The Silver Donkey

The time is the First World War. When two little French girls, Marcelle, ten, and Coco, eight, find a man in the woods near their home on the Channel coast, they think at first that he is dead. But he is not, though he is temporarily blind, a symptom not of physical injury but shock. The man is an English lieutenant, a deserter who has headed for home after seeing his platoon slaughtered in battle. He carries with him a good luck charm, a silver donkey, a gift from his young and gravely ill brother, so that ‘Every time you see it, you’ll remember to do your best’. However forgivably in the horrors of trench war, the lieutenant has not done his best, and knows it. The little girls care for him, recruiting their brother and then an older friend to aid his escape, and Coco, a brave little girl, comes to love the silver donkey. When the soldier goes away he leaves the silver donkey for Coco to find, because it ‘belongs to the trustworthy and the brave’.

The donkey, silver trinket and real animal, is at the heart of this bittersweet fable. Three inset stories are told by the soldier to the girls when they bring him food and help. One is a secular version of the Nativity, another a rainmaking myth, and the third a tale of human and donkey courage at Gallipoli. Each illustrates the traits that make the donkey ‘the noblest creature of all’. He is ‘patient, tolerant, modest, forgiving, humorous, gentle and brave’. However flawed the lieutenant might be, his presence, stories and silver donkey are seen to transmit these values to the children.