The Bomber Dog

‘For Gallantry, We Also Serve'

Occupied France, 1940

Sabine knew what the soldiers had come
for as soon as she saw them marching down the muddy lane to their farmhouse. Her
hands shook as she grabbed the nearest of the twelve-week-old German Shepherd
puppies and ran out of the wooden back door with it.

Her younger brother, Claude, was outside
feeding the chickens.

‘What is it? What's going
on? Where are you taking that puppy?' he called out.

The German soldiers were
almost at the farmhouse. There wasn't time for Sabine to explain.

‘Tell the soldiers one of the
puppies died,' she said. ‘Do you understand? Tell them he was the
smallest and weakest of the litter and he wasn't strong enough to survive and
he died.'

Claude's blue eyes opened very
wide. ‘But that's not true,' he said.

‘Just say it!' Sabine
shouted.

The puppy, frightened by the harshness
of her voice, wriggled to get away but she clung on to him.

‘You're not going to kill
it, are you?' Claude said, his eyes filling with tears. ‘You
wouldn't … You couldn't.'

Those tears would help convince the
soldiers that what he said was true.

The Germans were now so close she could
hear their voices as they entered the farmhouse. She heard her mother screaming at
them not
to take the puppies away. Alsatians, or German Shepherd
Wolf Dogs, as they were also known, were highly prized by the Nazis. They were famed
for their intelligence, strength and bravery, making them ideal dogs to train up for
war duty. Herr Hitler owned two of them.

‘No,' Sabine told her
brother. ‘It's a lie. Just tell them what I told you. At least this one
will be safe.'

Claude nodded once, dropped his pot of
corn on the ground, and ran back to the farmhouse. The chickens clucked with
excitement as they rushed to peck at their unexpected feast.

Sabine looked behind her and then ran
the other way. It wasn't easy to run with a wriggling, heavy, furry bundle in
her arms, but if she could save just one of the pups from becoming part of the war,
it would be worth it.

The puppy was still very young and not
used to being snatched away from his mother or
being squeezed so
tightly, but there wasn't time to stop and reassure him.

Sabine ran so hard it felt like her
heart was beating almost out of her chest and her breathing came in painful gasps,
but she wouldn't stop. Not even when she got a stitch in her side. She
couldn't stop. She had to save the puppy.

The British undercover soldiers were
boarding the rowing boat hidden by the newly formed French Resistance as she ran up
to them.

‘Please take this puppy with you.
Please save him,' she begged.

Ever since France had been occupied by
Germany, a few brave fighters had formed a group known as the Resistance. It was a
secret organization made up of ordinary French people and their aim was to do
anything they could to undermine the German occupation of their country. They were
being helped by
British soldiers from across the English Channel,
but their work was incredibly dangerous and secretive. Sabine's father was
part of the French Resistance, just as her brother and mother were.

The Resistance had started with just a
few people, but it had gradually grown and grown. Not everyone was a member though,
and Sabine and Claude's mother always warned them that they had to be very
careful who they told.

‘Whatever happens, the flame of
the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished,'
General de Gaulle had said in a broadcast on the radio.

But he was now in London and they were
on the front line in France.

There were rumours that if the German
army found out they were part of the Resistance they would be taken away and put in
a prisoner-of-war camp.

Close to the white cliffs of Dover, a
little German Shepherd puppy cowered away from the seagulls that circled menacingly
above him. He'd tried to run away from the birds but they were bigger and
faster than he was. He'd barked at them but the seagulls' cries only
seemed to mock his high puppy yap.

Molly, a honey-coated spaniel, spotted
the puppy and the gulls near the docks. She barked and ran at the large,
sharp-beaked birds, scattering them into the drizzly sky of the early February
morning. The gulls dodged the silver
barrage balloons that floated
high in the air, and circled to land on the warships anchored in the harbour,
screeching in protest. But they didn't return.

Once they'd gone, the rain-soaked,
floppy-eared, sable-coated puppy came over to his rescuer, whimpering and trembling
with fear and cold. Molly licked his blue-eyed face to reassure him and he nuzzled
into her. His pitiful cries were gradually calming but his desperate hunger
remained.

