Free Loyal Creatures by Morris Gleitzman

battlefield we saw straight off this was a different class of stoush.
    Our infantry had been going at it for hours.
    Big Turkish defence lines. Miles of trenches. Infantry stopped whingeing for a change. Almost broke through.
    But they didn’t. Poor blighters were getting mowed down.
    Then the order came.
    We’d waited two years for this.
    Gallop at the Turks. Break through the mongrels on horseback. No horse-holding here. We were all in it. Well and truly in it.
    Charge!
    Galloping hard across four miles of open desert. Hundreds of us but we were soon spread.
    Couldn’t even see the Turkish trenches through our own dust. But they could see us. Machine-guns, artillery, they let us know they could see us.
    Otton was next to me. His usual style of riding. Hang on and pray. Harder for him today because we had bayonets in hand.
    Regulation ones, but they’d do the job.
    I should have been yelling with excitement like the other blokes. This was my chance. Give the mongrels a big serve for Dad. Rack up some corpses to impress Joan’s folks. I should have been happier than a wagtail in a wheat field.
    But I wasn’t.
    I kept seeing the face of the Turk I’d let go. Would it be the same this time? Would I pike out at the last minute?
    Horses started going down. Men screaming. Horses screaming.
    Suddenly I could see the trenches.
    Blokes were diving off their horses onto the Turks. Vicious fighting. Chaotic.
    Johnson in the thick of it.
    I went in after them. And saw what the Turks were doing. Targetting the horses. Bayonets into their bellies as they reached the trenches. Bullets into their throats.
    The horses without riders were trying to get away.
    Machine-gunned. Blown to pieces.
    Two Turks in weird camouflage jackets rose up out of a trench, guns aimed at Daisy.
    No time to turn her away.
    I swung my rifle round from my back, clamped it tight against my side and pulled the trigger. Trained for this, but it still nearly kicked me out of the saddle.
    One of the Turks went down. So did my rifle, out of my grasp.
    Daisy didn’t stop. Straight at the other Turk.
    I gave him my bayonet.
    In deep.
    Daisy leaped over the trench.
    I took her reins in both hands. Urged her on and we flew. Soared over trench after trench. She never faltered, never wavered.
    Otton was doing the same I hoped. But I couldn’t see him.

    Next thing, we were behind the trenches.
    In the town. It was almost deserted. Few Turks running. Couple of our scouts yelled at me.
    â€˜Stop the mongrels duffing the wells.’
    I saw what they meant.
    Turks in the town square were trying to blow up the wells. So we’d have no water after the battle. Pipeline was hours away. We’d never have made it.
    The scouts dealt with the Turks. I dealt with the explosives. When you knew wells, you knew where the charges’d be.
    They did a top job, those scouts. I was down deep, dragging detonator wire out of the rock crevices. Desperate Turk tried to lob a grenade down onto me. Scouts showed him the error of his ways.
    I saw his body by the well-mouth when I came up. And the crater the grenade had made over the other side of the square.
    Then I saw that Daisy was bleeding.
    She was standing where I’d left her, trembling.
    Her chest and flanks were red.
    At first I thought she’d copped shrapnel from the grenade. But I looked closer and it wasn’t that. It was bayonet wounds. Turks must have got her as we jumped the trenches.
    I grabbed water from one of the wells and tore my shirt into pieces and wiped away the blood, gentle as I could.
    They’d got her five times. But not deep. She must have been flying too fast.
    â€˜Easy mate,’ I said. ‘Have to get these clean. Don’t want you festering up.’
    She understood. Calm and balanced.
    Me and Dad knew what to do when a horse got cut. Boil up sprigs of lemon myrtle and dab it on. But you couldn’t get lemon myrtle in Palestine, so I mixed disinfectant