Hope and Loss Theme Analysis

Once, after we had plodded on, too tired to be fearful, through a devastating barrage […] one of the soldiers with his tunic covered in blood and mud, came and stood by my head and threw his good arm around my neck and kissed me.

“Thank you, my friend,” he said. “I never thought they would get us out of that hellhole. I found this yesterday, and thought about keeping it for myself, but I know where it belongs.” And he reached up and hung a muddied ribbon around my neck. There was an Iron Cross dangling on the end of it. “You’ll have to share it with your friend,” he said. […] The waiting wounded outside the hospital tent clapped and cheered us to the echo, bringing doctors, nurses, and patients running out of the tent to see what there could be to clap about in the midst of all this misery.

[He] put his hands on her shoulders and said, “Nonsense, Emilie. They like to work. They need to work. And besides, the only way for us to go on living, Emilie, is to go on like we did before. The soldiers have gone now, so if we pretend hard enough, then maybe the war will go away altogether. We must live as we have always lived, cutting our hay, picking our apples, and tilling our soil. We cannot live as if there will be no tomorrow. We can only live if we eat, and our food comes from the land. We must work the land if we want to live and these two must work it with us. They don’t mind—they like the work. Look at them, Emilie—do they look unhappy?”

“I tell you, my friends,” he said one day, “I tell you that I am the only sane man in the regiment. It’s the others who are crazy, but they don’t know it. They fight a war and they don’t know what for. Isn’t that crazy? How can one man kill another and not really know the reason why he does it, except that the other man wears a different color uniform and speaks a different language? And it’s me they call crazy! You two are the only rational creatures I’ve met in this stupid war, and like me, the only reason you’re here is because you were brought here […]. As it is, I’m going to live out this war as ‘Crazy Old Friedrich,’ so that I can return again to Schleiden and become Butcher Friedrich that everyone knew and respected before all this mess began.”

Albert suddenly dropped my tail and moved slowly around me running his hand along my back. Then at last we stood facing each other. There was a rougher hue to his face, I thought; he had more lines around his eyes and was a broader, bigger man in his uniform than I remembered him. But he was my Albert, and there was no doubt about it […].

“Joey?” he said, tentatively, looking into my eyes. “Joey?” I tossed up my head and called out to him in my happiness, so that the sound echoed around the yard […]. Then he turned and walked away to the gateway before facing me, cupping his hands to his lips and whistling. It was his own whistle, the same low, stuttering whistle he had used to call me [before].

Major Martin cleaned my wound and stitched it up, and although at first I could still put little weight on it, I felt in myself stronger with every day that passed. Albert was with me again, and that in itself was medicine enough; but properly fed once more with warm mash each morning and a never-ending supply of sweet-scented hay, my recovery seemed only a matter of time. Albert, like the other veterinary orderlies, had many other horses to care for, but he would spend every spare minute he could find fussing over me in the stable […].

But time passed and I did not get better.

That’s what they said it was—one stray shell out of nowhere and he’s gone. I will miss him, Joey. We’ll both miss him, won’t we? […] You know what he was, Joey, before the war? He had a fruit cart in London, outside Covent Garden. Thought the world of you, Joey. Told me often enough. And he looked after me, Joey. Like a brother he was to me. Twenty years old. He had his whole life ahead of him. All wasted now, ’cause of one stray shell. He always told me, Joey. He’d say, ‘At least if I go, there’ll be no one that’ll miss me. Only my cart—and I can’t take that with me, and that’s a pity.’ He was proud of his cart, showed me a photo of himself standing by it.

You do not understand at all. I will sell you this horse for one English penny, and for a solemn promise—that you will always love this horse as much as my Emilie did and that you will care for him until the end of his days. And more than this, I want you to tell everyone about my Emilie and about how she looked after your Joey and the big black horse when they came to live with us. You see, my friend, I want my Emilie to live on in people’s hearts. I shall die soon, in a few years, no more, and then no one will remember my Emilie as she was […]. I want you to tell your friends at home about my Emilie […]. That way she will live forever, and that is what I want. Is it a bargain between us?