Joey's earliest memories are that of hilly fields and dark, damp stables but he well remembers the day of the horse sale. That day Joey was separated forever from his mother in the auction ring when he was not yet six months old. As an old Irish draft horse, Joey's mother was quickly sold but Joey proved more difficult to sell. Finally he was sold, for three guineas to a farmer. Never having been separated from his mother nor touched by a man, Joey panicked and attempted to bolt. But he was quickly subdued and tethered behind a farm cart with a short rope and followed it to his new home.
In the stable of his new home, Joey watches as the old mare that had pulled the cart is viciously struck by their owner. Joey was given no water nor feed but eventually two people came to the barn: a young boy named Albert and his mother. Albert is certain this new horse will be wonderful. He noticed Joey's red colour and the white cross on his nose. Albert wants to rub Joey down as he was thoroughly wet, but his mother tells him to leave the horse alone as his father requested. Albert is puzzled as to why his father, who was drunk at the auction, bought a horse when they needed a calf. Albert's mother explained that his father had fights over fencing with Farmer Easton, and wanted to win the bidding war with him over this horse. Albert tended to Joey, gently rubbing him and talking softly, telling him what they would do together. He brought Joey water and fresh, sweet hay and gave him the name of Joey because it rhymes with Zoey and he promised to care for Joey.
For two years, Joey and Albert grew together. Albert trains Joey walking and trotting him and teaching him to come at his whistle. The old mare, Zoey, who was also a working horse, helps Joey adapt to his new life on the Narracott farm. Gradually, Joey came to trust and love Albert and his gentle manner. But Joey never trusts Albert's father and never allows him to come too close. One day, Albert's father attempts to whip Joey who was so terrified he kicked the farmer in the leg. Albert's father gave his son an ultimatum: "...if that animal is not plowing straight as an arrow inside a week, he'll be sold, and that's a promise." Albert agreed to train Joey but told his father he must promise to never raise a whip to his horse again. And so, alongside Zoey, Joey's training as a farm horse began. After a week, Joey had learned to plow and Albert's father was satisfied as he'd won his bet with Farmer Easton.
Months later, Albert told the two horses that there is likely to be a war. Albert, now fifteen, wants to be a soldier: he believes he would be a good soldier and that Joey would make a good war horse. And then on a hot summer evening, Albert's father returned home from the village with the news that Britain is at war with Germany. While Albert's father believed the war would be over in a few months, his mother was terrified.
Gradually, over the summer, Albert began riding Joey, taking him out to the sheep and along the roads in the parish. Albert began to do most of the horse work on the farm while his father cared for the cattle, pigs and sheep. While Albert's relationship with his father grew strained, it was even more so with his mother. Albert's mother revealed that his father had taken out a mortgage so he could buy the farm from Lord Denton. This meant eventually Albert would own his own farm. But his mother reveals that it is the worry about the mortgage that makes Albert's father drink. Albert doesn't accept this explanation but his mother explains that now at fifty years old, his father can't do as much work on the farm and is worried about the war as well.
The situation between Albert and his father grew increasingly strained. After an argument between Albert and his father, Joey is tricked into a halter and led by Zoey, taken into the village, to the green. There, Joey is sold to Captain Nicholls for his regiment. Nicholls recognizes that Joey is indeed a fine horse and eventually gives Albert's father forty pounds. It is at this point that Joey realizes he is being abandoned.
Albert races to the green, wrapping his arms around Joey and begs Captain Nicholls to allow him to go with his horse. However, Nicholls tells Albert that he's too young and that his horse now belongs to the army. He promises to take care of Joey personally. As for Joey his training as a calvary mount begins. He dislikes the new barbed bit and even more his rider, Corporal Samuel Perkins who is an ex-jockey. Joey recognizes that both horses and men feared this "hard, gritty little man". Joey respected Perkins but not out of love but out of fear. And although he tried many times to throw Perkins, he never succeeded because "His knees had the grip of iron..." Joey's only consolation what that Nicholls often came to speak to him, sketching the horse. Captain Nicholls tells Joey that he plans to paint a picture of Joey but that he won't be able to take it with him. So, he intends to send this picture to Albert as proof that he is taking good care of Joey. He also reveals that he hopes the war ends before Albert is old enough to sign up because "...it's going to be nasty, very nasty indeed." He admits to the horse that he's frightened and that no one seems to understand what the machine guns will do.
