The Bomber Dog (10 page)

Back in England, Nathan found it hard to
feel relieved at being home because he was still so worried about Grey. During the
three weeks they'd spent apart he'd missed him terribly and often dreamt
about him. Sometimes they were happy dreams in which he was reunited with the dog.
Sometimes they were sad dreams in which Grey hadn't survived the drop and
Nathan found his body. The worst dreams of all were the terrible ones in which Grey
needed him. The dog barked and whined for his help but, however hard he tried,
Nathan could
never reach him in time. From those dreams he woke
with tears on his face, only to remember that they weren't real.

‘Just a dream,' he told
himself. But the harsh reality was that he didn't know where Grey was or what
had happened to him.

On the night of the parachute drop
he'd dragged the injured French Resistance fighter, Jacques Dubois, back to
his motorcycle and managed to drive it with Jacques clinging on behind him, barely
conscious, to the emergency rendezvous point on the beach. Once they got there it
was decided that it was too dangerous to send the information Jacques had given him
over the radio. No one wanted the German army to suspect that they'd been
tricked into believing the Allied attack was taking place in one place when it was
actually going to be in another. Not while they could still do anything about it and
thwart the attack.

Nathan was ordered to sail on a boat
back
to England to hand over the information in person.

Once he'd told Major Parry
everything he knew, Nathan asked if he could return immediately to France to search
for Grey. Major Parry looked grim as he shook his head.

‘It's too dangerous,'
he told Nathan. ‘If you were caught and interrogated our plans would be
discovered.'

‘But …'

‘No, soldier,' Major Parry
said. ‘You'll be returning to France along with hundreds of thousands of
Allied soldiers soon enough.'

The other soldiers at the base camp
didn't understand that for him, losing Grey was like losing his best friend.
They'd spent every single day together since they'd met and losing him
left a great empty hole inside him.

Nathan wrote to Penny to tell her that
Grey was missing and must be presumed dead. At least she'd understand how he
was feeling.

As more days and then
a week passed, Nathan fretted that there was no news of Grey. He desperately hoped
that if the dog had survived the drop, someone was taking care of him. His only
comfort was in knowing that if any dog could survive alone in France it would be
Grey. He'd survived as a stray dog on the streets of Dover and British streets
weren't so different from French ones.

Grey desperately tried to pick up the
scent of Nathan for days and days without any success. He was hungry and lost. The
last meal he'd eaten had been a large rat the evening before, so when he
spotted something that looked similar to a rat, in that it was about the same size,
he pounced.

Grey's head went down and then
snapped back up even faster as his sensitive nose encountered the sharpness of the
hedgehog's bristles. Grey hopped back in surprise and
looked
at the creature that had hurt him. He growled at it. Then he went towards it again,
intending to bite it, only to find the hedgehog was now curled safely into a ball
and first it was Grey's nose that got prickled again, and then his tongue.

Grey barked at the hedgehog as he hopped
backwards away from it. Then he reached out his front paw to touch it and ended up
giving a yelp and hopping away again as a spine spiked his pad.

Grey barked and barked at the creature
that had hurt him, but it remained tightly curled in its ball, safe from the
dog's unwanted attention.

Grey lay down and waited for it to
uncurl and when it didn't, he eventually gave up and went to the river to cool
off. He still wore the last remnants of the disguise Sabine had made for him and
flies buzzed around him whenever he stopped moving. He bit at them but all they
did was fly away and then come straight back again.

Grey took a long, refreshing drink from
the river and dipped the paw that had been pricked into the cool water. It was a hot
day and the fleece was heavy on him. He swam out into the water and the last of the
fleece disguise finally dislodged itself.

Grey came out of the water smelling much
better and shook himself vigorously, leaving the fleece to sink.

His thirst quenched and his body cooled
by the water, Grey's hunger still remained.

As night fell, he scratched a bed from
the soft forest earth and lay down. His thick fur kept him warm but he didn't
sleep. He lay awake with his head on his paws. Somewhere out there was Nathan but he
didn't know where, and as often as he sniffed the air he couldn't detect
any scent of him.

The clouds shifted and the sky above was
clear. The forest was silent apart from the sounds of night
creatures. Finally Grey slept, only to be woken at dawn by the sound of lowing. He
opened his eyes and found himself looking right into the soft brown eyes of a
brindled brown cow, which was towering above him. She had a white belly and head and
eyes that had brown patches over them.

Frightened, he stayed very still as the
beast stood over him. And then he was relieved to feel the lick of the cow's
massive tongue on his fur.

Eva had run out of the cowshed and into
the trees of the Brotonne Forest, terrified when the German soldiers began shooting
at her farm.

She'd never lived in a wood before
– never lived anywhere other than a farm – but the forest suited her just fine,
apart from making her feel a little lonely. The wild boar that lived there were
mostly nocturnal and skittered away if she even came close.

Eva led Grey to the
clearing where she spent her days and watched as he chased a rabbit, before lowering
her head to eat the rich forest grass. Grey chased the rabbit out of the clearing
and into the trees before he lost it, only to spot a squirrel, chase after it, but
lose that too. He returned to Eva who was now lying on the grass in the sunshine. He
went to join her and flopped down but then saw another rabbit. This time he caught
it and his hunger was finally satiated as he gulped the rabbit down.

As Grey and Eva spent a lazy time
together, Nathan and the Allied forces spent a frenzied day in the final stages of
preparation for the mission to liberate France.

‘It's on and it's
taking place tonight.'

‘Right, lads,' said Major
Parry in the briefing room. ‘The plan is for you paratroopers to land in
France first and prepare the way by taking
out any major guns and
bridges you can before the bulk of the force arrives at dawn.'

