The Dog Who Could Fly (14 page)

For a moment, all was quiet. Stumbling to their feet, the airmen saw that where three houses had stood before them, only shattered stumps of walls remained. Cries for help mingled with the crashing of falling masonry and the hissing of sparks from severed electrical cables. There were injured in those ruins, and they were screaming for help. They were also in danger of being crushed or burned to death where they lay.

With Antis leading the way, the Czechs ran to the rescue, Robert having sent Pamela off to get help. Choking and gasping, he stepped, half blinded by the dust, into the rubble of the first building. He scrambled over broken walls and splintered furniture, the adrenaline surging through him and numbing any fear he might otherwise have felt: buildings were collapsing all around them. He forced his way toward the direction of the nearest voice, trying to ignore the agonized cries coming from all sides.

We can only help one at a time
, Robert told himself.

Antis was scrambling ahead of him, paws scrabbling in the dust. The dog paused atop a mound of rubble, his taut body silhouetted against the glow from a burning building. He dropped his head and let out a sharp bark, which echoed around whatever lay below him. Seconds later Robert had joined his dog. Below was a narrow hole, leading to what Robert presumed was the cellar of the house. The cries were coming from down there.

Using his bare hands, Robert began to scrabble at the smashed brick and tiles, tearing great handfuls away to enlarge the opening. Antis watched him for a few moments, before he too began to paw and scratch away at the smaller stones. From behind them an army officer in uniform appeared with a flashlight. Peering into the hole, by the light of its beam they could see a man at the bottom, trapped by a timber that had fallen across his legs. They dug more fiercely now, calling for Stetka and the others to help. When they finally reached the wounded man it took all of their combined strength to lever the weight off the victim and lift him free. Three of the airmen carried him to a waiting ambulance.

The army officer tapped Robert on the shoulder and pointed farther into the ruins. “Good work, but there’s more to be done. Get your dog searching in there.”

It seemed as if the officer had mistaken them for a professional man-and-dog search team. Dogs can be trained to search for just about any scent—including buried people—using their noses, which are infinitely more sensitive than a human’s. Robert lacked the English to explain to the officer the truth of the situation. In any case, how could he refuse? He looked at Antis for a moment, then nodded his acquiescence. After all, the dog had already proved himself by rescuing the first victim.

Robert took Antis’s head in both his hands and gazed deep into his eyes. He gestured first to the hole, then to the rest of the wrecked buildings with an expansive sweep of his hand, trying to convey what he wanted and the import of the task.

“There are lives to save here, boy,” he whispered. “Let’s go find them.”

Antis let out a short, sharp bark of understanding. It echoed across the ghostly wasteland that they were now tasked to search. Taking a leather lead from his pocket, Robert fastened it to Antis’s collar and led him farther into the heart of the destruction.

Antis’s hypersensitive ears homed in on one sound. It was the pitiful plea for help from someone buried somewhere beneath his paws. Groping his way through a cloud of dust, and with brickwork falling all around, Antis pressed onward. As they crunched their way across a carpet of shattered glass, Robert dreaded to think what it would be doing to the pads of Antis’s paws.

Robert caught a barely audible moan now. It sounded like a woman’s voice. He couldn’t be sure from what direction it came, but Antis was in no doubt. Dragging his master by the lead and keeping his nose to the ground, he came to an abrupt halt and began yelping and clawing at a dusty heap of stones. Robert called for Stetka, and in no time a passage had been cleared. The injured woman was lifted out of a collapsed cellar and carried to the ambulance.

She was scarcely breathing, but at least now she stood a chance. A few minutes later Antis found another victim. A tug on the lead, a sniff, a bark, and a pawing of stones, and that was where they knew they had to dig. In no time, another man had been released from a hole in the ground that could have been his grave. By now, all the assembled rescuers were watching Antis like hawks, for they knew he would lead them to where the next casualty was to be found.

Another rescue followed, and another, each as dramatic as the last. But then came disaster. Antis’s instincts had just led him to discover his sixth survivor, and he was sniffing and snuffling at the ground for more. Robert had him on a loose lead so as not to inhibit the search. But as Antis thrust forward several feet ahead of his master, there was an almighty crack. Before Robert knew what was happening, a wall had collapsed straight ahead of him.

As Robert went to try to drag his dog back, the lead came away in his hand. It had been sliced in two by the falling masonry. For several seconds Robert stood there dumbfounded, the severed strap dangling from his hand. He was dazed by the speed of the calamity. One moment, Antis had been just in front of him. The
next, he had vanished and all Robert could see was a heap of bricks and mortar.

Dropping onto his already shredded knees, he seized the first brick in a hand that was gashed and covered in blood and began to dig, frantically tossing bricks to either side. Stetka knelt beside him, scrabbling at the heap in a frenzy. Robert felt certain that his dog had been crushed. If the weight of the falling masonry hadn’t killed him, the lack of oxygen under all that rubble certainly would. The very thought seemed to drive him out of his mind.

In answer to an unspoken prayer, Robert heard a faint bark. The airmen tore at the bricks with a redoubled effort, and finally a pointy nose came into view. It was dusty and flecked in shattered masonry, but it was definitely still twitching. As they pulled more debris away, Robert was overjoyed to see Antis turn his head his way, shaking the dirt and dust from his ears as he did so. The next moment Antis gave an almighty sneeze, and he leaped to his feet, seemingly unharmed.

Robert began to sob. He didn’t care who saw the tears coursing through the dust that coated his cheeks. Antis was alive and that was all that mattered.

He was more than ready to call it a night after such a miraculous escape, but Antis had other ideas. He insisted their job wasn’t done. He was going to follow the trail he’d picked up just before the wall collapsed, no matter what.