When Corporal Samuel Perkins enters he tells Nicholls that Joey is a horse that has a mind of his own and that he's a farm horse that's never been properly trained. However, Nicholls tells Perkins to be gentle with Joey, that he is special to him and has to carry him "through the war and, with any luck out the other side of it," He tells Perkins that many of the soldiers believe they will win the war by simply "flashing their sabers around". Nicholls also asks Perkins to give Joey more food as he's lost some of his conditioning.
Eventually Joey becomes resigned to his new life, although he has not forgotten Albert. During final maneuvers and his first cavalry charge in training, Joey is ridden by Captain Nicholls and beside him is Nicholl's best friend Captain Jamie Stewart on his horse, a large, black stallion named Topthorn. The two horses, Joey and Topthorn are neck and neck. The soldiers and their horses are sent by ship to the war in Europe and see the great numbers of wounded soldiers. As Joey and Topthorn march through the countryside, the two horses begin to form a bond with Topthorn often calming Joey. Eventually they locate the enemy and with swords drawn, charge. Ahead, Joey sees the soldiers raise their guns and hears the rattle of the machine gun. After the battle which the squadron claims they won, Joey sees dead and dying horses everywhere, and Captain Nicholls is gone, having been killed in action.
Joey is given a new rider, Trooper Warren, a pink-faced young man who reminds Joey of Albert. Although he was gentle and kind to Joey, caring for any of the saddle sores or chafings that arose, he was not a good horseman. As they march to find the enemy, Joey finds that as Captain Nicholls predicted the horses are often left behind and the enemy is engaged by the soldiers with their rifles. Trooper Warren begins to talk to Joey telling him about his life before the war as the son of the village blacksmith.
The war is deadlocked with neither side moving and the heavy rains turning the fields to mud. Joey and Topthorn try to shelter together throughout the cold winter while they hear the pounding of artillery and the machine gun fire. Then one spring night, they move out and Joey and TopThorn find themselves in no-man's-land which is a maze of barbed wire and shell holes and mud. Joey finds himself in the middle of a great battle with shells exploding around him and Topthorn and men and horses being thrown into the air. Ahead of them is a great roll of barbed wire and Joey and Topthorn and a few other horses were the only ones to reach it. There were a few holes in the roll of wire and Joey and Topthorn made it through only to find a second roll further into the woods which the two horses manage to clear, only to find themselves surrounded by the enemy. Trooper Warren on Joey and Captain Jamie Stewart on Topthorn surrender to the Germans. Behind there are the dead and dying, and absolute carnage.
As prisoners of war, Joey and Topthorn are separated from Stewart and Warren and led away to a German hospital. Behine the German lines, Joey and Topthorn are considered war heroes by the German soldiers. "These two horses came through helfire to get here -- they were the only two to make it. It was not their fault they were sent on a fool's errand. They are not circus animals, they are heroes -- do you understand, heroes..."
It is Herr Hauptman who says this but he is told by the doctor that these two horses must be used for the ambulance transport. Hauptmann is upset at this request which he considers sacriligeous as these are "fine British cavalry horses" but eventually agrees. So Joey and Topthorn are hitched to an old hay cart, a situation that alarms Topthorn. They spend the rest of the day transporting the wounded from the frontlines to the field hospital along "roads and tracks filled with shell holes and littered with the corpses of mules and men. The artillery barrage from both sides was continuous. It roared overhead all day..."
After that first day with the Germans, Joey and Topthorn are visited by a young girl, twelve-year-old Emilie and her elderly grandfather. The field hospital is located near their farm. It is they who care for Joey and Topthorn, groom them, water and feed them, and tend to their hurts. In the summer, they are lead to graze in the meadow by Emilie. She is there every dawn as they leave pulling the ambulance cart, and every evening when Joey and Topthorn return. Emilie becomes seriously ill with pneumonia and during her illness her grandfather tells the two horses that she has lost her parents and her seventeen-year-old brother to the war. She recovers on Christmas Day, a day that also sees the fighting pause.
