Captain by Sam Angus (review)

Fifteen-year-old Billy Bayliss should not be headed for Gallipoli among adult comrades at arms with whom he has little in common and far from the admiration of the schoolmates who had dared one another to enlist in the Great War. A friend shows up, however, in Benjamin, nicknamed Captain, a refugee who together with his father made his way to Egypt and stood ready to fight the Turks alongside the British. Now Captain has buried his father just after the Brits disembarked near Gallipoli, and he and his donkey, Hey-Ho, are assigned to the service corps. Narrator Billy recounts his three long years in the Middle East, chasing “Johnny Turk” from Gallipoli to North Africa and into Palestine, through the lens of his relationship with Captain, whose loyalty to Billy never wavers even as Billy’s treatment of him becomes haughtier and shabbier. Readers discern what Billy has a difficult time admitting—that his own fears of the enemy and of embarrassing himself before his fellow soldiers cause him to posture as Captain’s “superior,” even though Captain outranks him in diligence, field smarts, and heroism. The grim, intense details of battle seem to prepare readers for the kind of story that ends badly for its protagonist; it comes as something of a surprise, then, that Angus ties up the tale with an unexpected cheeriness that will please well-wishers. This is a compelling war story that will resonate with middle-schoolers not quite up to Spillebeen’s Kipling’s Choice (BCCB 6/05).