Loyal Creatures Read online

  ‘This prawn,’ said another trooper, pointing to the Indian officer. ‘What’s he up to?’

  The Indian officer looked very annoyed.

  ‘The army of India is doing the Australian army a favour,’ he said to the quartermaster. ‘It’s bad enough you’re trying to sell us damaged stock. We will not put up with abuse as well.’

  Sell?

  I couldn’t believe it. Our loyal horses, who’d worked their guts out for their country, were being sold off to work their guts out again in some other bloke’s war.

  Not on.

  ‘The damaged ones stay,’ said the Indian officer. ‘My orders are to take only healthy stock.’

  I had a selfish thought.

  At least they wouldn’t want Daisy, not with her bayonet wounds.

  But for the others, not on.

  I went to grab a fistful of the Indian officer’s jacket. One of the other troopers beat me to it.

  ‘You touch any of those horses,’ the trooper said to the Indian officer, ‘and you’ll be copping more than abuse. Your wallet stays in your pocket, Mahatma, you got that?’

  Me and the other troopers agreed with him.

  Loudly.

  The quartermaster blew a whistle.

  Next thing I was on the ground, face in the dust. I felt handcuffs on my wrists. Two military police dragged me to my feet.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Military police were swarming all over the place, armed and organised. We’d never had mobs of jacks like this in our camp. They must have been brought in specially. On account of the brass knowing how we’d feel, having our horses sold behind our backs.

  Some of the other blokes were handcuffed too. The rest were standing back, looking dazed.

  ‘You can’t do this, you mongrel,’ I said to the quartermaster.

  He sighed. For a long moment I thought he was going to agree.

  But when he replied, he didn’t look any of us in the eye.

  ‘Orders from the top,’ the quartermaster said. ‘These aren’t horses any more. They’re surplus military equipment.’

  I tried to get to him. Shake him till he came to his senses. But the jacks dragged me in the opposite direction.

  Daisy was still watching us.

  At least she was safe.

  After I cooled down in the lock-up, I worked out what to do.

  ‘How long?’ I said to the lock-up sergeant.

  ‘Forty-eight hours,’ he said. ‘You’re lucky. If we were still at war, with your record, you’d be doing serious time.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I mean how long till the horses get sent to India?’

  The lock-up sergeant shrugged.

  ‘They’ll be taking ’em by train to the coast,’ he said. ‘Putting ’em on a boat. Train track got blown up, so they’ll have to repair that first.’

  Good.

  Enough time to write to General Chauvel and General Allenby. Remind them how the Turks and Huns’d be dancing on our graves if it wasn’t for our walers. Point out that a horse can be a war hero just as much as a bloke. If heroic generals get to go home after the war for a rest and a pat on the back, so should heroic horses.

  I wrote all that out.

  ‘Can you send these for me?’ I said to the lock-up sergeant.

  The sergeant looked at the sheets of toilet paper I handed him. Shook his head.

  ‘Troopers don’t write to generals,’ he said.

  Soon as I got out of the lock-up, I checked on Daisy.

  She was tethered on the line, feed bag full and plenty of water. So were all the other horses, even the sold ones. The lock-up sergeant must have been right about the delay for train-track repairs.

  ‘Good to see they’re looking after you,’ I said to Daisy. ‘Even if you are damaged goods.’

  I tickled her under the chin while I said it, so she’d know I was joshing.

  She looked at me and her big eyes were sadder than I’d ever seen them.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘There’s still hope for your mates. I’ve put in for a face-to-face with the colonel.’

  In the army anyone could put in for a face-to-face with their commanding officer.

  But the rules said the commanding officer could pike out and offload the meeting to a lower-ranking officer. And the lower-ranking officer could shunt the meeting to an even lower-ranking officer. And so on.

  I got a troop sergeant.

  ‘At ease,’ said the troop sergeant, leaning back and putting his feet on a table in a bar in the local town. ‘Smoke if you want to.’

