Artwork © Robyn Dower

The Pact was written for the 100-year commemorations of Anzac in 2015. I wanted to write a story about the Australian Light Horse and, in particular, the bond often forged between the soldier and his mount. It was the overall winner at the Ipswich International Writing Competition in 2015 and has been recited at many commemorative events since then. It will always hold a very special place in my heart.

Featured artwork – Left Flank – courtesy of my sister, Robyn Dower.  Robyn’s powerful painting also won a major prize in the same year. Although it was never intended, it appears they were made for one another.

The Pact

It was quiet that Shift, I was on my last rounds,
there was only the hum of the normal ward sounds.
“Will you listen? Now listen.” an old man had said
as I walked by the end of his hospital bed.

“Do you hear what I hear? It’s a glorious sound.
It’s the thunder of hooves as they strike at the ground.”
I looked back at the man in that bed where he lay
but I knew he was dying and slipping away.

He is rambling I’d thought as I turned his light down,
just another poor soul in a hospital gown.
It was then that he took a firm hold of my hand
and he told me there’s something I must understand.

That tonight he was keeping a PACT he’d once made
to a mate he had known in the light horse brigade.
There were tears in his eyes so I sat by his bed
and I’ll never forget what it was that he said.

“All my mates, they were charging alongside of me
when a bomb had exploded we just didn’t see.
For a moment I thought that the time had been stilled
but my mates and their horses, they all had been killed.

Now my horse had stood near me despite his own fear
with his blood running red and the enemy near.
With my foot in the stirrup, he’d made for the line, 

and he got me back safely, that war horse of mine.