The savage drama of the First World War, retold for children
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Most schoolchildren know War Horse, Michael Morpurgo’s bestselling novel about a horse bought by the Army for service on the battlefields of the First World War. But Michael Foreman’s enchanting story about a contemporaneous friendship between a tortoise and a sailor, which is being republished 10 years after its first print run, has been comparatively overlooked.
Foreman presents The Amazing Tale of Ali Pasha as a novella, illustrated by him, but it’s based on the experiences of Henry Friston, a young seaman from Lowestoft who served on HMS Implacable during the Gallipoli landings and the defence of the Suez Canal. In the summer of 1915, on being thrown into a shell crater during a battle on the coast of Cape Helles, Friston found himself lying next to a tortoise: “All thoughts of lying there until Death turned up to cart me away vanished in an instant. ‘Stay still,’ I hissed.”
Friston smuggled the tortoise back on board his ship, and by the time Implacable arrived at Port Said, sailor and tortoise had become inseparable: “I would often conceal Ali in the collar of my uniform and take him out on deck – there were so many amazing sights to see and I didn’t want him missing any of them.”
Foreman, who knew the real Friston, introduces the story decades later, when Friston is 59, and being visited at home by a young reporter from the Lowestoft Journal who looks at his diaries and listens as he recounts his experiences. (“A proper reporter would have been scribbling away furiously as Henry told his story, but I just wanted to listen and watch as the old man spoke, his eyes somewhere far away.”)
This skilful frame-narration allows Friston’s memory to wander freely, while the reporter pins him down on the details young readers might ask – “Where’s Gallipoli?” – and provides a chronology of events. And while Friston’s youthful diaries are full of bravado – “We’re landing heavy fire on the Germans… Kaboooom!” – in middle age he provides us with a different perspective. In one chapter, he recalls sheltering from enemy fire behind the dead bodies of his colleagues: “As the bullets thumped into the dead man in front of me, I felt a guilt that tore my soul. He’s taking another one for me, I would think.”
The real Ali Pasha survived too, and returned to Britain with Friston to live in a converted railway carriage in Suffolk, surrounded by as much fresh fruit and vegetables as he could eat. A News of the World article in 1968 turned him into something of a celebrity; in 1986, one year before his death, he made his television debut, and was awarded a coveted Blue Peter badge.
The Amazing Tale of Ali Pasha is published by Templar at £7.99. To order your copy, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books
