The Tortoise and the Soldier: A Story of Courage and Friendship in World War I
144
The Tortoise and the Soldier: A Story of Courage and Friendship in World War I
144eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781627791748 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) |
| Publication date: | 11/24/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 144 |
| File size: | 16 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 8 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Tortoise and the Soldier
A Story of Courage and Friendship in World War I
By Michael Foreman
Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 2013 Michael ForemanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62779-174-8
CHAPTER 1
it was the 1950S, and I was working for the local paper, the Lowestoft Journal. I told my mates I was a junior reporter, but really, I was just the office boy. Now and again I'd be trusted with a reporting job. Small jobs only, mind. And only when the proper reporters were busy. Still, it got me out of the office and away from the endless filing and tea runs.
It was weddings mainly. Everyone got married on a Saturday back then, so there was often a big fancy do at the church and a small wedding in the chapel at the same time. You can probably guess which one I got to report on.
I used to be given other stories too, the ones that seemed to come round again and again, just like the seasons. Summer would mean the village fete, where old Fred Carver always won the competition for Most Impressive Vegetable (thanks to the ready supply of horse manure that came from the blacksmith's next door). Autumn, it'd be the church harvest festival, then winter was the school Christmas party. Just the names and dates needed changing and–Bob's your uncle–there was my report.
But when it came to spring, well, there was one story that meant spring had well and truly sprung ... and I'd never been given the chance to report on it: Henry Friston and his famous tortoise.
* * *
It was a grayish morning in March, when the editor yelled to me across the newsroom, "Say, Trev, pop along and check on Mr. Friston's tortoise, would you? See if it's awake yet."
Back in those days, normal folk didn't have telephones at home. So, with my reporter's pad and some freshly sharpened pencils in my top pocket (I always wrote in pencil so I could check my spelling before I handed in my report), I jumped on my rusty old bike and pedaled off to the tiny village of Corton. It was Corton where Mr. Henry Friston (age fifty-nine) lived, in a pair of restored railway carriages, with his family and his tortoise, Ali Pasha (age sixty-eight-ish).
Mr. Friston was digging in his garden when I wobbled up the lane.
"Aha!" he said, catching sight of me and my pocketful of pencils. "The Journal ,is it? Well, you're bang on time; Ali Pasha woke up this weekend just gone." Henry pointed to a small wooden box sitting in a pool of sunshine, next to a rain barrel.
"He's not living outside yet," the old man continued. "It's still a bit too cold at night. But he does like a spot of sunshine."
I propped up my ancient bike and squatted down next to the wooden box. The tortoise didn't look too pleased to see me, but I was enchanted by his crinkly, beaky head and the wise old eyes that blinked beadily in my direction. I'd never seen a real live tortoise before.
"Why is he called Ali Pasha?" I blurted out.
Not the finest opening question, I know.
"It's a very long story," said Henry. "Too long to go into now." My face must have fallen, but Henry, with a twinkle in his eye, continued, "If you're really interested, come back at the weekend, and I can tell you more. Sundays are best."
So I climbed on my bike and weaved my wonky way back to the office. I told the assistant editor that Ali Pasha was indeed awake, a photographer was sent off to take a picture, and the usual report went into Friday's paper, under the headline ALI'S AWAKE–SPRING HAS SPRUNG!
But I knew there was more to this story. And I couldn't wait to find out what that was.
CHAPTER 2Sunday came and, pencils in pocket, I headed off to Corton on my rusty steed. I'd spent so much of Saturday trying to come up with questions a proper reporter might ask that I'd hardly had time to eat, and my mum had started fussing that I was sickening for something. But I knew there was a story waiting to be discovered, a proper story, and I was determined to be the one to get it.
When I arrived at the railway carriage, Henry was busy in the garden again. "Hello, young fella," he said. "Brought your pencils, I see."
Henry stuck his fork into the earth and beckoned me toward a weather-beaten garden bench. Ali's wooden box was on the ground beside it.
"Take a seat. The wife's out helping at Sunday school this morning, so we shan't be disturbed. Would you like some apple juice?"
I'd never had juice quite like it. The deliciously crisp taste cleared my head of all the jumbled-up questions that were whizzing around in there. I told Henry so.
"Well, old Ali loves an apple, let me tell you." Henry sat down beside me on the bench and lifted the tortoise gently out of the box and onto his lap. "Goes back to our time in Egypt...."
And with that, Henry Friston began to tell me his story.
* * *
It all started with a map. This map was pinned to the schoolroom wall, and it had all the countries of the world on it. So many places, in fact, that it was difficult to believe they were all out there somewhere, just waiting to be explored. They were called things like Zanzibar and Honolulu, and, well, names like that are exciting enough to make any young lad's mind wander, aren't they? My mind was no different. I'd just stare at that map, with its mountains and deserts and wide expanses of pale blue sea, and I'd daydream....
Until Miss Hood threw a piece of chalk at my head to snap me out of it–which happened quite a lot.
"Daydreaming will get you nowhere, Henry Friston!" she would squawk, like an angry seagull, and send me to stand in the corner.
But I didn't mind. When I stood in the corner and faced the wall, I could carry on daydreaming in peace!
