Alfie Bennington

A Story of World War I

In my 2022 novel Renaissance Radio, my character Francis Calderon shares a story from his experience during the First World War. Francis tells this story during a national radio broadcast a decade after the war ended, on the tenth Armistice Day (what we’ve long since renamed Veterans Day here in the United States) — November 11, 1928:

In July 1917, Lieutenant Harold Hanley shows up at the veterinary facility with a youth in tow.  “Alfie, this is the veterinarian I told you about,” Lieutenant Hadley tells him, “Mister Francis Calderon.”  I nod Alfie’s way.  “Now run along, will you, Alfie?   Give me a few minutes to talk with Mister Calderon.”  Alfie ambles away.

“Francis, this lad is 16.  Alfie Bennington, that’s his name.  He made false declaration of age in England, said he was 19, and the bloody fools sent him here to the Front.  Our new captain can’t possibly have him facing combat.  I was wondering if you could take him on as a veterinary assistant of some sort?”

“Can’t you just send him back to England?”

“Yes, but he’s so eager to be part of it all.”

“I’ll give him a chance, Harold.  One week.  No guarantees.”

“All I can ask for, Francis,” he replies.  “Alfie,” he yells, and when the boy comes back, Hadley explains to him that he has a job for one week.  Alfie nods.  I shake his hand and he says, “good morning, Mister Calderon”. 

Later, after he’s gotten his belongings and put them in a guest room, he comes back over and watches me work with the animals.

“Why’d you say you were 19, Alfie?”

“I wanted to get at the Germans,” he replies, “have a go at ‘em.”

“As a pink-faced lad who’d never shaved?” I ask.

“I shave my face every morning,” he insists.  “I wanted to put on a helmet and pack, join in battle, get up into the line, and play the part of a good brave man.  I might be a young scamp, but I’ve got the makings of a man.”

“This was all about testing yourself?” I ask him.  “To see if you have guts?”

“Yes!” he asserts.  Then he averts his eyes from me and admits, “well, I was bored with my job, too.  A dull, dreary, dead-end job.  Very hum-drum, you know?  I wanted an adventure.”

“You’re an honest chap,” I say.  “I’m glad.  What did you tell them when you handed them your attestation form?”

“I told ‘em, ‘I can ride jolly quick on my bicycle’,” Alfie says.  “Also, ‘I’m very strong and win fights.  I’m a good shot with a revolver.  And I’ll give a good account of myself.’”

“No wonder you convinced them,” I tell him.  “You’ve got pluck and dash.  How tall are you?”

“Five-foot-five.”

“Do they have to lift you up to see over the trench?”

“Yes.”

“Good grief.” 

He looks around at the animals.  “I was in the Scouts, and in the Boys’ Brigade.  Lots of training.  I’ve got self-discipline.  And I grew up on a small farm.  A few cows, a few sheep, a couple horses.  What we got here?”

“Mules.”

“What are mules?”

The next morning I give Alfie the grand tour of the veterinary clinic.  “A mule comes from a male donkey and a female horse,” I tell him.  “But mules are not laid back like donkeys and they don’t prance like horses.  Also, mules will take on no danger for their handlers.”

“Mules have some strengths,” Alfie observes.

“During the Spanish-American War,” I tell him, “Spanish soldiers shot the mules first, then took aim at the American soldiers.”

“They saw the value of the mules,” Alfie says.

“Mules have great value,” I reply.  “Mules are calmer than horses.  Horses caught in barbed wire will lose control – they’ll get too excited and then panic – and injure themselves even worse.  Mules take their time and either figure out how to free themselves without injuring themselves or wait patiently for help.”

Alfie raises an eyebrow.  “You’re saying they have good judgment?”

“Keen judgment about what they can and cannot handle,” I say.  “How many hours they can work, how much weight they can pull.  They used mules in the gold and coal mines.  The mules would get together, count the number of cars the miners had hooked together, and if the mules thought it was too many cars, all the mules would stand their ground and refuse to move until the load was lightened.”

“Amazing!” Alfie exclaims.  “And I love their magnificent ears.”

“Those ears go up like a jackrabbit’s and they collapse like a pair of scissors.  And when their ears flop in rhythm with their gait, it means all is right in their world.”