Antis stepped ahead, nose down and nostrils puffing away like a pair of bellows as they vacuumed up the dusty scent. At his side Robert had hold of the frayed remains of the severed lead. Antis came to a halt beside a small bundle of clothes. He had sniffed out a tiny toddler, no more than a year old. Nearby lay the child’s mother. There was nothing that anyone could do for her, but the little toddler seemed as if she might live. Once again, due to Antis’s incredible canine abilities, hope flared among the ruins and the fearful darkness.

It was well after midnight when an exhausted Robert arrived back
at camp. For the last few hundred yards he’d had to carry his dog, so painful had his paws become to walk on. They went straight to the sick bay, where Robert began to painstakingly clean his dog’s cuts and bandage his bleeding paws. He spoke softly to him throughout, telling him what a good boy he was and how well he had done, and that he was a lifesaving hero. Not until he’d finished tending to Antis did Robert accept any treatment for his own gashes, scrapes, and bruises.

Robert’s malaise had truly been broken. This dark night had reminded him how he needed to put his dog first, every time.

Nine

Ant became 311 Squadron RAF’s official mascot. But when German aircraft bombed the airbase he was blown up, lost and buried in debris for several days.

T
he remaining few days that Robert and Pamela had together were spent attending to Antis’s recovery, with plenty of romantic interludes. Her departure hit Robert harder than he had expected and he began to wonder if he was falling in love. But the shock of that was as nothing compared to the hammer blow of the letter he received the following day, from RAF Honington.

His old friend Karel had written to tell him that Joska, the bright young flier who had first thought up Antis’s name, and helped him to evade the military police upon arrival in Britain, was dead. He had been crewing a Wellington bomber that was hit by enemy fire.
The aircraft had burst into flames and become a funeral pyre for Joska, plus the five other Czech aircrew, as it plummeted from the heavens.

Joska it was who had pledged to organize the Christmas reunion for the seven Czech airmen and their war dog—the Original Eight.
All for one, and one for all.
But like many such pledges during the war, it had proved impossible to uphold. Joska would not be the only one to miss the party. Just days later Robert received a second letter, this one informing him of the seemingly impossible. Karel—the handsome Casanova of their party, and the one who had come back from the dead once before—had vanished, likewise killed in action. He had exulted in life’s pleasures for just twenty-four years and now he was gone.

In their candlelit hut, Robert and Stetka, plus Jicha and Mirek, two fellow Czech airmen, held a customary wake as they speculated about how many of their number might survive the horrors of this war. One operational tour of duty constituted two hundred hours of flying, and neither Joska nor Karel had reached the halfway point of their tour. For Robert the news of their deaths brought one emotion that overrode all others: in spite of the seemingly unbeatable odds, he hungered to get into the air and take the fight to the enemy. The eight had become six, and he burned to avenge the deaths of his fellows.

Antis dozed at his master’s feet, lulled by the somber hum of the conversation and keeping no more than half an ear alert for trouble. But suddenly it was as if a pistol had been fired next to his head. The comatose dog sprang to his feet, and dashed to the door with ears pricked forward. Cocking his head, he listened intently, raising nervous eyes to the sky. Apparently satisfied that he wasn’t mistaken, he hurried across to Robert, whining in what had now become an all-too-familiar fashion.

But Robert and his friends were absorbed in their somber conversation and burdened with the news of the deaths of their comrades. In
any case, the air-raid sirens had sounded at about this time for several days in a row now, and the target had always been the docks. Why would it be any different this evening?

Robert reached for his dog and gave him a reassuring rub around the ears. “It’s all right, Antis,” he soothed. “They’re not coming here.”

But his dog shook his head free and fixed his master with an electrifying look:
It’s not all right. It really is not. Trust me, the monsters of the air are coming.

He pushed his nose under Robert’s hand and pressed his trembling body against his thigh, trying to shove his master into motion. Robert focused his senses on the skies above and listened hard for a moment, but he could hear nothing out of the ordinary.

“Don’t worry, Antis. I’m telling you—they’re miles away.”

In answer, Antis seized Robert’s hand in a near-painful grip and forced him to look into his eyes. The magnitude of the alarm the dog was feeling was palpable.

Robert sighed. “Okay. All right, boy, you know best.” He turned to his friends. “I think we’d better go. Antis seems too convinced to have got it wrong this—”

The words froze on his lips as a thunderous roar vibrated the hut’s flimsy wooden walls. Every one of the airmen knew that sound. The engines of a Dornier Do 17 bomber—the “flying pencil”—had been opened to full throttle, indicating that it had just leveled out from a dive and was coming over the airbase at low level.

No siren had sounded.

No gun had been fired.

The only warning had come from Antis.

The pitch of the engine noise changed slightly. “He’s already dumping them!” Stetka shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the detonations of a stick of bombs.

The force of the explosions rocked the hut on its foundations as if it had been hit by a tornado. Stunned and half deafened by the blasts,
the men and their dog had been flung across the floor. The candles had all gone out, and Robert heard Antis yelp as someone fell on top of him in the darkness.

“Antis, I’m here!” Robert cried, crawling on all fours toward his dog.

Antis rushed toward the sound of Robert’s voice and the two of them had a head-on collision over the floorboards.

“Into the shelter before he comes back,” one of the others shouted.

By the time they had rushed for the door, they could hear the faint roar of the Dornier inbound toward them once more. Worse still, the door had been warped by the force of the explosions and would not open. They tugged and shoved at the handle but it refused to budge.

“Stand clear,” Stetka ordered.