Sometimes, Miss Hood would keep me late to catch up on the lesson. I didn't mind this either–the classroom was quiet and peaceful, and Miss Hood was less fierce after school. She would look up from her marking and study me over the rim of her spectacles, like I was a tricky sum she was trying to solve.
"You're a bright boy, Henry Friston," she said to me on one such occasion, after I'd spent the entire morning watching a dragonfly zooming around outside. "But you're such a dreamer. Dreams are all well and good, but you need a plan, or they will never come true."
I decided then that Miss Hood was more like a wise old owl than an angry seagull.
When I was thirteen, I left school, as a lot of other boys did at the time. My family lived at the entrance to the local country estate–me; my parents; grandparents; my brothers, Ernest and Arthur; and my sisters, Ethel and Hilda, all crammed together into a tiny cottage with tall chimneys called Hawthorn Lodge. My dad worked as head gardener at the Big House on the cliffs, and my ma and grandma were in service there too. So after leaving school, I went and worked with my dad.
I was a proper country boy and loved working outside, tending to the hedges, weeding the flower beds, planting vegetables–anything that kept me out in the fresh air, really. But the Big House also had greenhouses for growing fruit. I didn't often willingly swap the outdoors to work inside, but going into those little glass buildings felt like stepping into another country, one that was hot and far away.
I looked after the melons and grapefruit–they were truly exotic fare back then. Seeing these strange and wonderful fruits ripening in the heat of the greenhouses made me daydream about where they came from. I would wonder whether it was those countries on the schoolroom map that also had strange and wonderful names.
Then, on my fourteenth birthday, I came one step closer to exploring the world. I was offered a job as a deckhand on a steam drifter, The Girl Ena, and swapped a life at the Big House for a life on the ocean wave. It felt like coming home, I tell you. Hauling nets was backbreaking work, and conditions were often rough and cold, but it didn't matter a jot to me. I was riding the rolling North Sea, and the waters stretched out before me as far as the eye could behold, leading to all those countries I had dreamed about.
Oh, yes, I may not have been a schoolboy anymore, but I'd never stopped daydreaming. Although now it wasn't Miss Hood's sticks of chalk that bounced off my head–it was herrings thrown by my crewmates.
I worked on The Girl Ena for five salty years. But on the twelfth of August, 1913, I got fed up with only dipping my toe in the ocean of adventure and decided it was time to dive right in.
I joined the Royal Navy.
* * *
Henry was swaying from side to side slightly as he spoke. I wondered if he was back on that steam drifter right then, still riding the waves in his imagination, still daydreaming, even now. A proper reporter would have been scribbling away furiously as Henry told his story, but I just wanted to listen and watch as the old man spoke, his eyes somewhere far away and his left hand resting protectively on the grizzled shell of his ancient companion.
A few moments of silence ticked awkwardly by, then Henry gave a little shiver and surfaced from his daydream. "Tea?" he asked, carefully lowering Ali back into the wooden box and getting to his feet. "How d'you take it?"
"Just milk, thanks," I said as he disappeared into the nearer of the railway carriages. I looked down at Ali Pasha. The tortoise looked back up at me, blinking. "So, Ali. Want to give me a quote about your pal Henry?" I said to him.
Blink.
"How about telling me what's coming next, then?"
Blink.
"Not exactly front-page stuff, Ali." I chuckled.
Before long, Henry emerged back out into the garden, carrying a tea tray. As he set it down, I noticed there was also a small wooden casket and an old photo on the tray. Henry passed me the photo and sat back as I studied it. It looked like a picture of him, but as I imagined a proper reporter might, I flipped the photo over to see if it had anything written on the back, to be sure. But instead of a name or date, there was just a sequence of letters and numbers: SS4384.
"Is this you, Henry?" I asked. "What does SS4384 mean?"
"Handsome fella, don't you think?" Henry chuckled, and took up the story again.
* * *
You never forget your navy number, and mine was SS4384. Soon as I got it, they sent me off to the HMS Pembroke base to train to be an ordinary seaman. No amount of hauling nets and landing catches on The Girl Ena could have prepared me for the right-to-the-bones exhaustion of training–day after day of orders yelled right into your face, endless marches with heavy packs, and tough physical training in all weathers. It was only when I proved myself nifty with a rifle (my dad had taught me to shoot from an early age) that the instructors eased off me a little. It was a blessed relief, that's for sure.
Eventually, through blood, sweat, and a lot of shots on target at the practice range, I was promoted to able seaman and sent to the battleship HMS Implacable. First time I clapped eyes on her, I was speechless. I'd seen all sorts of ships when I was out at sea, but none quite as vast as this one. She was like an iron giant. They wanted to train me to fire her enormous guns, and looking at them, I imagined I'd be able to hit the stars with a single shot.
Life aboard the battleship was like living in a world made entirely of metal. Iron decks, iron walls, iron doors, iron ladders, iron walkways–there was iron everywhere. I was one of a crew of 780, all crammed into small spaces that smelled of engine oil, coal, sweat, and fried onions from the mess decks. The sheer number of us meant we had to share hammocks at night. As one sailor got up for his spell of duty, his shipmate would swing himself up into the vacated hammock and get his kip. One in; one out. Each night, I'd drop into one of the hammocks like a lead weight and fall into an instant, exhausted sleep, oblivious to the snores and farts of my fellow crew around me.
