War Stories

by Michael Morpurgo

‘Some dads are still here,’ she said. ‘Mine is.’

  ‘Your dad’s only got one arm,’ said Christine. ‘He’s like Captain Hook in that book Miss House reads us.’

  ‘Peter Pan,’ Elizabeth said with a sigh. She had seen Sally’s dad collecting milk cans out in the country, lifting one with his left hand, and hoisting another up with the hook on the end of his metal right arm. She was glad her father was at home, able to sit down in the evening and read her adventure stories, and yet she hated to be told that he was frightened of the great war game on the other side of the world. She rather envied Toby, who had a hero for a father.

  That night (just as she always did), her mother turned on the radio to listen to the news.

  ‘This is the BBC World News,’ said a voice, sounding like the voice of a magician casting a spell.

  ‘It looks as if the Germans might take Moscow,’ said Elizabeth’s father, sighing and shaking his head

  ‘They’ve backed off from Britain,’ said her mother. ‘Russia’s a lot easier.’ But Elizabeth’s mother always spoke as if Britain was the hero of the war game and was bound to win out in the end because the heroes of stories always won.

  There were three maps on the dark wall of the hut they lived in – one of New Zealand itself – the South Island looking rather like a drawer with a knobbly handle sticking out of its east coast, the North Island leaping up like an eager, flying, scarlet giraffe, stretching its neck towards the middle of the world. The second map showed the whole world, with New Zealand still leaping and stretching, still scarlet, but looking unexpectedly small, down in the far south. There was nothing much after New Zealand except the white borders of the Antarctic. The third map was the map Elizabeth called the War Map. There was Italy, pale purple like a bruised leg, dancing in the Mediterranean Sea. There was Spain, yellow and somehow off to one side. But then there was France (blue) and Germany (green like a sinister, rotting moss). There was Holland. And there, separated from all the other countries, by a blue sleeve of sea was Britain – gallant old Britain, as her mother always called it, sometimes touching it tenderly as she said its name – scarlet again, and still free. Other countries had been beaten back and taken over. Britain alone was confronting that savage mossy-green dragon that had devoured country after country.

  ‘England is just wonderful,’ said Elizabeth’s mother. ‘It’s the greatest country in the world. And the English speak so beautifully.’

  Elizabeth’s father looked up, smiling. He had a slow, crooked smile and a dimple in his right cheek, so his smile often reminded Elizabeth of a question mark lying on its side.

  Elizabeth and her parents were living, almost camping for a while, in the far north of the North Island of New Zealand – high on the neck of the giraffe – sleeping in a caravan, but eating and reading and talking by lamplight in an old tin hut. Every morning, as they crossed from bed to breakfast, they looked down a long grassy slope, across a road, past headlands rough and dark against a clear sky, and out to sea.

  ‘Dad, why aren’t you off at the war?’ Elizabeth asked her father that night as he passed her her dinner on a white enamel dish.

  ‘You keep asking me that,’ he said, smiling his question-mark smile. ‘Do other people ask you?’

  Elizabeth’s mother broke in. ‘He’d go if he could,’ she said, ‘but he’s older than most fathers. He was in the Great War. A lot of people don’t know that.’

  ‘They only want young, quick guys for the front line,’ Elizabeth’s father told her, still smiling. ‘I’m too old to be worth shooting.’

  ‘You could fly a Spitfire,’ suggested Elizabeth, half holding her arms out on either side as if she might take off across the rickety table.

  ‘Look! This is important work we’re doing here,’ Elizabeth’s mother cried. ‘This is war work just as much as flying any Spitfire. You tell the kids at school how important it is that things get from place to place. And things are hard to shift from place to place unless there are wharves for the ships to pull up to.’

  Elizabeth’s father was working on the edge of the sea, building a new wharf because, a year ago, the old wharf had caught fire and burned. The black bones of that first wharf were still there, sticking out of the clear green water. The tide swirled around them as it came in to lap at the beach, dancing a little mockingly before racing back out again. Elizabeth’s father and his men (older men but still strong and hard-working) were driving the piles of the new wharf. An iron weight – the one-ton monkey – was hoisted by the winch up high on the derrick and then dropped down (then down again, and down again), driving the long wooden piles that would support the new wharf through sea and sand and deep into the hard land below. Pile-driving made a sound like a dull, slow drumbeat, and sometimes Elizabeth could feel that beat coming up through the soles of her shoes and into her bones.

