War Horse

For the next few weeks, Joey trains to become a war horse. The training days are long and hard, and Joey resents his new rider, Corporal Samuel Perkins, most of all. The Corporal, “an ex-jockey whose only pleasure in life seem[s] to be the power he [can] exert over a horse” (32), is feared by both horses and troopers alike. Joey tries several times to buck the Corporal off his back to protest his harsh training methods but is unsuccessful every time.

The one consolation Joey has in his new life is his visits from Captain Nicholls. The Captain, who has taken to sketching pictures of Joey, is the only one who “seem[s] to have the time to come and talk to [Joey] as Albert had done before” (32). He speaks gently to Joey, telling him he will paint him as soon as he can and send the finished painting back home to Albert. Nicholls hopes the war will end before Albert’s old enough to join, for he predicts it will be “very nasty indeed” (33). The Captain fears that his fellow soldiers are underestimating the devastation the war will cause, especially with the invention of machine guns and artillery.