The Regimental Dog Is Buried By The Gate And He Still Does The Rounds

There is a small stone by the gate with a dog's name on it and a date in the 1950s. The regiment buried him there and somebody, at some point, planted a rose, and the rose is still going, which nobody can explain either.

The thing happens at 02:00, on the hour, near enough.

Claws on concrete. Trotting. Not running — the unhurried, businesslike pace of a working dog doing a route it knows.

It always goes away from you. That is the detail that everybody who has stood that gate will tell you, and they will tell you in the same words, and I have heard those same words from a man of eighty who did his service in 1968 and from a girl of nineteen who did hers last year.

It never comes toward you.

I stood that gate for two years. I heard it maybe thirty times. The first time I nearly had a heart attack and I have never admitted that to anyone in uniform.

By the end I would say, "Evening," out loud, in the dark, to a sound.

Here is the story I actually want to tell you, though.