Free War Horse by Michael Morpurgo Page A

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 now the guns were 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 now 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 wewere 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 amongst 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 spasmodically as winter came on again and there was only a meagre 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 thestrength to pull as a gun horse should, a great hulk of a horse they called Heinie who seemed quite unper-turbed 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 traces 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 amongst 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-coloured ponies with flaxen 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 theirdiminutive size they were at least our equals in stamina; but in the 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 fodder 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 travelled 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