The Silver Donkey by Sonya Hartnett

Author:Sonya Hartnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742281506
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2009-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

THE FRONT

Alone in the silent woods at night, it was easy for the soldier to remember the war. Inside the fog that clouded his eyes, he saw the colours of war; beyond the silence of the night, he heard the battle cries.

The soldier could have told Pascal some stories about the war.

As soon as he’d been put in command, the soldier had learned the names of the thirty men he commanded – he thought every officer should do this. As well as this, he tried to remember certain things that made each man different from his fellows. Tommy Drake bred goldfish; Joe Webster carved furniture from wood. Eddy Hobbs had a gift for drawing; Arthur Harris could play the flute. A swinging gate had snipped off the tip of Will Palmer’s left thumb. Such things could be difficult to remember, but the Lieutenant made himself do it. He didn’t think it was right to send a man into battle without caring to know anything about that man.

The trenches in which he and his platoon had lived were deep and narrow and dirty, fanning out across the fields like an odious spider’s web. It was easy to get lost in the grim network of passages. The trenches stank of wet earth and decay, reminding the soldiers of a graveyard. Sometimes the trenches would cave in, and then everyone would dig as fast as they could to rescue the men who’d been buried.

The enemy had their own trenches. The noise of gunfire and shelling went on almost ceaselessly, but in rare moments of quiet the enemy could be heard talking and laughing and worrying with each other. The enemy soldiers sounded young – some of them had the fresh voices of boys. The Lieutenant supposed that some of them played the flute or carved wood or could draw; and that all of them had mothers and fathers waiting and wondering at home.

Here and there, throughout the trenches, troughs the length and depth of a man had been gouged from the claggy walls. The troughs were for sleeping in, though it was nearly impossible to sleep. There was too much noise, and too much tension. Lieutenant Shepard, when he dozed, dreamed of waking to find the trenches deserted, his comrades having abandoned him to fight the enemy alone.

Sometimes a week would go by before the men could rest and take off their boots. Everyone would hold their noses. They would laugh at themselves, at how uncivilised they’d become. Then their laughter would fade at the sight of their feet, the ankles and toes rubbed raw.

They were always hungry and thirsty. The army gave them bully-beef and biscuits to eat. The biscuits were so hard that they chipped the soldiers’ teeth. Rain filled bowls scooped from the mud and the soldiers dipped their fingers in it.

On the greatest and most wonderful days, the mail would arrive. The luckiest received parcels, inside which were books, handkerchiefs, almonds, soap, and lovely clean knitted socks. The mail brought other precious things: letters from home.

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