CHAPTER 12
PERHAPS IT WAS THE CONTRAST WITH THE FEW IDYLLIC months we had spent with Emilie and her grandfather that made what followed so harsh and so bitter an experience for Topthorn and me. Or perhaps it was just that the war was all the time becoming more terrible. In places, the guns were now lined up only a few yards apart for miles and miles, and when they sounded out their fury, the very earth shook beneath us. The lines of wounded seemed interminable, and the countryside was laid waste for miles behind the trenches.
The work itself was certainly no harder than when we had been pulling the ambulance cart, but now we were no longer stabled every night, and of course we no longer had the protection of our Emilie to rely on. Suddenly the war was no longer distant. We were back among the fearful noise and stench of battle, hauling our gun through the mud, urged on and sometimes whipped on by men who displayed little care or interest in our welfare just so long as we got the guns where they had to go. It was not that they were cruel men, but just that they seemed to be driven now by a fearful compulsion that left no room and no time for pleasantness or consideration either for each other or for us.
Food was scarcer now. We received our corn ration only sporadically as winter came on again, and there was only a meager hay ration for each of us. One by one, we began to lose weight and condition. At the same time, the battles seemed to become more furious and prolonged, and we worked longer and harder hours pulling in front of the gun; we were permanently sore and permanently cold. We ended every day covered in a layer of cold, dripping mud that seemed to seep through and chill us to the bones.
The gun team was a motley collection of six horses. Of the four we joined, only one had the height and the strength to pull as a gun horse should, a great hulk of a horse they called Heinie who seemed quite unperturbed by all that was going on around him. The rest of the team tried to live up to his example, but only Topthorn succeeded. Heinie and Topthorn were the leading pair, and I found myself in the ruts behind Topthorn next to a thin, wiry little horse they called Coco. He had a display of white patch marks over his face that often caused amusement among the soldiers as we passed by. But there was nothing funny about Coco—he had the nastiest temper of any horse I had ever met, either before or since. When Coco was eating, no one—neither horse nor man—ventured within biting or kicking distance. Behind us was a perfectly matched pair of smaller dun-colored ponies with blond manes and tails. No one could tell them apart, even the soldiers referred to them not by name but merely as “the two golden Haflingers.” Because they were pretty and invariably friendly, they received much attention and even a little affection from the gunners. They must have been an incongruous but cheering sight to the tired soldiers as we trotted through the ruined villages up to the front. There was no doubt that they worked as hard as the rest of us and that, in spite of their diminutive size, they were at least our equals in stamina. But in a canter they acted as a brake, slowed us down, and spoiled the rhythm of the team.
Strangely enough, it was the giant Heinie who showed the first signs of weakness. The cold, sinking mud and the lack of proper food through that appalling winter began to shrink his massive frame and reduced him within months to a poor, skinny-looking creature. So to my delight—and I must confess it—they moved me up into the leading pair with Topthorn, and Heinie dropped back now to pull alongside little Coco, who had begun the ordeal with little strength in reserve. They both went rapidly downhill until the two of them were only any use for pulling on flat, hard surfaces, and since we scarcely ever traveled over such ground, they were soon of little use in the team, and made the work for the rest of us that much more arduous.
Each night we spent in the lines up to our hocks in freezing mud, in conditions far worse than that first winter of the war when Topthorn and I had been cavalry horses. Then each horse had had a trooper who did all he could to care for us and comfort us, but now the efficiency of the gun was the first priority and we came in a very poor second. We were mere workhorses, and treated as such. The gunners themselves were gray in the face with exhaustion and hunger. Survival was all that mattered to them now. Only the kind old gunner I had noticed that first day when we were taken from the farm seemed to have the time to stay with us. He fed us with hard bits of crumbly black bread and spent more time with us than with his fellow soldiers, whom he seemed to avoid all he could. He was an untidy, portly little man who chuckled incessantly and would talk more to himself than to anyone else.
The effects of continual exposure, underfeeding, and hard work were now apparent in all of us. Few of us had any hair growing on our lower legs and the skin below was a mass of cracked sores. Even the rugged little Haflingers began to lose weight and muscle. Like all the others, I found every step I took now excruciatingly painful, particularly in my forelegs, which were cracking badly from the knees downward, and there was not a horse in the team that was not walking lame. The vets treated us as best they could, and even the most hard-hearted of the gunners seemed disturbed as our condition worsened, but there was nothing anyone could do until the mud disappeared.
The field vets shook their heads in despair and pulled back those they could for rest and recuperation, but some had deteriorated so much that they were led away and shot there and then after the vet’s inspection. Heinie went that way one morning, and we passed him lying in the mud, a collapsed wreck of a horse, and so eventually did Coco, who was hit in his neck by flying shrapnel and had to be destroyed where he lay by the side of the road. No matter how much I disliked him—and he was a vicious beast—it was a piteous and terrible sight to see a fellow creature, with whom I had pulled for so long, discarded and forgotten in a ditch.
The little Haflingers stayed with us all through the winter, straining their broad backs and pulling against the ruts with all the strength they could muster. They were both gentle and kind, with not a shred of aggression in their courageous souls, and Topthorn and I came to love them dearly. In their turn, they looked up to us for support and friendship, and we gave both willingly.
I first noticed that Topthorn was failing when I felt the gun pulling more heavily than before. We were fording a small stream when the wheels of the gun became stuck in the mud. I turned quickly to look at him and saw him suddenly laboring and low in his stride. His eyes told me the pain he was suffering, and I pulled all the harder to enable him to ease up.
That night, with the rain sheeting down relentlessly on our backs, I stood over him as he lay down in the mud. He lay not on his stomach as he always did, but stretched out on his side, lifting his head from time to time as spasms of coughing shook him. He coughed intermittently all night and slept only fitfully. I worried over him, nuzzling him and licking him to try to keep him warm and to reassure him that he was not alone in his pain. I consoled myself with the thought that no horse I had ever seen had the power and stamina of Topthorn, and that he must have a reservoir of great strength to fall back on in his sickness.
And sure enough, he was up on his feet the next morning before the gunners came to feed us our ration of corn, and although his head hung lower than usual and he moved only ponderously, I could see that he had the strength to survive if only he could rest.
I noticed, however, that when the vet came that day checking along the lines, he looked long and hard at Topthorn and listened carefully to his chest. “He’s a strong one,” I heard him tell the spectacled officer—a man whom no one liked, neither horses nor men. “There’s fine breeding here—too fine, perhaps, Herr Major. Could well be his undoing. He’s too fine to pull a gun. I’d pull him out, but you have no horse to take his place, have you? He’ll go on, I suppose, but go easy on him, Herr Major. Take the team as slow as you can, else you’ll have no team, and without your team your gun won’t be a lot of use, will it?”
“He will have to do what the others do, Herr Doctor,” said the major in a steely voice. “No more and no less. I cannot make exceptions. If you pass him fit, he’s fit and that’s that.”
“He’s fit to go on,” said the vet reluctantly. “But I am warning you, Herr Major. You must take care.”
“We do what we can,” said the major dismissively. And, to be fair, they did. It was the mud that was killing us one by one—the mud, the lack of shelter, and the lack of food.