  Elizabeth’s school was miles away, but each morning the milk truck came along and Elizabeth and her mother went out to the truck, her mother with a billy and Elizabeth with her school case.

  ‘Any news?’ her mother would ask as the milk-truck man filled the billy from one of the big cans of milk that crowded the back of the truck. Though Elizabeth’s family had a radio, it ran on batteries and they could not always get the stations playing the newest news. The war was far far away on the other side of the world, and things happened overnight. Battles were won and lost while Elizabeth and her parents slept, and the war was like any good story. People were always longing to know what was happening next.

  As Mr Grey, the milk-truck man, talked to her mother, Elizabeth climbed into the truck, joining Toby Beckett who was a milk-truck traveller too. Off they would go (stopping every so often to deliver milk), until they reached the school, when Elizabeth and Toby would scramble out of the truck which would drive on to collect milk from farms further up the road. In the afternoon, the local doctor, driving back from an afternoon clinic, would bring them home. She and Toby Beckett shared the back seat of the doctor’s car and often talked about the war.

  ‘I hope it goes on until I can enlist,’ Toby said. ‘My dad’s having adventures. He’s been fighting in Crete. I could go over and then we’d fight together. Side by side! Him and me!’

  ‘My dad and I fight in Crete too,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Concrete, that is.’

  ‘Why isn’t your dad away at the war?’ asked Tony yet again – not making fun of her this time, simply curious. ‘Is he a … a conscience objector or something?’

  ‘He’s a bit too old,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘He was in the Great War, though.’ She always emphasized the word ‘great’, hoping to remind Toby that that other earlier war was a bigger, better war than the one his father was fighting.

  ‘They didn’t have Spitfires back then,’ said Toby. He spoke as if that first world war was an old-fashioned, childish game which did not count any more.

  Elizabeth was supposed to be in bed by the time the latest episode of the war story played over their radio in the evening but, if she sat quietly, her parents did not always remember she was there listening in. A serious voice would say, ‘And now – the evening news.’ Then, suddenly, the hut would echo to the sound of a great clock chiming, then solemnly striking nine times.

  ‘Big Ben!’ her mother often said, sounding satisfied in a curious way. New Zealand might be at the very bottom of the world map, and they might be living in a tin hut and a caravan, but the very sound of London could fly across the world to ring out there in the hut with them. They were still part of the true world.

  ‘Holland and Belgium are small places. Of course they couldn’t stand out against Germany,’ Elizabeth’s mother told her as she swept out the ashes in the fireplace. ‘But France is a big country and the Germans just swept through it.’ Her mother made a sweeping gesture. Ash flew off the little hand broom and into the dim air of the hut. ‘And then there was Greece. And Crete. Britain’s the only country that’s stood out against the Germans so far.’ She said ‘Germans’ screwing up her face as
if the mere word tasted horrible.

  ‘Your mother’s a Christchurch woman,’ said Dad, grinning across at Elizabeth. ‘Christchurch still thinks it’s a little bit of Britain.’

  ‘Well, it’s the most English city this side of the equator,’ Mum said proudly. ‘One day you’ll see our Christchurch, Elizabeth. It’s down in the South Island and it has a cathedral and beautiful stone buildings – parks full of oak trees with bluebells growing under them And daffodils growing along the Avon – that’s the river that runs through Christchurch. When spring comes the whole city just blossoms. It’s beautiful. And you can laugh at me,’ she said, looking over at Elizabeth’s father, half laughing herself, ‘but the British are wonderful. They write such beautiful books and they speak so nicely.’

  ‘It’s beautiful here, too,’ said Dad, smiling his smile that also asked a question. ‘We look out at the rocks and the sea – bush grows down almost to the water.’

  ‘It is beautiful,’ Mum agreed, ‘but it’s just not the same. You know that. You came from England.’

