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Far behind me, at the farm, I could hear my grandfather calling my name. It tore at my heart to be so blatantly disobeying such a wise and kind man, but I could also hear the rattle of enemy's bit-chains and the stamping and snorting of their bad tempered horses; this made me all the more determined to move the horse and myself as far away as possible.
We reached the far side of the spinney and our feet touched the soft spongy grass that used to grow so freely over the whole region. I looked about the country side and saw the miles of desolation that war hod brought to the once fertile plains, and I thought about how abundantly the crops used to grow and how since the war had started the fields had gradually turned one by one into an ever increasing dust bath in the summer and quagmire during the winter months. I thought with disgust of how many people had died in those fields which used to be full of corn
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The horse bent his great glossy neck and began to crop at the grass with lips of velvet. His dark coat was gleaming in the late summer sun and his tail, soft and smooth and freed from the mud of war began to swish the flies away lazily.
He really was the only good thing to come out of this war. I can remember the day he was left with us on my grandfather's farm. Starving and filthy he looked half the horse that he did now. The enemy soldiers left him on the same day that we received the telegram from the commanding officer stating the death of my eldest brother. The following week we were told that my other brother was missing in action.
I put my energy into caring for my new horse. Early in the previous year the army had requisitioned our farm horses and left my grandfather unable to tend the farm in any serious way. After weeks of tender love and
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attention the horse began to show signs of improvement. His sides started to fill out and his face lost its gaunt hollow look.
With the warming of the summer air, he soon grew a lovely smooth shiny summer coat and started to glisten like the white horses dancing on the waves that grandfather took me to see at the beach when I was a very small child. Before long, grandfather started to use the horse that I had claimed as my own for light work about the farm. He was very willing to learn and picked up new skills, like ploughing and seeding, very easily.
All the spore time though, was kept as our own. I had spent the long summer evenings with him, walking away from the constant sound of gunfire and away from the danger of
a stray shell hitting us.
Now though, there was none of that carefree idleness. I tugged at the horse's halter rope desperately trying to encourage him to move
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