  I didn’t want to.

  ‘It’s like this,’ I said. ‘You don’t sell blokes to other armies. Why are horses different?’

  The sergeant rolled his eyes.

  ‘They’re horses,’ he said.

  ‘They’re our mates,’ I said.

  ‘The Australian army is not a bleedin’ friendship society,’ said the sergeant. ‘We’ve got tens of thousands of enlisted men to get home. Blokes are more important than horses, end of story.’

  ‘What about Sandy?’ I said. ‘That horse who belonged to that Aussie Major General who copped it at Gallipoli. They’re sending him home.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the sergeant. ‘And the whole catastrophe’s gunna take six months. Quarantine in England. Quarantine in Sydney. Medical tests all over the place. Costing a heap. Army reckons never again.’

  ‘So our mates get dumped in India,’ I said angrily, ‘just cause it’s too much trouble to bring ’em home.’

  ‘They’re the lucky ones,’ he said.

  We stared at each other.

  I felt something go tight in my guts.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ I said. ‘What’ll happen to the ones the Indian army doesn’t want?’

  The sergeant didn’t say anything. Just sighed. Took a pull on his beer. Lit another cigarette.

  ‘What’ll happen to them?’ I said.

  ‘Why don’t you have a beer,’ said the sergeant. ‘Have lots of beers. That’s what all your mates are doing.’

  I looked around the bar. Full of troopers. Drinking hard.

  Looking gutted.

  ‘I’m going back to camp,’ I said.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said the sergeant.

  Camp was chaos.

  Troopers running all over the shop, dragging their horses. Like they were trying to get away from something, but they didn’t know where to go.

  Officers walking fast, wiping their eyes.

  I asked a couple of blokes what was happening.

  They didn’t even hear me.

  These were blokes whose horses hadn’t been sold. They should have been feeling relieved. Didn’t look like they were.

  ‘It’s alright, mate,’ I said when I got to where Daisy was tethered.

  Why was she trembling? She knew she could trust me. I’d brought her over, I’d take her back.

  She gazed at me and I saw a look in her eyes. One I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I could see she knew something I didn’t.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  Of course she couldn’t tell me, so I went to investigate.

  A fenced-in enclosure. Beyond the far side of the camp. Behind a grove of date palms. Rough job. Six-foot plank fence that looked like it had been knocked together in a hurry.

  I peered over.

  And saw why our blokes were so worked up.

  Twenty or so of our horses, tethered to posts. Heads down. Feet moving anxiously. No manes. No tails. Someone had cut their manes and tails off.

  I didn’t understand.

  Troops up the other end of the pen, not our blokes, infantry by the look. Shoulders slumped. Standing around something that shouldn’t have been there.

  A machine-gun.

  Gunner sitting in position. Threw his cigarette away. Took aim at the horses.

  I stared. Tried to yell.

  My throat was frozen.

  I dropped. Lay in the dust and put my hands o
ver my ears. But I still heard it.

  I heard it all.

  ‘They will not all be shot,’ yelled the remount quartermaster, standing at his desk. ‘The unsold horses will not all be shot.’

  We didn’t believe him. We could all hear the machine-gun in the distance.

  There must have been a hundred blokes in that tent. All of us in shock. All of us ropeable and letting him know.

  ‘Shooting horses is a last resort,’ the quarter­master yelled over the din. ‘You have my word.’

  How could we trust him? How could we trust an army that would machine-gun its own horses?

  It was down to us now.

  Blokes pleaded. Threatened. Tried bribery.

  Me included.

  No good.

  Military police pushed us back from the desk.

  The remount quartermaster slumped in his office chair and put his head in his hands. A troop sergeant stood next to him and yelled at us.

  ‘None of us like this,’ he shouted.

  He didn’t look too unhappy to me. I remembered this sergeant. Before Beersheba he’d reckoned the army should get rid of all its horses and replace them with tanks.