  ‘Years ago!’ said Dad. ‘And this has probably been a better place for a man like me to grow up in. I’ve had work – earned a good living.’

  ‘But you are on Britain’s side,’ said Elizabeth, just to make sure.

  ‘Of course I am,’ said Dad. ‘It’s just that having been in that first war has mixed life up for me in some ways. But of course I want us to win – you bet I do. After all, your uncles are over there doing their bit. Their turn, this time round!’

  On the shelf above the fireplace beside the radio were photographs of two of Dad’s younger brothers: Uncle Stan and Uncle Cliff, one in the army and one in the air force, both overseas and doing their bit, playing the war game. Uncle Cliff might even fly Spitfires. In her mind Elizabeth saw him with his arms held out on either side of him, whisking though the air, making aeroplane noises as he went.

  ‘I wish I could be adventurous!’ Elizabeth told Toby, longingly. ‘You could fight beside your dad, and I could fight beside my uncles’

  ‘You’d have to be a nurse,’ Toby said. ‘Girls don’t fly Spitfires.’

  ‘I could cut my hair and dress up as a boy,’ Elizabeth said, dreamily. As she said it she half believed she could. She could see herself smiling gallantly, saluting as she took the brake off – if Spitfires had brakes, that is. The plane would move forward … it would lift into the air … she would be flying … flying; half girl and half bird.

  Butter was rationed because New Zealand was sending as much butter as it could to Britain. Sugar was rationed too. ‘Well, we just have to back up the British,’ said Mum. ‘And we don’t need a lot of sweets. They’re bad for our teeth.’

  ‘It would be nice to have some Christmas chocolate,’ said Elizabeth. A sudden doubt overcame her. Were Christmases going to be rationed too? ‘Are we going to have any Christmas this year?’

  ‘Of course we are,’ said her father. ‘Maybe no sweets, but we’ll have a Christmas tree.’

  ‘And Christmas stockings,’ said Elizabeth. It was good to feel that there were some things that could be relied on.

  December came in. School was about to break up for the summer holidays, and just after midsummer’s day it would be Christmas. But then, suddenly, everything changed.

  The voices on the radio crackled differently, sounding sharp with new alarm and a different sort of fear. The summer air no longer felt open and carefree. The Germans were closing in on Moscow – the capital of far-away Russia – but suddenly Moscow did not seem to matter quite as much. A new place was being talked about. Something terrible had happened at a place called Pearl Harbour.

  ‘The Japanese!’ cried Mum.

  ‘What?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘The people in Japan?’

  ‘They’ve attacked the Americans at Pearl Harbour,’ her father said. ‘It sounds as if they’ve wiped out the American fleet. Listen!’

  The radio talked on and on and, as it talked, the war stopped being quite the distant adventure game it had been yesterday. Suddenly the adventure seemed much closer and more dangerous, turning its head in New Zealand’s direction, baring its blood-stained teeth at them. Dangerous. But, of course, adventures were meant to be dangerous. That’s what made them adventurous.

  ‘The Japanese have bombed Hong Kong – they’ve bombed the British,’ said Mum. ‘What’s going on? What’s happening to the world. Well, they won’t get far with the British.’

  ‘The Germans did,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘But the Japanese – they won’t have had the practice – they won’t have the planes that the British have,’ her mother replied.

  ‘They’ve been fighting China for a while,’ said her father in a quiet voice, almost as if he was speaking to himself. ‘They’ve probably worked out a few tactics by now.’

  ‘The Japs won’t get far,’ said Toby next day at school. ‘We’ll fight them off.’ He danced and punched the air.

  ‘But most of our soldiers are off fighting Germans,’ Elizabeth said doubtfully.‘We can’t send a whole lot of people to help the Americans.’ She did not know if there were any Spitfires hidden away in this part of the world.

  ‘Oh dear! How can we possibly have a happy Christmas?’ cried Elizabeth’s mother. But Dad brought in the branch of a pine tree, and Elizabeth decorated it with decorations that she made herself. Sitting by the Christmas tree, looking at one another by candlelight, they sang Christmas carols full of joy and happiness even though, by Christmas Day, the Japanese had taken the whole island of Hong Kong.

