead. You must remember the living. And you must go home to them.’ Her eyes creased and a dimple formed in each cheek as she smiled a sort of secret smile. Again she glanced towards the door as though at any moment a visitor for Stanley might materialize where one never had before. She hesitated, then turned back, looking awkward and a little lost for words, her hands seeking refuge beneath her apron in the side pockets of her skirt.
‘We’re going to get you home this week. Your eyes are good now, and your lungs. You’ve been so lucky, Stanley.’ Stanley looked away towards the dotted sunlit groups, the loving clusters of sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, mothers and wives visiting the other men. Go home to what? Where were Tom, Da, Soldier?
‘Here . . .’ Matron pulled her right hand out of her pocket, ‘This is for you.’
‘FOR JUNE 8th’ was marked in capitals across the top left of a white envelope. That was Tom’s writing – and that was an ordinary Post Office stamp – Tom was alive and he was home.
‘You have a father and a brother Stanley, and they love you,’ Matron said. Stanley tore at the envelope, read in one stumbling, breathless rush:
Stanley looked up at Matron, tears in his eyes, his chin and lips wobbling. Tom was home, Tom was safe. Stanley read on, at breakneck speed, breath held. Da? Soldier? What of them?
‘Soldier, Soldier . . . he was my dog, Tom . . . the dog I named for you . . .’
Da safe. Tom and Da safe.
Tom, Tom! What of Soldier . . . ?
Stanley read and reread, revelling in pieces of it, agonizing in others, reading again and again the whole of it; Tom was alive, he was back and back for good. He and Lara Bird were both at Thornley. And the campion was up and there’d be honey on the table.
A hand ruffled Stanley’s hair and he felt the callused skin of a large palm on his cheek. Stanley froze. His eyes shifted a fraction from the letter. Matron’s white stockings had vanished, in their place stood a pair of shiny boots and puttees. Slowly at first, all of him trembling uncontrollably, Tom’s letter rattling in his hands, Stanley’s gaze rose inch by inch, now shot upward.
Above the high, weathered forehead, Da’s white hair was dappled with luminous spots of sun. Stanley flung aside his blanket and sprang up, scattering a shower of cake crumbs – He’d come – Da had come to find him – He’d come not once but twice –
‘Da—’
‘Wait, Stanley. Wait.’ Da’s hand was on his shoulder, holding him down. ‘Close your eyes and hold out your hand.’
Feeling like a small child, Stanley clenched his eyes, but not before he’d seen the proud carriage of the once bent back and the warm light in Da’s eyes. Like a child again, Stanley held his palm flat and open. Something cold and metallic was dropped on to it. Stanley paused, then his wary palm cupped it, feeling a cylinder, shaky fingers searching for the opening around the belly of it, thumb finding the ring that once attached it to a collar. His eyes flew open.
The cylinder was engraved:
WAR MESSENGER DOG No. 2176
‘Open it, Stanley.’
Stanley pulled the halves apart, took out the message and read in Da’s unpractised hand, ‘Yours to keep.’ Da was stooping over a large hamper, untying twine. The lid was forced up and like shaggy rolling surf something unleashed itself, and in a surge of silvery light vaulted on to Stanley. Balancing on the unsteady ground of Stanley’s thighs, it furled and unfurled itself, turning and turning, nosing and nuzzling him. Stanley clenched fistfuls of the long rough coat, smelt Soldier’s sweet hay smell, smelt the doggishness of him, felt his tongue lick the wet from his own cheeks and the swoosh of a feathery tail.
‘They had to tear the two of you apart, the medical men told me,’ Da said. ‘When I found him, he was still there, still waiting. He’s a great dog. They told me, your McManus brothers – they came looking for me, Stanley, for me to give you this, and they told me what he did that day – what you and he did together.’
Stanley looked at his Da. ‘What happened to them, Da? Are they—?’
‘They tell me Fidget was sent home after that first morning at Kemmel – shell shock, not wounded. Hamish and James, they were both at Kemmel, Stanley, and like Tom, they were lucky.’
Soldier organized himself to hold his nose towards his master, waggled his haunches, waggled them again, whirred his tail, tossed his head and opened his jaws to smile.
‘I smuggled him over,’ Da said. ‘He’s been pretending to be a sandbag for that long – on the boat – on the train – in front of Matron. So he’ll be wanting to go home now . . . will be that happy to go home and be a dog again . . . for you to be a boy again.’
Soldier steadied his forepaws on the narrow arm of the deckchair, joggled his haunches, raised his snout skyward and hurled a salvo of woofs to the rustling tracery of the acacia. Away, under the mulberry, the visitors looked up and gawped. By the candyfloss roses Matron stood open-mouthed, gulping, her mighty bosom heaving, her throat constricting as though to expel a frog. Stanley ran his hand down the dog’s haunches, tracing the firm raised scars. He tilted his head upward, felt sunlight on his temple and he saw Da turn aside lest anyone should see his tears.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Villers-Bretonneux was not a great battle but it was a decisive one, putting an end to the German plan of taking Paris. The carnage at Villers-Bretonneux continued until the night of 26 April 1918 when the town and its immediate surroundings fell once more into British hands. During that night French troops relieved the British and Australian forces of a position which had cost the lives of around 10,000 men, killed, wounded and missing.
Villers has the largest of all First World War military cemeteries.
When hostilities were declared in August 1914, the German army had 6,000 trained dogs while Britain had no official dog cover.
Colonel Edwin Hautenville Richardson had spent fifteen years training dogs. At the outset of war he decided not to re-enlist, but to continue this work. However, when he offered his help to the War Office, a General responded that his own duty ‘as a commanding officer would be to prohibit, under all circumstances, the use of dogs . . .’ For the next two years, the War Office continued to reject Richardson’s offers. However, in 1916, he received an unofficial request for dogs from a Colonel Winter. Richardson sent out two Airedales, Wolf and Prince. When all telephone lines had broken and visual signalling was impossible, Prince delivered a message that saved a battalion of the Sherwood Foresters.
Finally, in November 1917, as casualties soared, the War Office summoned Richardson and established the Messenger Dog Service, to be run as a branch of the Signals Service, with Richardson as Commandant of the Training School. Dogs were recruited from the Battersea, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester homes. Then the Home Office ordered police all over the country to send in strays. Finally, an appeal to the public brought an overwhelming response – 7,000 dogs came forward at once.