A couple things go awry.  During his first week Alfie leaves one of the corral gates unlatched.  Suddenly a couple dozen mules are enjoying their freedom – shaking their heads, stamping their hooves, kicking, playing, and then running and scattering in all directions.  The younger they are the friskier they get, and none of them pay any attention to our shouting.  They race back and forth until we finally get them rounded up, turned around, and back in the corral.  I give Alfie a talking to, but I’m too amused by the ruckus to carry my admonishment on for more than a minute. 

I begin in earnest to teach Alfie everything about mules.  How they have a sense of justice and how they know the difference between discipline and abuse.  How to brush them, pat their necks, pet their backs, rub and stroke their ears, talk with them, and feed them so they know you respect them.  How they’ll play with you, even play mind games with you, because they like people who treat them right and because they have a sense of humor.

I’ve been teaching Alfie that mules notice everything but almost nothing bothers them.  Mules have a hefty sense of self-preservation and they evaluate situations and determine how dangerous they are.  They have an uncanny ability to detect bad ground, so they’ll stop in their tracks.  And they know how many hours of work they can handle, and when they need a break or are done for the day – and there’s no changing their minds.

There’s one important thing I forget to tell Alfie.  If a mule sees anything moving on the ground – like a rope or a hose – he’ll think it’s a snake and he’ll react from fear.  One day Alfie is moving a water hose when a colt looks back and gets angry.  The colt attacks a young British lieutenant with a blow on the thigh, kicks him again and knocks him over, and then bites him.  I’m there within a minute but it‘s too late.  The mule has to be put down with a revolver shot to the head.

Alfie is devastated.  He mopes around for days.  But it turns out that Alfie has a good aptitude for veterinary work.  He’s good at looking after basic care of the mules.  For one thing, he’s already learned how to clean out a mule’s hoof with a knife.

I handle every diagnosis.  Alfie checks for signs of bruising or sensitivity in the leg by tapping the handle of the knife against the hoof.  When the mule flinches as Alfie presses the lad will say, “here’s the spot!  Here’s the trouble!”  He’s quite proud of his newfound skills.

It’s up to me to reset mangled bones and snap pulled joints back into place.  Alfie’s learned how to dip plaster bandages in warm water and apply them to the fracture in a mule’s leg.

It’s my role to inject all medications.  Alfie’s learned what all of them are and he keeps them in jars on shelves.  Catgut, iodoform, antibiotics, chloroform, barbiturate anesthetic, prontonsil, Kaolin poultice – he knows each of them by sight and he’s gaining clearer and clearer notions of what each of them does. 

As prudence would dictate, I perform all surgeries.  Alfie’s getting good at cleaning skin and disinfecting wounds.

I also let Alfie nurse mules back to a full healthy recovery.  After a mule comes out of surgery or some other procedure, Alfie will help the animal stagger to its feet, amble about, and then walk with more and more strength.  He likes getting the mule to eat its hay and enjoys watching the mule savor tufts as it drags them into its mouth.  He loves helping the animal gain weight, breathe normally, twitch its tail regularly, get the intensity of life back in its eyes, and get healthier and healthier until it’s as good as new. 

Alfie’s biggest veterinary achievement comes along during a procedure to relieve a bacterial infection in a mule’s leg that’s turned into an abscess.  I handle the local anesthetic, make the initial incision, and reach the infection site with the needle.  Then I let Alfie hold the muscle fibers apart with retractors.  In no time at all, a small trickle of pus begins flowing out of the mule’s leg.  I tell Alfie to open the forceps as wide as possible.  He does, and the enlarged drainage hole turns the trickle into an outpour, which gushes out of the mule’s leg and onto the straw.  Success.

When we complete that job Alfie gets up, walks tall, pumps his fist, smiles, and yells, “I’m going to be a veterinarian!”

November 10, 1918.  Lieutenant Hanley and I are talking as we sit and eat a meal.  I ask him, “so, Harold, how many under-age Brits are serving in this war?”

He thinks for a moment.  “I’ve heard it’s been close to a quarter-million.”

I’m stunned. “And how many have been casualties?”

“At least 100,000.”

“And the youngest to die?” I ask.