Number Two Gun belonged to me and my mates–Matt the Cornishman, Long John from Liverpool, and Gus the Scot. All ex-fishermen and all a bit older than me, but we made quite some team. Passing, loading, and punching the heavy shells into the mouth of the great gun was tricky, especially when you were fighting against the rise and fall of the waves out at sea. The slightest slip could result in broken fingers, or worse. You had to trust your team, and I did–I trusted them with my life.
* * *
Henry leaned over to the tea tray and picked up the small wooden casket that was sitting on it. From his box on the ground, Ali Pasha stretched out his wrinkly neck, as if to get a better view of what was going on.
"This here's my ditty box, lad," Henry said, lifting the lid. "We all got given one on board, to hold our personal possessions and the like."
The ditty box was old, but it gleamed from regular polishing and was obviously a treasured possession. As Henry rummaged inside, I got a glimpse of some yellowing postcards and more photographs. I opened my mouth to ask if I could have a look at them, but Henry found what he was looking for and closed the lid. "You can see those another time," he said, answering my unasked question. Instead, he handed me a small, very worn book. It was a dull kind of red with a battered yellow spine, and once again his navy number, SS4384, was written on the cover.
And heaving himself up to standing, Henry headed off to the vegetable patch. I looked at Ali. He looked back. I could have sworn he bobbed his head, just a little, like he was nodding his approval. So I opened the book and discovered brittle pages filled with tight lines of inky script, sometimes introduced by neatly written dates.
It was Henry's wartime diary.
4th August 1914
Would you know it — we're at war with Germany! The quartermaster piped it through when we were coaling the ship around six P.M. this evening. "Hostilities will commence at midnight," he said. Finally looks like we'll get to see some action. About time too.
Wonder where we'll be sent? Wouldn't mind going to Zanzibar. I can still remember exactly where it was on the old school map.
31st October 1914
Well, it's not exactly Zanzibar, but we've made it as far as Belgium. I've been here before, on The Girl Ena, but at least I'm not hauling fish this time. We're landing heavy fire on the Germans ("Fritz," Long John calls them). We're shelling them as they make their way to the Front in France. KABOOOOM!
I heard on the mess deck yesterday that Austria and Hungary have joined up with the Germans to fight against us. One of the mess boys, Moby Richards — who'd heard it from one of the lads in the telegraph room — told me so as he dolloped a mountain of mash onto my plate. Didn't taste so good after I heard that. Got a little side order of news with my beef broth tonight too — the bloomin' Turks are against us as well. No idea why they're choosing Fritz over us. Hasn't anyone told them the Germans don't have a chance?
Can't help thinking about Ernie and Arthur. They are my kid brothers, after all. Last I heard, they were in France with the army, stuck in no-man's-land. Ma must be going out of her mind with worry, with all three of us away fighting. Bet she's proud of us all, though.
As I read this entry, sitting in the peaceful safety of Henry's garden, I felt a little shiver run up my spine. I had a little brother too. Georgie. I could imagine how worried I'd be if he were out fighting somewhere, miles and miles from home, maybe alive, maybe dead. George could barely fire a decent shot from a catapult, let alone a gun. If this had been wartime, though, he'd have had only a couple more years before call-up. Then he'd have had to go off and fight for his country. And I would have already been at war! How had Henry coped so far from home and so far from news of his family?
I stood up to get a better view of the vegetable patch, but Henry was still bent over his spade, digging and turning the soil. So I sank back down on the bench and carried on reading.
It soon became clear that life on the Implacable in Belgium consisted of eating, training, shelling, sleeping, and then shelling some more. Although I'd never have said as much to Henry, I found it all a tiny bit disappointing. Where were the battles, the secret missions, the daring nighttime raids on enemy territory? The sailors must have been itching to see some action after doing the same thing day after day after day – I was certainly itching to read about it!
I was ready to make a polite excuse to leave, but as I gently laid the diary on the bench beside me, a sudden gust of wind caught the thin pages and flipped them to the entry for March 13, 1915. I knew instantly that something had changed.
It said just two words: To Gallipoli!
CHAPTER 3"Where's Gallipoli?" I called over to Henry.
The old man straightened abruptly from his digging, as if I'd shouted BOO in his ear. He paused for a second, then, pushing his spade into the earth, he headed back to the bench and settled down next to me with a sigh.
"You're not the first to ask me that, you know," he said, the faraway look returning to his eyes. I knew he was back on the Implacable again.
I waited as Henry lifted Ali out of his box, settled the tortoise gently into his lap, and began to speak.
* * *
Cornish Matt asked me the same question forty years ago.
The lads of Number Two Gun always came to me to find out about places they'd heard news of from the telegraph room. They knew I could answer their questions, but I could show them too, thanks to the world map I kept tucked inside my ditty box. My dad had given it to me before I left for war.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Tortoise and the Soldier by Michael Foreman. Copyright © 2013 Michael Foreman. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
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