At the beginning of August 1914 the battery had just returned to its station after a month’s hard work at practice camp. Bilfred, a veteran now of more than seven years’ service, had probably never been in better condition in his life. Ordinarily he would have been given an easy time for some weeks, with plenty of food and just enough exercise and collar work to keep him fit for the strain of the big manœuvres in September.
But there were to be no 1914 manœuvres. About August 6 things quite beyond Bilfred’s comprehension began to happen. Strange men arrived to join the battery and in their ignorance took liberties with him which he resented. Every available space in the lines became crowded with unkempt, queer-looking horses, obviously of a low caste. Bilfred was shod a fortnight before his time by a new shoeing-smith, for whom he made things as unpleasant as possible. His harness, which usually looked like polished mahogany decorated with silver, was dubbed and oiled until it looked (and smelt) disgusting. When the battery went out on parade, all these absurd civilian horses with bushy tails (some even with manes!) went with it, and for a day or two behaved disgracefully. The whole place was in confusion and everybody worked all day long. Bilfred, ignorant of the term ‘mobilisation,’ was completely mystified.
A week or so later he was harnessed up in the middle of the night, hooked in and marched to the station. Now it had been his habit for years to object to being entrained. On this occasion he was doubly obstinate and wasted much precious time. Other horses, even his own team-mates, went in quietly in front of him; it made no difference, he refused to follow them. A rope was put round his quarters and he was hauled towards the truck. He dug his toes in and tried to back. Then, suddenly, his hind legs slipped and he sat down on his haunches like a dog, tangled in the rope and unable to move. In the dim light of the station-siding his white face and scared expression moved us to laughter in spite of our exasperation. He struggled to his feet again, the cynosure of all eyes, and the subject of many curses. Then, for no apparent reason whatever, he changed his mind and allowed himself to be led into the next truck, which was empty, just as though it was his own stall in barracks. And once inside he tried by kicking to prevent other horses being put in with him.
He continued in this contrary mood for some time and upheld his reputation for eccentricity. Some horses made a fuss about embarking. He made none. He showed his insular contempt for foreigners by making a frantic effort to bite the first French soldier he saw—a sentry on the landing quay, who, in his enthusiasm for his Allies, came too close. He got loose during the night we spent at the rest camp, laid flat about an acre of standing corn, and was found next morning in the lines of a cavalry regiment, looking wofully out of place.
On the railway journey up to the concentration area, he slipped down in the truck several times and was trampled on by the other horses. The operation of extricating him was dangerous and lengthy. When we detrained he refused food and water, to our great concern. But he took his place in the team during the twenty-mile march that followed and was himself again in the evening.
Where everybody was acutely conscious of the serious nature of the business during the first day or so, it was something of a relief to watch the horses behaving exactly as they normally did at home. We, Heaven help us! knew little enough of what was in store for us, but they, poor brutes, knew nothing. Oats were plentiful—what else mattered? Bilfred rolled over and over on his broad back directly his harness was removed, just as he always did; he plunged his head deep into his water and pushed his muzzle to and fro washing his mouth and nostrils; he raised his head when he had drunk, stretched his neck and yawned, staring vacantly into space as was his wont. For him the world was still at peace. Of course it was—he knew no better. But we who did, we whose nerves were on edge with an excitement half-fearful half-exultant, saw these things and were somehow soothed by them.
Bilfred’s baptism of fire came early. A few rounds of shrapnel burst over the wagon-line on the very first occasion that we were in action. Fortunately, the range was just too long and no damage was done. Some of the horses showed momentary signs of fear, but the drivers easily quieted them; and, besides, they were in a clover field—an opportunity too good to be wasted in worrying about strange noises. Bilfred, either because he despised the German artillery or because he imagined that the reports were those of his own guns, to which he was quite accustomed, never even raised his head. His curly tail flapped regularly from side to side, protecting him from a swarm of flies whilst he reached out as far as his harness would allow and tore up great mouthfuls of grass. He had always been a glutton, and it was as if he knew, shells or no shells, that this was to be his last chance for some time. It was; there followed four days of desperate strain for man and beast. Through clouds of powdery, choking dust, beneath a blazing August sun, parched with thirst, often hungry and always weary, Bilfred and his fellows pulled the two tons of steel and wood and complicated mechanism called a gun along those straight interminable roads of northern France. Thousands of horses in dozens of batteries were doing the same thing—and none knew why.
Then, on the fifth day, our turn came to act as rear-guard artillery. The horses, tucked away behind a convenient wood when we came into action just before dawn, had an easy morning—and there were many, especially amongst the new-comers received on mobilisation, who were badly in need of it. Now the function of a rear-guard is to gain time, and this we did. But, when at last the order to withdraw was given, our casualties were numerous and the enemy was close. Moreover, his artillery had got our range. The teams issuing from the shelter of their wood had to face a heavy fire, and it was at this juncture that the seasoned horses, the real old stagers, who knew as much about limbering up as most drivers and more than some, set an example to the less experienced ones. Bilfred (and I take him as typical of the rest) seemed with a sudden flash of intuition to realise that his apprenticeship and all his previous training had been arranged expressly that he might bear himself courageously in just such a situation as this. Somehow, in some quite inexplicable fashion, he knew that this was the supreme moment of his career. Regardless of bursting shells and almost without guidance from his driver he galloped straight for his gun, with ears pricked and nostrils dilated, the muscles rippling under his dark coat and his traces taut as bow-strings as he strained at his collar with every thundering stride. He wheeled with precision exactly over the trail eye, checked his pace at the right moment, and ‘squared off’ so as to allow the wheelers to place the limber in position. It was his job, he knew what to do and he did it perfectly. B was the first gun to get away and the only one to do so without a casualty....
More marching, more fighting, day after day, night after night; men were killed and wounded; horses, dropping from utter exhaustion, were cut loose and left where they lay—old friends, some of them, that it tore one’s heart to abandon thus. But there could be no tarrying, the enemy was too close to us for that.
Then came the day when the terrible retreat southwards ceased as abruptly and as unexpectedly as it had begun. Rejoicing in an advance which soon developed into a pursuit we forgot our weariness and all the trials and hardships of the past. And I think we forgot, too, in our eagerness, that for the horses there was no difference between the advance and the retirement—the work was as hard, the loads as heavy. For our hopes were high. We knew that the flood of invasion was stemmed at last. We believed that final victory was in sight. Reckless of everything we pushed on, faster and still faster, until our strength was nearly exhausted. It mattered not, we felt; the enemy retreating in disorder before us must be in far worse plight.