“Quite a few were 15,” he informs me.  “The youngest we know of was 14.”

“How civilized you Brits are.”

“All these under-age blokes want to be here, Francis,” he replies.  “You know how much Alfie wants to be here.”

“Youth think they’re indestructible,” I say.  “They’re foolish.  But the British Army should know better.”

A note is passed to Lt. Hanley.  He looks at me with a wide smile.  “Ceasefire.  End of all hostilities.  The war’s over, Francis!  Tomorrow morning.  11:00 sharp tomorrow morning.”

Four years of war, ten million combatant deaths, 15 million combatants wounded, and six million civilian deaths.  And now it comes to its end.  It’s a hope so long delayed it’s hard to believe it’s true.

The next morning I decide that I’ll head over with my own wagon to take a warm meal to a couple hundred soldiers as they leave the trenches.  Alfie insists on going with me.  “I’d be awfully pleased to be there as it ends,” he says.  When I finally relent he says, “thanks, awfully”.  Brits use the world “awfully” in the strangest ways.  

We head out about 9:30.  I hold back a couple miles from the Front.  The order’s gone out: “stand fast until eleven, absolutely no let-up until eleven.”  I’m determined we’ll not risk our lives, just feed 200 men.

A soldier is joking.  They’ve developed their own appalling gallows humor to get through the war.  “No more R.I.P.s!” he shouts out to me.  “No more ‘Rise If Possible’.  No more ‘Rest In Pieces’.”

Alfie enjoys this dark humor and chuckles a while.  “I’ll go on living!” he shouts to me.  “I’m still in the flush of youth.  My whole life lies ahead of me!” 

“It’s a deep relief to all of us, Alfie,” I respond.  “We will all live.  Now, whaddya say, lad, have you proven something to yourself the past year and a half?”

“Yes!  I’m a boy in years but a man in deeds!”

“Very good.”

By 10:50, our happiness is turning to joy and our joy to elation.  The mules are picking up on our good mood.  The ears of the mules are flopping in rhythm with their gait.  Alfie’s fingers are holding the reins and the coats of the mules are gleaming and glistening in the sunshine.

I park our wagon behind the third trench as some troops begin moving out of it.  Alfie jumps out and begins running toward them.  I move the wagon closer to the second trench as soldiers begin emerging from it.  Everyone is jubilant. 

I’ve told Alfie that I want to feed soldiers from the front trench.  Alfie begins running toward it.  I’m just 30 feet behind him in the wagon, keeping an eye out for where he’s going.  He yells at a soldier in the front trench, “we’ve got a warm meal for 200 of you blokes!”  The soldier smiles and passes word along.

A second later Alfie is staggering backwards and yelling out, “I’ve been hit!”  I jump off the buckboard and run, catching him in my arms before he falls.  A jet of warm blood is coming out of his forehead.  I’m in disbelief.  A German sniper.

I squat and lay him over my lap.  I grab my handkerchief and try to stem the flow of blood from his wound.  He lets out a groan.  He’s getting pale.  His puzzled eyes fix on me with a pleading stare.  “Alfie!” I cry out, as if my loud dazed sound will heal him.

“I stopped a bullet with my head,” he says.  “Did I save anyone?”

“Of course you did, Alfie.”

“I’ve noticed that wounded mules suffer in silence,” he tells me.

“What?” I ask in confusion.  “Umm, yes, yes, wounded mules suffer in silence.”

“I want home with all my being.”

“Of course you do, Alfie.”

His eyes are questioning.  “Why?”

“I don’t know why, angelito.”

“Mum!” he yells out.  “I see light.  Colors.  Angels.  Light.  Bright light.  Mister Calderon, will you hold me till I go?”

“Till your last moment, lad.”

His sweet, gentle face becomes serene.  He glances around one last time at the battlefield.  His strength is draining away.  

“Francis?”

“Yes, Alfie?”

“I was an imprisoned bird.  Now I’m free.” 

In my hand I feel this youth’s warmth departing his lifeless body, like a candle being blown out.  Then I sense his soul take its leave and step out into eternity.  At my feet lays the cap he has worn every day for these 16 months we’ve worked together.  I glance at my watch.  It’s 10:59 a.m.