Loyal Creatures (11 page)

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 over 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.