Then in the spring, Joey and Topthorn learn from Emilie that the field hospital is moving further away and that they are being allowed to stay and work on the farm until they are needed again by the army. However, life on the farm did not last long. One day another set of German soldiers arrives at the farm. These soldiers are battle-hardened and harsh and their horses weary and exhausted from pulling the heavy guns. They take Joey and Topthorn with them. Conditions are harsh as Joey and Topthorn are made to pull the heavy guns, are whipped frequently, and no longer stabled at night. Food is scarce and the battles are now long and furious. Standing in freezing mud with no care, all the horses begin to weaken, even the magnificant Topthorn.
In the summer Joey and Topthorn and the other horses recover. They are assigned to the care of an old German soldier called "Crazy Old Friedrich" to pull the ammunition from the railroad to the artillery lines. The work is hard on them because the cart is often overloaded with shells. Eventually, the hard work and poor rations lead Topthorn to develop a persistent cough, and he finally collapses one day from heart failure. That same day, a shell attack kills Friedrich too. The death of his friend Topthorn and the arrival of tanks - something Joey has never seen before - so traumatizes Joey that he bolts in terror. The constant firing of guns, brilliant explosions and rumble of artillery leads Joey to run into no-man's-land where he gets caught in the barbed-wire. He injures his leg and limps further into the mud. But Joey's run has led him to a place where he will ultimately be reunited with the one human he loves the most.
Discussion
War Horse is another wonderful short novel by British author Michael Morpurgo that explores the relationship between a horse and the humans he encounters, while portraying the horrors of the Great War from an animal's perspective. The novel is set in Britain before the war, and in Europe (likely France) during the war.
The story is narrated by Joey, a red bay with a white cross on his forehead. Joey is an intelligent horse who bonds with those humans who truly care for him. He is able to discern the humans who are cruel and harsh and acts to protect himself. The horse describes his relationships with the various humans he encounters, and his experiences during the war first as a cavalry horse, then pulling the ambulance carts, the heavy artillery guns and the ammunition carts. Alongside him during Joey's cavalry training and his time in the war is a black stallion named Topthorn.
World War I began with the British Expeditionary Force and other countries including Russian and Imperial German utilizing traditional methods of warfare. The main battle tactic was one used in previous wars, that of mounted infantry and cavalry charges - men riding horseback and brandishing swords - to attack and overwhelm opposing forces. However, warfare in the early 20th century had drastically changed with the invention of modern machine guns, artillery and tanks. This meant that horses and the soldiers they carried were vulnerable. While those British military outside of the cavalry units recognized this change in warfare, most senior cavalry officers continued to believe in the use of the mounted infantry. This is portrayed in Morpurgo's novel, through the character of Captain Nicholls.
While still in England, Captain Nicholls believes the war is going to be a disaster based on the new armaments that have been developed. When he's sitting sketching Joey, Nicholls tells the horse, "Back in the mess hall, they're all talking about how they'll get the Germans, how the cavalry will smash through them and throw them clear back to Berlin before Christmas....We have our doubts...None of them in there seem to have heard of machine guns and artillery. I tell you, Joey, one machine gun operated right could wipe out an entire squadron of the best cavalry in the world - German or British. I mean look what happened to the Light Brigarde at Balaclava when they took on the Russian guns...And the French learned the lesson in the Franco-Prussian War. But you can't say anything to them, Joey. If you do, they call you a defeatist..." And in fact, Nicholls is killed during his very first charge of the war, likely being shot off his horse - Joey by gun fire.
When Captain Nicholls and his troops along with their horses, including Joey and Topthorn finally arrive in France, the men are faced with the reality of war. The sight brings Captain Nicholls to tears. "The wounded were everywhere --- on stretchers, on crutches, in open ambulances and etched on every man was the look of wretched misery and pain.They tried to put a brave face on it but even the jokes and quips they shouted out as we passed were heavy with gloom and sarcasm. No sergeant major, no enemy barrage could have silenced a body of soldiers as effectively as that terible sight, for here for the first time the men saw for themselves the kind of war they were going into..."