  ‘Orders have been issued,’ yelled the sergeant. ‘I quote. Military property is the property of the military.’

  We didn’t hear any more of what he said. He was drowned out by a hundred furious voices.

  The remount quartermaster stood up and raised his hands pleadingly. We quietened down. Just in case he had something half-decent to say.

  ‘The British army have agreed to take some of the damaged mounts,’ said the quartermaster. ‘So have local horse dealers.’

  ‘How many will they take?’ somebody yelled.

  ‘How many won’t they take?’ shouted somebody else.

  Every bloke there was wondering the same thing. There were a lot of Light Horse camps in Palestine. A lot of Aussie horses.

  How many of them had battle scars?

  Five thousand?

  Ten?

  ‘How many won’t they take?’ repeated the angry voices.

  The quartermaster didn’t reply. He stared down at his desk. We could see tears in his eyes.

  Suddenly there was a disturbance up the back. Somebody shouting in a foreign accent. A bloke in a blood-smeared smock, a local.

  He squeezed through the crowd. Looked around. Decided the military police were the ones to talk to.

  ‘I’m coming for the hides,’ he said.

  The military police looked confused. The bloke waved a piece of paper at them.

  ‘Hides,’ he said. ‘Selling from army.’

  I grabbed the paper. It was a bill of sale, an official army form. One hundred hides, one hundred tails and manes, four hundred hooves.

  Another trooper snatched the paper. I let him take it.

  I was numb.

  At least this answered the question I’d been asking myself. Why were the army destroying their own property?

  They weren’t destroying it.

  They were selling it off.

  Bit by bit.

  Well, no way was Daisy ending up in pieces.

  The tent was a pig fight. Troopers snatching the paper from hand to hand, reading it, staring at it, horrified. Others trying to get their hands on the local trader. The jacks stopping them.

  I backed away.

  Yelling and rioting wasn’t going to save Daisy.

  Stay calm.

  Balanced.

  Think this through.

  Posh hotels in Palestine didn’t get many horses in them. Not from the looks Daisy and me were getting.

  I didn’t care.

  Daisy didn’t either. She stood there, head high.

  ‘You’re right, she’s got a few nicks,’ I said to the Indian purchasing officer. ‘But deep down she’s a gem. And don’t be put off by her shape. She’s a champ.’

  The officer gave me a dark look. Apologised to the other two officers he was having tea with. Got up from the table. Led me and Daisy over to the other side of the hotel garden.

  ‘The consignment is complete,’ he said.

  I didn’t need Otton to explain what that meant. It meant they were chokka with our horses.

  ‘You’ll want to make room for Daisy,’ I said. ‘She’s something special. Plus you’ll get me. No charge for either.’

  The officer looked like his cake had gone down the wrong way. I pushed on, trying not to show how desperate I was.

  ‘Three-and-a-half years military experience, both of us,’ I said. ‘Wells and pipelines. Don’t tell me India hasn’t got dry bits.’

  ‘This is absurd,’ said the officer. ‘I’m reporting this to your senior officer.’

  ‘Fair go,’ I said, putting my arm round Daisy. ‘Give her a break. Please.’

  But I could see she wasn’t going to get it.

  Not in this posh hotel.

  A couple of their security blokes were coming towards us, so I got her out of there.

  ‘Eighty quid,’ I said to the British despatch sergeant at the railway depot. ‘Put her on the train for Blighty and I’ll give you eighty quid.’

  The sergeant pushed away a couple of other blokes who were trying to get his attention by grabbing his chin-strap. He looked at what I was holding out to him.

  ‘That’s not eighty quid,’ he said. ‘That’s a piece of paper with your untidy scrawl on it.’

  ‘It’s an IOU,’ I said. ‘My demob pay will be at least eighty quid. Soon as I’m a civvy I’ll come straight to England and give you the cash.’

  I didn’t tell him how I’d get myself there if I was using all my dough to buy Daisy her life.

