The Dog Who Could Fly (5 page)

Time and again they lay half buried in the snow, braced for the challenge they were sure would ring out—one that would lead to imprisonment for Pierre and the firing squad for Robert. There were moments when Robert was so sure they had been seen that he hoped to be shot on the spot, rather than await his fate at the hands of the avenging Gestapo. But each of those moments seemed to pass, and he would chide himself for his cowardice and lack of fortitude, and urge Pierre forward.

They had been crawling uphill for a full hour when the moment of greatest danger seemed upon them. A pair of flares burst directly overhead and drifted toward the wreckage of the aircraft, which lay some four hundred yards behind them. Then came the staccato
rat-tat-tat
as the first machine gun opened up, followed by several more. This time there was no doubt about their target: the terrain all around the smoking wreckage of the French fighter-bomber was being raked by murderous fire.

Long bursts swept farther and farther out from the aircraft. Soon bullets were hammering into the snow within spitting distance of the two men, throwing chunks of snow and ice into their faces. As they tried to dig deeper with their frozen fingers they felt sure they had been seen, and they braced themselves for the searing penetration of flesh by hot metal. Robert felt the faint squirming of the puppy pinned beneath his ribs and imagined it would be his last sensation on this earth.

Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the firing ceased. Hardly daring to breathe, Robert lifted his head an inch or so and gazed around, scanning the slope for the enemy patrol that would surely be approaching. The flares illuminated an eerie scene. Ghostly figures surrounded the wreckage of the aircraft. A shrill cry rang out, triggering
a terrifying burst of automatic fire. Robert could see bullets ricocheting off the metal skeleton of the Potez in a shower of sparks.

“For God’s sake, lie still,” Pierre groaned.

Having found no bodies, the enemy patrol would lose no time in hunting for survivors. Another flare, still burning, came to rest not far from their position. It sputtered and hissed as it burned a hole into the snow. Robert tensed for the Germans to head their way. He knew if that happened he could never leave his fellow airman, even though the consequences of capture would be so much graver for him. They had come too far together for him to abandon Pierre now.

To Robert’s utter amazement the German patrol failed to turn in their direction. He and Pierre crawled ahead seemingly unnoticed by the enemy, who for some reason had taken their search farther toward the east. Pierre’s grimaces and silent curses suggested that he was approaching the limits of his endurance. On the stroke of midnight—six exhausting hours after they had set out from the farmhouse—Robert glanced up to find that the wood was now a towering mass of darkness directly ahead of them.

“Almost there,” he whispered. “A five-minute breather, then off again.”

There was no response. Pierre lay silent and motionless beside him. Had his friend been shot by a sniper? Had he bled to death from his injuries? Had the physical and mental strain of this night proven too much for his overloaded system?

“Pierre! Pierre!” he whispered urgently.
Still no response
.

He reached across to the body and shook it by the shoulders. The Frenchman didn’t lift his head from the snow, but he did speak—although in a voice so low that it was barely audible.

“Go on,” he pleaded. “Go on alone. Leave me. I’m finished.”

“Nobody’s leaving anybody,” Robert retorted. “Either we both go forward or no one does.”

He wasn’t just angry that Pierre was giving up when they were so
close to the sanctuary of the woodland; he was furious that his friend thought he was capable of abandoning him on a snowbound hillside in the midst of no-man’s-land. But Pierre seemed immovable. Numbed by the freezing cold, his skin torn by ice and stones, his leg throbbing with a pain that he had never imagined possible, the tough Frenchman insisted he couldn’t go another inch.

But Robert was having none of it. “When you feel me shove, make an effort to move forward. Like that we’ll make it. We’re nearly there.”

He put his arm around Pierre’s shoulders, thrusting a hand under his armpit and heaving him forward so hard that the Frenchman moaned in pain—yet at least it seemed to jolt him into action. Putting all his remaining strength into his one good leg, Pierre thrust forward, inching ahead. Robert remained at his side, heaving repeatedly as the injured man clawed at the frozen snow crust with his fingers and one good leg, thrusting himself onward.

Together, inch by agonizing inch, they crawled up the incline toward the dark wall of the woodland. It took a full forty-five minutes to reach the first tree. Robert staggered to his feet and dragged his friend behind that big, solid fir, putting him out of the reach of any sniper whose attention might have been attracted by the final moments of their flight.