  The sound of Big Ben still came ringing across the world, to echo bravely in the hut, but somehow everything had changed. The distant war was no longer like a monster someone was making up. And the Japanese army kept doing things that people thought it just could not do, and it was doing them on Elizabeth’s side of the world, edging down, down, down through the Pacific Ocean.

  ‘There!’ said Mum, pointing at the map of the world. ‘That’s Singapore. The Japanese are taking it over. And they’ve sunk the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. They’re just sweeping down on us.’

  Now, when she talked of the war, she no longer sounded as if she were telling an exciting story with villains and heroes you could rely on. She sounded quieter … she sounded troubled … she even sounded frightened.

  ‘It seems they are good jungle fighters,’ said Dad. ‘We’re not so good in the jungles. We need a few roads. Maybe a few signposts.’

  ‘Well, of course we’re not as good in the jungles,’ Mum exclaimed crossly. ‘There are no jungles in Britain. Or here! Well, there’s the bush, of course, but the bush doesn’t count as a jungle. Our boys just won’t have had the practice.’

  ‘I don’t think there is a lot of jungle in Japan, either,’ said Dad. ‘Face it! They’re good soldiers.’

  ‘But not better than us!’ cried Mum. ‘They can’t be better than us.’

  Dad did not say anything aloud, but Elizabeth, watching him, thought his crooked smile was asking, ‘Why not?’

  At school there was suddenly a different feeling about the games in the playground, almost as if the boys were now practising for something real. They swept around the playground, shooting and then arguing about who had blown up whom, just as they had done before. They still made the same sniggering machine-gun sounds. Yet somehow the playground felt as if it had become a more dangerous place than it had been. Nothing had changed in the playground; it was just that everything was changing in the world around it.

  ‘I might have to go away and be a soldier,’ said Toby, sounding excited but troubled too. ‘The British won’t let our guys come home. If the Japs get here we’ll need to have someone defending us – kids like me and even old fogey-men like your father will be called up.’

  ‘They won’t call up kids like you – not for ages,’ said Elizabeth derisively.

  ‘They might,’ said Toby. ‘They’ll need someone to look after the women and the girls.’

  ‘I could look after
myself,’ boasted Elizabeth, ‘and, anyhow, my dad would go. He might be a bit old but he’s tough. Driving piles is great exercise.’

  ‘I reckon my dad will work out a way of coming home. My dad’s a hero,’ cried Toby. And he began a war dance, shouting it over and over again. ‘My dad’s a hero! My dad’s a hero! Your dad’s just a builder, but my dad’s a hero!’

  Two days later, Elizabeth scrambled into the milk truck to find she was the only child in it. Toby was not there. The men in the front seats muttered to one another about the weather and jumped up and down, filling billies for the women who stood out by their front gates needing milk.

  ‘Where’s Toby?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, that a long story,’ said Mr Lee. ‘Toby’s family – well, they’ve got a bit of trouble in their neck of the woods.’ But then he swept on, talking to Mr Henderson about the fact that the Japanese seemed to be hovering around the top of Australia.

  ‘Who’d have thought, eh? Who’d have thought!’ said Mr Henderson. And he did not sound like a man playing an exciting game he was sure to win. He sounded almost terrified.

  Elizabeth arrived at school. The bell had not rung and children were racing around in the playground, girls on one side of the front steps, boys on the other. Elizabeth looked for Toby but he wasn’t there. The bell rang and they had to line up in their joggling lines with Miss Dalley walking up and down them, inspecting them, making sure they stood straight, making sure they looked respectful. Elizabeth looked for Toby again, but he just wasn’t at school today.

  ‘Where’s Toby?’ she whispered to Yvonne next to her, but Miss Dalley saw them and closed in on her, holding out her finger in a reproving way, then placing it over her lips. Shhhhh!

  Mr Mowatt, the headmaster, put a record on the gramophone and they marched into school.

  ‘Where’s Toby?’ Elizabeth asked Shirley.

  ‘Dunno!’ said Shirley. ‘Hey! Is he your boyfriend?’

  ‘No!’ cried Elizabeth, ‘I just wondered where he was.’