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D-day

They lined up the bodies like bread soldiers with my wolf cub's breakfast. Pierre ate an egg that morning, which was more than his usual fare, considering our rations. My wife and I never wanted him to feel the beast of our snarling bellies, so we insisted that he took it and enjoyed. Pierre frowned and said, "Daddy, it's okay. I don't need my egg today." We made sure that he ate it anyway, even if at our expense. We couldn't have our son going hungry. He tucked his tail between his legs and tried to bargain with us, bartering that he would eat all of his breakfast if we would only let him go down to the beach to see the soldiers. His eyes were wide and puppy like under his mop of black hair. He was so young. But going down to the beach was out of the question: another thing that we couldn't let him do.

I did not anticipate the extent of the beachside occupation, living further inland as I did on our little homestead. It was a morbid curiosity that carried me, on foot, for that couple of hours, reaching the dunes at just gone noon. Military trucks ground to a halt and evacuees, French like me, slammed shaking paws on to the horns of cars, which were plastered with mud. The furs and families were white-eyed with fear behind the wheel and so they should be. We feared the shrapnel terror, the strafing stream of metal hail. Those cars would have once been nice, but now all the occupants carved was escape. It was much quicker to walk on foot and, as I ducked around a loitering group of soldiers - why did they not simply walk on? - I stifled the stench of blood, sweat and animal waste with a dirty handkerchief pinched around my nose. Breathing through one's mouth was not much better in hindsight. I felt as if I was drawing death and illness into my lungs with every hastily gulped breath, swallowing down their suffering.

In the leaning sand dunes, ribbed with spiky, dead grass, officers directed different classes of furries, soldiers and residents, to respective holding areas. Like cattle, that's what they were, and the officers their dealing paw. I could not claim that it was organised chaos, however. The noise level rose above what I was accustomed to and a sharp scream twined with obscene groans to produce the ghost of discourse. That was what passed for rough conversation on the beach: the screams of the dying. Seeing that I was dressed in civilian clothes, presentable and cleaner than most, the officers allowed me by with barely a cursory glance. They had too many other orders to issue than to worry about a lone French wolf.

Evidence of the German air force wound through the heaving remains of the crowd like disease, creeping into every last nook and cranny so that nowhere was safe. Strangely bare after the holler of commotion set on evacuating the area, the beach was desolate and stinking. Most of the previous squadrons had vanished, or at least those that still had use of their legs. They had fled to the ships and some stragglers scrambled before my eyes into tug boats ten men deep until they half-sunk, dipping dangerously low in the choppy water.

Bright colour flickered past the corner of my eye and I jerked into motion. It should have not come to any surprise to me but, like one overloaded tug boat, my heart sank with a sigh. He had not taken my instruction to heart, as always, that stupid cub. Tripping up soldiers, he earned curses and dashed past their legs, his quivering ears barely reaching their waists as they stumbled and swore. Thoughts raced through my head, fighting with each other for dominance. Why had he not stayed home like I had told him to? Why had my wife not kept him at home? It was dangerous out there. My pace increased and I fought to keep track of him, crashing over the remains of a campfire - the embers scattered and scorched my muddied trouser hem with tiny, charcoal holes. Something foreign caught my boot and I went down hard, my face smashing into the gritty, foul-tasting sand. I spat out sand and crawled to my knees. I had to see what had tripped me, I just had to, though I knew the answer would be far from pleasant.

That was my first body of the day. My son had found the rest, the ones lined up like bread soldiers with his breakfast. He stood above an English fur, from his soldier garb, lying face down in the sand, rounded helmet askew and feet comically bare of the standard boots. An equine tail splayed across the marked sand, knotted and unkempt - a heavy breed that had seen better days. He could have been in a comedy act, but he was not, I knew he was not. My dark-haired cub looked up at me, confusion written across his plump, puppy features. He shivered.

"Daddy, why are they sleeping?"

I could not answer him, so I remained silent and shook my head slowly, drawing him in close to my side as if I could protect him from the sight. Of course, I could not. The closest body - I could not think of them as furry - boasted a soaked pack of cigarettes, which protruded invitingly from a ripped, brown pocket. That pocket had been stitched up in the field, a dog's repair job. Taking things as they were, I bent down swiftly and snagged the packet, taking a white lance from the sodden, red and white box. Pierre watched me light it with his grandfather's silver-tone lighter, eyes following the flame. When I was done, he took my larger, firmer paw in his own cold one as if for comfort. I heaved a drag on the cigarette, sweet smoke flooding my lungs. It was calming, a lethal soothing. One of the bodies groaned.

"Let's go," I said to him, my voice sounding very far away to my own ears. I could have been watching the scene unfold at the pictures. That was a better thought. "Let's go home."

I tried to not let there be any doubt in the matter, to take Pierre away with me so that he would not have to bear witness to the death that he would not and could not understand. But the little cub hung back, straining my arm, lips parted and eyes wide with incomprehension. He dug his fingers into my grey-furred palm.

"Daddy," Pierre persisted, tugging anxiously at my paw. "Look. He's waking up."

I did not want to look. I already knew what I would see and I cupped my paw around my cub's face, turning him gently away from the object of his curiosity. At our heels, the breathing soldier moaned, cloth scraping across sand as I assumed he struggled to move, to reach out to us. My eyes steeled as I led Pierre away, toughened in the face of war, even when retreat played its godly hand. We were different from one another, every fur. And, with evacuation, the English furs did what no fur should ever have done to another: they left the sick and wounded in the ranks of the dead.