"There is a farm up past the golf course in Mirfield, where a young foal was born called 'Midnight Fighter.' The foal was one of twins and as any horse person know, it is highly dangerous for a mare to give birth to twins. One foal died at birth and the other struggled to survive.The lady farm owner worked the farm alone and after it was discovered that the surviving foal was most unlikely to live or ever walk properly, all looked bleak. The foal's mother did not have enough milk to feed her colt and without bottle feeding it every few hours throughout the first month of its life, it would most certainly die.
Help came in the form of a guardian angel five miles away. In fact it was a teacher from a school in Rawthorpe, Huddersfield. The long school summer holidays had just begun and in order to try save 'Midnight Fighter', the female teacher cancelled her arranged holiday abroad and gave up all of her summer break. For the next two months she lived and slept in the stable with the poorly foal, bottle feeding it at three and four-hourly intervals. Midnight Fighter did live, but because of damage to its fetlocks, he required numerous operations and eventually had to be put down in his second year of life.
Occasionally, when I go through Mirfield, I will detour and drive up the lane past the field where Midnight Fighter and his mother and father once grazed; and though he be long dead, I always sense his spirit nearby. I always had an affinity with Midnight Fighter, the young colt with injured legs; having been unable to walk myself for three years as a boy, following a traffic accident that left me with spinal injuries and damaged legs between the ages of 11 and 14 years.
When I first became acquainted with the story of the teacher from Huddersfield giving up the whole of her summer holidays to help a newly born foal survive, I became determined to capture the essence of the tale in a children's story book which I also called 'Midnight Fighter.' I changed the characters and used all proceeds from book sales to go to a charity which houses children and young adults who cannot, walk, speak or function adequately on their own. To widen its appeal, we also arranged to have the story professionally read and recorded; accompanied by background music for radio transmission and to enable children to listen who could not read. The television Magician Paul Daniels even recorded an additional version of the story for charitable purposes.
The audio version of 'Midnight Fighter' is freely available to listen to on my website by following the link below. It is suitable for the 5-11 year old child; particularly any lover of horses. The book can also be purchased in e-book format from www.smashwords.com If however, you wish the story in hard paper copy, it is included as one of two stories in a book called, 'Fighter' from www.lulu.com or www.amazon.com. The book 'Fighter' also tells the story about a boy called 'Maw' with stunted growth who is bullied at school and whose only wish is to play in the school football team. All profit from book sales goes to charity." William Forde: December 17th, 2015.
http://www.fordefables.co.uk/midnight-fighter.html