Only the Animals Read Online Free PDF

skilled movement, the sentry fired his flare pistol. The flare rose into the sky, a beautiful firework illuminating the ghoulish line of our trenches beneath it, and not far away, crouching in no man’s land, five German soldiers instinctively turned their young faces towards the light and froze. The dog’s whole body was trembling but he had not let the frightening pop of the flare gun distract him. The soldiers in the trenches opened fire, and did not stop until the flare’s light began to dim as it floated back to earth on its miniature parachute and the officer called for a halt. Three of the German soldiers were dead. The other two had their faces pushed into the mud, hands up in surrender.
    The flare’s last light showed the officer looking stunned. ‘The dog was right,’ he said to the sentry. ‘I will make sure he is mentioned in my dispatch to headquarters tomorrow.’
    â€˜After Paris was saved,’ the sentry said, ‘we heard that a pigeon who’d carried a message crucial to our victory was awarded the Légion d’honneur.’ He was chatty now in his relief that the dog hadn’t been wrong. ‘But the medal kept falling off from around his neck, so they sewed bands with the colours of the medal’s ribbon around the bird’s leg.’
    The officer gave orders, and the prisoners were led away. The dog was still quivering.
    The tom and I waited until the men had gone back to sleep, everyone except the sentry. We moved closer.
    â€˜You two almost got me in trouble,’ he said, lighting a cigarette behind his helmet to keep its glowing end unseen across the lines.
    The dog didn’t bother growling this time. He looked exhausted.
    â€˜We hear you might be up for a medal,’ the tom said to him from a cautious distance.
    The dog put his head on his paws. ‘I can finally run away and go home to my master and my sheep in Avignon without dishonour,’ he said.
    â€˜But what about the parade in Paris?’ the tomcat said. ‘Haven’t you heard? Any animal who’s awarded a medal will be invited to be in it, once this war is over. It could be your grand moment!’
    The dog closed his eyes. In the stillness the sentry’s cigarette smoke moved upwards in an almost straight line.
    â€˜Let’s go back to our trench,’ I whispered to the tom.
    â€˜No, not yet. I have something to show you.’
    â€˜I thought the dog was it,’ I said, following the tomcat out of the trench.
    â€˜He was the side-show.’
    For a long time we prowled in silence, until we reached the final dugout at the edge of the line where a solitary soldier sat up awake, bent over a letter lit by a greenish-blue glow. I couldn’t understand where the light was coming from until I saw the jar beside him, filled with glow-worms.
    â€˜They give these jars out sometimes, the night before a major offensive. They’re supposed to be used for reading maps and battlefield plans. But he hides his jar during the day, and feeds them slugsto keep them alive,’ the tom said. ‘He stays up late, rereading letters from his sweetheart.’
    â€˜How do you know who they’re from?’ I asked.
    â€˜Sometimes he whispers them aloud,’ he said.
    I thought of how enchanted Colette would be by this little scene, and of the faraway look on her face while she writes by lamplight, the only time I feel she is entirely lost to me. We used to come home from the Palmyre at the place Blanche after a supper of onion soup and small steaks, me beside her and Missy in the booth while they ate. At home, Colette would melt chocolate in a saucepan and dip a piece of rye bread in her cup. Then she’d call me by one of my pet names to sit on her lap in front of her writing desk: ‘Come hither, Light of the Mountainside,’ she would say, or, ‘O little one, striped to the utmost, come warm my legs.’
    I would go to her, and