Pierre rolled onto his back and promptly lost consciousness. Picking a tree beside him, Robert sank down with his back to the base of the trunk. Every muscle in his body was burning and the fire in his arms surged unbearably from shoulders to fingertips.

He fumbled for the zipper of his jacket, desperate to check that the breath hadn’t been crushed out of the puppy in the last frantic yards. As he held the tiny dog before him, he saw that there was more life in his stick-thin tail than the two men seemed to have left in their entire bodies. It twitched elatedly to and fro in a somewhat premature celebration of their great escape.

Robert knew they were far from safe yet, but he craved rest. The
last thing he saw as he drifted into an exhausted sleep was the little dog standing up on his hind legs to lick his chin.

•  •  •

Robert was woken sometime later by a low whine. He looked around for the pup and saw him standing a few feet away, his legs stiff, his hackles raised as he stared intently at the undergrowth at the edge of the woodland. He had detected some kind of sound that his master couldn’t yet hear, and all of his instincts screamed that a mortal threat was nearby. The growl he gave next was a warning both to the friends at his side and to whoever was approaching.

Robert grabbed the dog and covered his muzzle with his hand to stifle the puppy snarls. A twig snapped with a crack so loud that it could have been a pistol shot. It woke Pierre. He sat bolt upright, gazing around confusedly. Robert knew that it was too late to try to run, even if Pierre had been capable of moving. He felt for his pistol and readied himself for the final battle. At least their tiny companion had given them a few seconds’ warning.

Figures loomed out of the shadows and were instantly upon them. Bayonets glistened at Robert’s throat and at Pierre’s chest. Yet more soldiers slipped out of the bushes. The two airmen were surrounded; resistance was hopeless. Robert’s disbelief that their epic bid for freedom should have ended in capture quickly gave way to despair. The German patrol must have followed their tracks in the snow. How else could they have found them so quickly?

“All right,” he heard Pierre announce defiantly. “You’ve found us! So now what?”

Silence.

A flashlight was trained on their faces.

Then the tense and murderous atmosphere was transformed by the exclamation from the nearest soldier:
“Mon Dieu! Mais ils sont Français!”

Barely able to believe his ears, Robert peered through the gloom at the men crowding ever more closely around him. French uniforms!

“Our plane . . . It crashed. Out there.” He heard himself gasping out their story. He pointed at Pierre. “He’s hurt. His leg. Help him.”

A lieutenant wearing the uniform of the French infantry stepped closer. “Please, who exactly are you? Identify yourselves.”

Pierre went first: “Sergeant Pierre Duval, French First Bomber Reconnaissance Squadron.”

Robert found his voice, but it sounded faint and thin as if stretched to breaking point. “Sergeant Robert Bozdech, observer and air gunner. Same squadron. We were shot down this morning, sir. My pilot is wounded.”

The lieutenant put a hand on Robert’s shoulder. “Steady now. We know about the crash but we weren’t sure about the aircrew. How the devil did you get here?”

“Crawled . . . every bloody inch,” Pierre gasped. “Is there a doctor? My leg’s buggered.”

“Not here, and we can’t do much this close to the enemy. We’d better carry you.”

The French soldiers removed the bayonets from their rifles, lashed the butts and muzzles together to form a rough platform, and placed a greatcoat across it. Pierre was eased onto the makeshift stretcher and the party moved off through the trees.

“Is your pilot badly wounded?” the lieutenant asked Robert.

“A bullet through the leg, sir. He’ll recover.”

“Indeed. Anyone who can get up that slope with such an injury will surely recover . . . In fact, you’re both to be congratulated. In the morning we’ll get him to a hospital. In our frontline position we can at least give him first aid, plus you’ll have a meal and a bed and you’ll be safe there.”

The small force made its way through the darkened woodland, until the first defenses of the Maginot Line hove into view. They entered
a clearing where a blockhouse had been cleverly camouflaged to blend in with the firs. All around it Robert could see gun barrels poking out from hidden emplacements in readiness for the feared German onslaught. The lieutenant hesitated before the building as Robert unfastened his jacket and reached for the puppy.