After their first battle in which Nicholls is killed, likely by being shot off his horse, Joey remembers, "We had won, I heard it said, but horses lay dead and dying everywhere.More than a quarter of the squadron had been lost in that one action. It had all been so quick and deadlly." Despite this heavy loss Trooper Warren who is now riding Joey tells him that there are now trenches "from the sea to Switzerland" and that in the spring, "The cavalry could go where the infantry could not and were fast enough to overrun the trenches." To attack an opposing trench meant crossing into no-man's-land which is exactly what they do that spring with disastrous results. Joey relates, "...the first terrible shells fell among us and the machine guns opened up. The bedlam of battle had begun. All around me, men cried and fell to the ground, and horses reared and screamed in an agony of fear and pain. The ground erupted on either side of me, throwing horses and riders clear into the air. The shells whined and roared overhead, and every explosion seemed like an earthquake to us. But the squadron galloped on inexorably through it all toward the wire at the top of the hill..." At the end of the battle only Captain Stewart and his horse Topthorn and Trooper Warren and Joey have survived.
The German captain is shocked himself and echoes what Captain Nicholls had predicted only weeks before: "What a waste...What a ghastly waste. Maybe now when they see this they'll understand that you can't send horses into wire and machine guns. Maybe now they'll think again." Clearly the old ways of fighting a war were not working. The British would go on to lose almost five hundred thousand horses through sickness, hunger, and being worked to death.
The deadlock in the war in Europe, with both sides in trenches with a wasteland of mud, shell holes and barbed wire between them meant the use of horses wasn't required. So instead of using horses in battle, the British began to use them in other ways, some of which Joey experiences. Horses could transport men, goods, ordinance, and the wounded better through the never-ending mud than vehicles. The heavy work, the scarce food and the poor care take their toll. Although Joey is of stronger stock, it is his best horse friend, Topthorn who succumbs like many thousands of British horses.
While Joey's war experiences are the main part of the story, it is bookended by a second story, that of his relationship with a young British boy, Albert (Berty) Narracott. Albert's father buys Joey, a colt, in a drunken bet with another farmer. Albert immediately takes to the red bay colt, naming him, caring for him and training him. Albert and Joey form a lasting bond so that when Albert's father sells Joey, Albert makes a promise to the young horse, "Wherever you are, I'll find you, Joey." And so while Joey is a war horse Albert comes of age and joins the Veterinary Corps in the hopes that somehow, some way he will meet up with Albert. And that is exactly what happens through a remarkable bit of luck.
Reminiscent of the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914, Joey is the reason for a brief pause in the conflict. Having wandered into no-man's-land, terrified and now lame, Joey is claimed by both a German soldier and a British soldier. To decide ownership, the German suggests they flip a coin and this leads to the British soldier winning the toss. Joey is headed to a British veterinary hospital. However, this event serves to also show, as did the Christmas Truce, how futile the conflict really was. The German soldier tells the British soldier, "We have shown them, haven't we? We have shown them that any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other. That is all it needs, no?"
And so because of this chance event, Joey is reunited with Albert. But the story doesn't end there and it almost doesn't end with Joey and Albert permanently reunited. Master storyteller, Michael Morpurgo adds a few more twists the least of which is the kindness of an old man who has lost everything in the war offers hope in a world destroyed by war.
War Horse is a wonderful short novel, that evokes so many emotions: the horror and futility of war, the pain of loss, the joy of a deep bond between a boy and his horse, and the happiness of reunion. It is the mark of a good writer that a reader can experience so much from a story so well told.
Farm Boy, the sequel to War Horse is due to be published in March 2012. In this follow up, Albert's son is now an old man who reminisces about his war-hero father, life on the farm and their horses, Joey and Zoey.
Book Details:
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo
New York: Scholastic Press 2007 (1982)
165 pp.
Hachi is a wonderful, poignant family movie about a lost dog and the man who finds him. Parker Wilson, known as Professor, finds a lost Akita puppy one day on his way home from work. The puppy has a tag with Japanese characters on it and when Parker is unable to locate his owner, he asks a close Japanese friend what the characters mean. He is told that the dog's name is Hachiko. Parker and his family decide to keep Hachi and gradually a strong bond is formed between man and dog.