Molly used her nose to knock over a
glass bottle of milk that the milkman had just left at the Dover harbour
master's door. The bottle smashed and the puppy's little pink tongue
lapped thirstily at the milk that flowed on to the ground.

‘Get away from that!' the
milkman yelled angrily, when he saw the puppy drinking. His boot kicked out at him,
only narrowly missing the puppy's little legs. Molly barked at the
milkman and she and the pup ran off together with the
milkman's furious shouts still ringing in their ears.

The smell of the sea and the reek of the
oil from the ships grew fainter as they ran, but the small dog wasn't strong
enough to run for very long yet, and they slowed to a walk as soon as they left the
docks. Molly led the puppy through the outskirts of Dover to her den, a derelict
garden shed at the edge of the allotments. There was sacking on the floor, it had a
solid waterproof roof, and as an added bonus, every now and again a foolish rat or
mouse would enter the shed – only to be pounced on and eagerly gulped down.

The tired puppy sank down on the sacking
and immediately fell fast asleep, exhausted from the morning's excitement.
Britain was in the grip of the Second World War, and Dover was a crucially important
port, constantly filled with the hustle and bustle of ships and soldiers,
but the puppy was blissfully unaware of all that.

Molly lay down too, her head resting on
her paws, but she didn't sleep; she watched over her new companion.

Only a few weeks ago, Molly had been a
much-loved pet, until a bomb had hit the house she lived in.

She remembered her owner being put on a
stretcher and rushed to hospital, but Molly herself hadn't been found.
She'd stayed hidden amid the rubble, shaking uncontrollably, too traumatized
to make a sound.

She'd stayed in exactly the same
spot for the rest of the night, covered in debris, too scared to sleep. At dawn
she'd crawled out of her hiding place and taken her first tentative steps
towards the shattered window and the world outside, alone.

The puppy snuffled in his sleep and
Molly licked him gently until he settled. There were
hundreds,
maybe thousands, of lost and abandoned dogs in Dover but at least she and this baby
Alsatian had found each other.

For the first few weeks, the puppy
stayed as close to Molly as he could, never allowing the two of them to get more
than a few steps apart. Wherever she went he followed her, not wanting to be left
alone again, even for a moment.

Every night they lay close together on
the sacking and kept each other warm, listening to the bomber planes as they flew
overhead on their way to London and other cities.

As the weeks turned into months, and
winter turned into spring and then summer, the bomber planes and the bombs they
dropped became so commonplace that they no longer woke Molly or her young friend,
curled up together in the shed.

Now one year old, the German Shepherd
was no longer the vulnerable puppy he'd once been, but Molly
still licked his furry sable head to soothe him when he twitched and cried out in
his sleep. He still had the same piercing blue eyes he'd had as a young puppy,
but one of his ears now stood straight up, while the other still flopped down. With
Molly's care and love he'd grown fast and he was now much larger and
stronger than her, but she was still definitely the leader of their two-dog
pack.

Their first priority each day was always
to find food – and the most delicious food in the world, just waiting for a dog to
help himself, was in the pig bins.

Two or more tin dustbins were set on
most street corners for people's waste food. These dustbins were collected
every week and taken out to farms to feed the pigs. Although the bins were emptied
regularly, they still attracted flies, especially in the warm summer weather.

Molly and the German Shepherd
didn't
mind about the bluebottles that buzzed around the
bins. In fact, the young dog sometimes forgot the reason they'd come to the
pig bins in his excitement at trying to catch one. He'd jump and snap at the
insects as they flew out of the pig bins and buzzed around him, almost taunting him,
daring him to try and catch them. He did dare, but however hard he tried, he only
occasionally managed to swallow one.

Molly would remind him with a look or a
whine, and occasionally even a bark, that they were at the pig bins to eat. Then he
would stick his head in the bin and gorge himself until he could eat no more.
Sometimes the leftovers had only just been put in the bin and were fresh, but more
often, if the bins hadn't been emptied in the previous few days, they were
rancid and mouldy. The dogs ate them anyway, ate and ate and ate.