“What’s that you’ve got there?”

“A dog, sir. A puppy.”

“Well, bring him in! Have you had him long?”

Robert grinned. “Long enough to make friends with him, sir.”

A meal of bread and bully beef was being prepared, the mouth-watering aroma of meat and gravy hanging heavy in the air. The puppy stirred, took one sniff, and started whimpering in excitement.

“At least somebody appreciates the smell of Henri’s cooking,” joked the lieutenant. “Maybe the taste will change his mind!”

Secure in their quarters, the soldiers toasted the rescue of the two airmen with hot black coffee laced with French cognac. They demanded to know every detail of the crash landing and the airmen’s escape to the woodland. But what they were most curious about was how, in the midst of the fight of their lives, the two airmen had ended up bringing a puppy with them.

“Poor devil, he looks half starved,” Henri, the cook, remarked, once Robert had finished telling the story. “I’ll mix him some gravy and bread. Perhaps he’ll take it from you.”

Sure enough, when Robert placed the bowl on the floor the puppy shot out from hiding and wolfed down every last morsel. He seemed to sense that if food came from Robert it was safe to eat. Wide brown eyes pleaded for a refill and a second bowl followed the first. Then, his tiny stomach swollen by the rich, unfamiliar fare, the puppy flopped down at Robert’s feet and threw up violently. The room erupted with raucous laughter and fresh gibes about Henri’s cuisine.

Robert lifted the exhausted pup onto his lap and stroked him to sleep. Soon he and Pierre were likewise dead to the world.

They were woken at dawn by the arrival of a field ambulance to take the wounded Frenchman to a hospital. Robert watched his friend being loaded aboard, before giving him one last grip of the hand.

“Get back to the squadron soon. We’ll be waiting.”

Pierre seemed more concerned that his girlfriend’s head might be turned by a rival while he was away convalescing. “Keep a close eye on the lovely Marie for me,” he remarked with a wink, and then he was gone.

An hour later it was Robert’s turn to take his leave. He thanked his rescuers, placed the puppy inside his jacket, climbed into a Renault van, and set off for the nearest airfield. There, an aircraft had been put at his disposal for the 215-mile flight back to the squadron’s airbase at St. Dizier.

The twin-seat, single-engine training plane—a Potez 25—was just the job to introduce an inexperienced flier to the air. The little dog trembled against his ribs as Robert started the engine, but a pat and a few gentle words soon calmed him. He behaved perfectly throughout the rest of the flight, and Robert felt a surge of pride in his new charge. What a team they made. Not only did they have their fighting spirit in common, but like him this little dog seemed born to fly.

•  •  •

While Robert and Pierre had dived through the fog over the German lines, the six fellow Czechs in Robert’s squadron had been flying high above them, battling a flight of German Messerschmitts. They had seen much of the doomed aircraft’s desperate last moments, and they’d assumed that Robert and Pierre had perished as the Potez went down. Consequently, they had drunk heavily to help speed their friends’ “journey upstairs,” in traditional Czech style.

At first they were almost too hungover to take in the sight of Robert breezing back into the base, some twenty-four hours after they’d believed him killed in action. Then there were wild cheers, slaps on
the back, and promises of a good many rounds of drinks that night to celebrate his great escape.

The Czech airmen had formed something like a close-knit family in exile. While serving in their own country’s air force, they had bonded like young men do during wartime. But since Hitler’s invasion had forced them out of their country, they had become united in one driving desire—
to kill Nazis
. Since they were stuck in France they had decided to adopt the motto of Alexandre Dumas’s Three Musketeers: “All for one, one for all.” And now they had an eighth musketeer joining their number in Robert’s puppy dog.

Although they didn’t know it at the time, the lives of these men would be intimately bound up in the fate of their newfound four-legged friend. Robert’s fellow Czechs were Joska, twenty-four, and Josef, twenty-six, both crack shots; Karel, a slim, twenty-three-year-old ladies’ man; the avuncular Vlasta, thirty-five; Ludva, twenty-seven, nicknamed “Flame” for his red hair and fiery temper; and Gustav, at eighteen the baby of the party. All were single, and most importantly right now all were self-confessed dog lovers.