  I didn’t know. But I’d do it.

  ‘Sorry, matey,’ said the despatch sergeant. ‘I’m a loyal son of England. I only get corrupted by bits of paper with His Majesty’s gob on it.’

  He turned to the other two blokes, who were waving IOUs at him as well. So were a crowd of blokes behind them.

  ‘Serious customers only,’ he said. ‘Hundred quid one way, neddie class, standing room only, payment up front, no home-made currency.’

  I wasn’t the only one without the cash.

  The railway depot was swarming with dejected troopers leading their horses back towards camp. We walked past a train packed with English horses happy to be heading home.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ I said to Daisy. ‘I thought an IOU would do it. But some of us humans aren’t as trusting as you lot.’

  I led her away.

  Not towards camp. My ideas hadn’t dried up yet.

  The local horse dealers fell in love with Daisy the moment I showed them the four pounds six shillings, which was every penny I had in the world till I got my demob pay.

  ‘Good home for lovely horse, effendi,’ they said. ‘Much kindness. Much comfort.’

  Trouble was, me and Daisy didn’t fall in love with the local horse dealers. We didn’t even like them. I was very tempted to do to them exactly what they did to their horses.

  ‘Much kindness, much comfort, effendi.’

  Hanging from the belt of every dealer who said that was a vicious-looking whip and a couple of canes. And every poor nag we saw, in a whole street of dealers’ yards, was in a tragic state.

  Starved.

  Beaten.

  Diseased.

  I could hardly look at the poor blighters.

  Daisy looked at them for a long time, whinnying softly and blowing air at them.

  Horses don’t cry, everyone knows that, but Daisy came close that day.

  I tried to think it through.

  Healthy horse like Daisy would be sold quick. So she wouldn’t spend much time with these cruel mongrels.

  Plus the four pounds six shillings would pay for decent feed while she was here.

  If she was lucky.

  Then I remembered the working horses we saw the day we got off the boat. Dropping with exhaustion. Beaten where they lay.

  Daisy had seen them too.

&nb
sp; Which was why she wanted to get closer to the poor wrecked horses in the dealers’ yards. To give them a moment of sympathy in their unhappy painful lives.

  But she didn’t want to be one of them. Not permanent. I could see that for a fact.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ I said to her. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  We got out of there alright.

  All the way out.

  After dark I led Daisy out of camp. She was saddled up and kitted out and loaded with extra food and water. Which technically I was stealing from the army. But as I wasn’t going to be around to get my demob pay, it seemed fair.

  ‘Where’s your pass?’ said the guard at the gate.

  I didn’t have one so I gave him the four pounds six shillings, which did the trick.

  Daisy and me rode into the desert.

  South.

  I wasn’t exactly sure where we were heading. Not long term. When you leave school at eleven, you don’t carry much in the way of geography around with you. I had a notion Africa was ahead of us somewhere.

  Persia maybe.

  Didn’t matter. Important thing was we were headed away from the machine-guns. Which, if you were a horse, smashed your legs and punctured your lungs and left you in agony on the ground until some bloke with a pistol strolled over and finished you with a bullet in the head.

  ‘You alright, Daisy?’ I said.

  I could tell from her easy breathing and relaxed gait as we jogged across the sand in the moonlight that she was.

  ‘Dunno where we’re headed,’ I said. ‘But I’m glad we’re going there together.’

  Daisy didn’t slow down, so she must have felt the same way.

  Every so often I glanced over my shoulder to see if we were being followed.

  We weren’t.

  But something was nagging at me.

  Was there something I’d forgotten that could be coming after us?

  It wasn’t behind us, it was ahead of us.

  In a shallow gulley. I didn’t see it till we’d almost reached it. By then the moon had climbed a smidge and lit up the full horror of them.

  Horses and men, on the sand.

  I’d seen plenty of death, but I’d never seen the bodies of horses and men treated like these had been.