War Horse

Friedrich leads the horses toward battle, and as they stop to rest, two young soldiers approach them. Rudi, a farmer before joining the war, is especially taken with Topthorn’s fine features. His friend, Karl, laughs at Rudi being awestruck over a horse, to which Rudi responds, “To find a horse like this in the middle of this filthy abomination of a war is for me like finding a butterfly on a dung heap” (100). As he is speaking, Joey notices how young Rudi is. He looks about the same age as Albert was when they were separated: “a child dressed up as a soldier” (101). Despite their significant age difference, Rudi and Friedrich are alike in their respect and love for the horses. Rudi walks alongside Friedrich, Joey, and Topthorn as they walk to the river to drink.

At the river, Topthorn seems to be behaving as normal. He dips his head in the water and shakes it onto Joey to cool him off, just as he always does. Once they leave the river, however, Topthorn suddenly stumbles, his movements requiring more effort with each step. His breathing is “suddenly short and rasping” (101), then he drops to his knees. Topthorn looks up at Joey one last time before slumping over. Joey “bend[s] down to nuzzle him […] but [he knows] instinctively that he [is] dead” (102). Friedrich kneels on the ground beside Topthorn and cries out that the horse has died. A soldier tries to get Friedrich to keep moving, but Friedrich refuses to leave Topthorn’s side.

The veterinary officer runs down the hill to inspect the body and comes to the same conclusion. He shakes his head in sadness, saying, “We should not treat horses like this—we treat our machines better” (103). He laments the harsh conditions of working too much on too little food that have led to the needless deaths of many horses in the war, including Topthorn. The soldiers stand around Friedrich and Topthorn in silence, “in a moment of spontaneous respect and sadness” (103). Many of them had come to love and respect Topthorn during their time together; he had become a part of their lives.

Their mourning is interrupted by an explosion that lands in the river. The silence turns to screams as men run toward them to escape the shelling behind them. Joey’s “first inclination [is] to run with them” (104), but he shakes it off, refusing to abandon Topthorn. Friedrich does all he can to get Joey to leave, “but no man can move a horse that does not wish to be moved, and [Joey does] not want to go” (104). After pulling on Joey’s reins and pleading with him to move, Friedrich drops the reins and begins to run. He is too slow, however, and is soon shot down. His body rolls back toward Topthorn and lands beside him, dead. Joey remains where he is, watching his troop “struggling to pull the gun up through the trees” (104) until they disappear, leaving Joey alone with the bodies of his dearest friends.

Joey stays where he is “all that day and into the night” (105). The shelling continues all around him, but his fear is “overwhelmed by a powerful sense of sadness and love that [compels him] to stay with Topthorn for as long as [he can]” (105). Joey knows that once he leaves Topthorn behind, he will be completely and utterly alone.

At dawn, Joey looks up from his grazing to a deafening sound that fills the air. A roar of grating steel emerges from a “gray lumbering monster that belch[es] out smoke from behind” (106). Though Joey doesn’t realize it, the monster is a tank; before long, multiple tanks advance toward him. Joey stands and watches them move past Topthorn and Friedrich's bodies and then takes off running. He runs “through empty farmyards, jumping fences and ditches and abandoned trenches, and clattering through deserted, ruined villages” (107). He stops to sleep in a meadow, where he no longer hears the terrible sounds of tanks and guns.

Joey awakes to the sound of explosions all around him. He moves, directionless, to escape and runs straight into a barbed wire fence, his foreleg getting snared in the coil of barbs. He eventually manages to pull free, but not without injuring his leg, and he can only limp along after that. Joey, “[b]leeding, bruised, and terrified beyond belief” (108), wishes that Topthorn were with him to lead the way.

Joey’s leg continues to stiffen throughout the night; eventually, he can’t put any weight on it. For Joey, this is “the longest night of [his] life, a nightmare of agony, terror, and loneliness” (109). The mist surrounding him grows thick, and he must rely on only the sounds of the roaring tanks and gunfire to know which way to move next. When he finally stops and takes his bearings, he finds himself in a “wide corridor of mud, a wasted shattered landscape, between two fast, unending rolls of barbed wire” (112). He has arrived again in “no-man’s-land” (112).

In no-man’s-land, Joey walks back and forth between the German and the British, searching for a hole in the barbed wire fence. He is drawn to both sides by the smell of warm food and the soldiers who cheer him on as he nears them. However, the fence bars him from crossing into either camp, and he has to settle for eating “a small patch of coarse, dank grass growing on the lip of an old crater” (114) to satisfy his gnawing hunger.

While devouring what little grass is left in no-man’s-land, Joey spies an older German soldier “climb[ing] up out of the trenches, waving a white flag above his head” (114). Meanwhile, on the other side, a young, red-faced British soldier emerges with a white flag of his own. The German cups his hand and extends it in Joey’s direction. Joey slowly walks toward it in hopes of being given food. Behind him, the British soldier calls after Joey, telling him to wait.

Eventually, the two soldiers come face to face with each other, and “[f]or a few strained, silent moments, the two [stand] yards apart from each other, eyeing one another” (115). The British soldier, who turns out to be a young Welshman, breaks the silence. Luckily, the German speaks some English, and the two can communicate.

Neither knows the best way to determine who is entitled to take Joey. Instead of heavily debating who will keep the horse, the two soldiers turn their attention to Joey’s wounded leg. The Welshman examines it tenderly and says it isn’t broken, but the horse has clearly lost a lot of blood. They will need to act fast to treat the wound, “or else the poison will set in, and there won’t be a lot anyone can do for him” (117). Both soldiers have veterinary hospitals where they could take the horse, so they decide to flip a coin for Joey. Whoever wins the coin toss will take him to their side of no-man’s-land and care for him there.

The Welshman wins the coin toss, and he and the German part ways civilly. The German remarks on the irony of their situation, saying, “We’ve shown them, haven’t we? We have shown them that any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other” (119). The Welshman agrees, amazed at the truth in the German’s comment. With that, the soldiers part ways, and Joey is again led to the British army's side.