Today, Molly led her young friend to two
bins at the bottom of a dead-end street. He skilfully knocked
the lid off the first one and then sneezed with excitement at the tantalizing smell
coming from inside it. The next moment all that could be seen of him was a fiercely
wagging tail as his sensitive nose investigated the intriguing scent coming from the
bottom of the bin. He was so busy trying to reach it that he didn't even hear
the growl.

But Molly did. She turned to find five
vicious-looking feral dogs spoiling for a fight. The growl had come from their
leader: a large rough-furred, yellow-toothed, muscular dog that towered menacingly
over Molly.

Molly gave a low, warning growl in
return.

It was at this moment that the German
Shepherd emerged, triumphant, to show Molly what he'd found. The ham bone had
been right at the bottom of the bin, and old potato peelings and cabbage leaves
dropped from him as he rose. He hadn't expected to
find five
snarling dogs waiting for him. The brutish-looking leader drooled at the sight of
the bone.

The dogs' faces twisted into
snarls as they headed towards him. There was only one way out – he leapt from the
pig bin and raced past them and out on to the main street. The feral dogs turned and
charged after him, while Molly ran after them, barking loudly.

He raced down one street, and up
another, and still they followed him. They were big dogs and looked better fed than
him, but he was much quicker.

The large ham bone was heavy in his
mouth and slippery in his jaws, but he wouldn't let it go, not even when one
of the pack got so close he could hear it breathing. He doubled back through an
alleyway, dodged left then twisted right, racing on through the graveyard, and back
through a concealed hole in the fence and into the allotments, where he hid in the
blackberry bushes. He panted as he listened intently for the
sound of the other dogs, but there was nothing. He'd successfully lost them
and he gnawed on his ham bone trophy with relish.

Molly found him a few minutes later and
came up to him, out of breath. He dropped the bone and nudged it over to her with
his nose. She wagged her tail in thanks and gnawed on it. The bone had been worth it
and they took it in turns to chew on it until it was quite gone.

At twilight they made their way back to
their den in the old disused shed.

The blackout had been in force since the
beginning of the war, so with no street lights on and with clouds hiding the stars,
it grew very dark very quickly.

Usually the young dog paid very little
attention to the high wailing sound of the air-raid siren.
It was
such a common noise, one he'd heard since he was born and he, like many other
pets, knew instinctively when no bomber planes were headed in their direction and
there was nothing to fear.

But tonight was different. Tonight the
hackles along his back rose and he sat up and listened to the strange, almost
bird-like whistling sound. Tonight he was afraid. He got to his feet but there
wasn't time to run before the bomb fell. A deafening roar filled his ears and
for a moment the whole world seemed to collapse around him. The force of the blast
threw him across the shed, and he lay still as the dusty air swirled about him.

For a moment he was knocked out, but as
soon as he came to, he belly-crawled over to Molly who lay unconscious on the
ground.

He whined and nuzzled his head against
hers but her eyes didn't open. He lay down beside her to keep her warm and
listened as
outside in the street people called to each other,
fire-engine bells rang and ambulances screeched to a halt.

Then he smelt a new smell. The smell of
smoke. A spark from the burning houses had fallen on the shed and now it began to
smoulder.

The dog whined again and then barked at
Molly, but still she didn't stir. He pawed at his friend, instinctively
knowing that the smell meant serious danger.

In desperation he barked again and then
he took hold of Molly's collar with his teeth and pulled. Although Molly was
much smaller than he was it was still almost impossible for him to drag her leaden
body across the uneven ground. He lost his grip, whined, then gripped her collar
more firmly in his teeth and crouched low so he could pull her with every ounce of
strength he had.

The back wall of the shed had been
completely blown away in the blast and he
dragged Molly out of it
and across the ground away from the flames that had now taken hold. Then he lay down
beside her in the smoke and ash-filled air, panting and trembling.

Molly was in a bad way; her fur was
coated in blood and her breathing was ragged. The anxious young dog licked his
friend's face and whimpered.