I had as yet been touched by no man and backedaway from them until I felt the bars of the pen behind me and could gono further. They had taken off their hats andjackets and rolled up their sleeves and they were all laughing as theycame towards me. My owner had a rope in his hand and wasclambering into the pen followed by three or four of his red-facedfriends. I shall not call him my master, for only oneman was ever my master. ‘Not bad for three guineas, is he? Are you, my little firebrand? Notbad at all.’ The voice was harsh and thick with drink, and it belongedquite evidently to my owner. But whatever thereason they were a long time haggling over how little I was worth beforeI heard the hammer go down and I was driven out through the gates andinto a pen outside. Perhaps it was the wildlook in my eye as I circled the ring in a desperate search for my mother,or perhaps it was that none of the farmers and gypsies there werelooking for a spindly-looking half-thoroughbred colt. She was sold within minutes, and before I couldfollow her through the gates, she was whisked out of the ring and away.But somehow I was more difficult to dispose of. She was a fine working farm horse, getting on in years but with allthe strength and stamina of an Irish draught horse quite evident in herfore and hind quarters. She was a fine working farm horse, getting on in years but with allĪgain. We were parted that dayin the terrible hubbub of the auction ring and I was never to see heragain. I was not yet six months old, a gangling, leggy colt who had neverbeen further than a few feet from his mother. The terror of itstayed with me all my life. MY EARLIEST MEMORIES are a confusion of hilly fields and dark,damp stables, and rats that scampered along the beams above my head.But I remember well enough the day of the horse sale. His story is written so that neither he northose who knew him, nor the war they lived and died in, will beforgotten. Some in the village, only a very few now and fewer as each year goesby, remember Joey as he was.

Joey.Painted by Captain James Nicholls, autumn 1914. But those who look more closely willsee, written in fading black copperplate writing across the bottom of thebronze frame: To them the picture is so familiarthat it commands little attention. To many who glance up at it casually, as they might do when thehall is opened up for Parish meetings, for harvest suppers or eveningsocials, it is merely a tarnished old oil painting of some unknown horseby a competent but anonymous artist.

He looks wistfully out of the picture, his earspricked forward, his head turned as if he has just noticed us standingthere. White cross emblazoned on his forehead and with four perfectlymatched white socks.

War Horse by Michael Morpurgo