‘The intention is still to trick
the German army into believing the attack will take place elsewhere,' he
continued, ‘and we'll be dropping thousands of fake dummy men called
Ruperts over the Pas-de-Calais area at the same time as the Normandy invasion
begins, to try and pull the wool over Hitler's eyes.'

Once the order was given, thousands of
Allied aircraft – transport planes, military gliders and bomber planes – filled the
sky like a cloud of locusts.

At her grandparents' farm in Kent,
Penny was awoken by the insect-like droning sound of the Allied planes on their way
to Normandy. As she watched them from her bedroom window she didn't know if
Nathan was on one of them or not, but the mission to take back the country for the
French people was no longer a secret.

‘Be safe Nathan
and Grey,' she whispered.

She'd had Nathan's letter
telling her Grey was missing and probably dead but she didn't believe it, not
for one minute. She was sure Grey was alive and out there somewhere. He had to be
because she wanted him to be so badly.

Mrs Green also saw the planes fly
overhead from where she stood by Dover Castle.

Dover port was busy with soldiers, some
of them acting as decoys. Most would be travelling to Normandy on ships from further
along the coast in the morning.

As another wounded pilot was brought up
the hill to the castle to be treated in the underground hospital, she longed, as she
did every day, for the war to be finally over and for Nathan to come home
safely.

It was dark when a faint droning sound
woke Grey and Eva as they lay close to each other in the forest. Grey opened his
eyes and then
sat up at the sight of a family of wild boar,
playing in the dark of the night-time.

He'd seen pigs at the Ringway
airbase with Nathan, but he'd never seen wild boar before and they smelt
different though similar to domesticated pigs. The mother was about as tall as Grey,
but much stockier. Her skin was a brown colour and she was covered with tough
bristles.

The wild boar piglets that came
scampering after her were candy-striped in brown, black and white. They ran around
squealing and chasing each other in a puppy-like way while their mother dug into the
ground seeking out roots and worms. One piglet rooted up a worm and snuffled it down
only to have a second piglet grab hold of his little tail. The first piglet squealed
and the two of them were soon chasing after each other, before Eva sat up and they
ran back to their mother in fright.

Grey looked up as the droning grew
louder.
Little did he know that it was the sound of the Allied
planes on their way to free France.

The drone of the aircraft grew ever
louder, until the sound was right above them and almost deafening. The frightened
wild boar ran back to their nest of vegetation for cover. And Grey ran too, not away
from the planes, but in the direction they took, towards the coast, as Eva gave a
bellow of goodbye.

The night sky around Nathan's
plane was soon lit with orange flames. He could hear the sounds of guns firing.
Nathan and the other soldiers were restless. No one wanted to wait. They all knew
they could be killed by enemy fire as they parachuted down – but at least
they'd have a chance. They'd be doing something instead of waiting
inside the plane, which was a far larger target than a single paratrooper would
be.

‘Let us out!' the men on
Nathan's plane shouted to Sergeant Harris.

The static wire along
the centre of the plane to which each of them had clipped their parachute clip was
needed to operate the parachutes once they reached 600 feet. If they didn't
get out before the plane was hit they'd have no chance of survival. There were
so many men crammed into the plane that there was barely room for them to move,
other than in their appointed positions. They were sitting ducks inside the
plane.

‘We have to wait for the red
light,' Sergeant Harris shouted back. But out of the hatch he could see more
and more planes being shot down and he didn't want his men to die without
having a chance to survive.

‘Equipment check, strap on!'
he yelled. There followed a frantic few minutes as the men followed the instructions
they'd learned during their training, and leapt out into the night sky.

The plane's right wing was ablaze
as the last man jumped and the pilot parachuted out too.

As Grey raced towards the coastline after
the planes he heard the chattering
chi chi chi
sound of alarmed guinea
fowl. The day had dawned bright and clear but the drone of the Allied planes
continued and it had left them in a state of panic. To Grey the flock of large grey
birds looked similar to the chickens he'd seen at the farm in Kent, but not
quite the same. He stopped running and went a little closer, only to have first one
bird and then all of the birds come at him.

One bird wouldn't have intimidated
Grey.
Nor would two or three, but many terrified guinea fowls
squawking their alarm cry and charging him was too much and Grey turned and ran
on.

Before him was a vast expanse of dunes
and sand leading to the sea, and lying among the sand dunes there was a solitary
plane. Grey raced towards it over the sand dunes, only to suddenly yelp in pain and
stop. He'd stepped on a jagged piece of shrapnel buried in the sand. He felt a
wave of agony sweep through him and he bit at his paw to try to remove the iron
debris left from an exploded gun shell, but the fragment was embedded too deep and
he couldn't remove it.

He tried to run on but it was too
painful to even touch the paw to the ground. He hobbled three-legged to the plane.
It had lost both its wings as it had come crashing to the ground, and most of its
tail. The front of it was also mostly gone, leaving a large entrance hole.

Before it fell the
plane had caught fire and Grey could still detect the faint lingering smell of
smoke. He sniffed again and crept closer. The pilot of the plane had parachuted from
it as soon as it had been hit. Not to have done so would have meant certain
death.

Grey peered into the wrecked plane and
then went inside, giving a shrill yelp of agony from the pain in his paw as he lay
down in his new den.

A day that had started so bright and
sunny soon turned cloudy, but the plane kept him dry during the rainstorm that
followed and he found the sound of droplets tapping on the plane's metal
casing oddly soothing. Grey dozed and then slept.

‘What have we here, then?' a
voice asked in French.

Grey couldn't understand the
actual words but the tone of the man's voice was kind. He looked up at the old
man with the wrinkled,
weather-beaten face and merry brown eyes,
silently begging him to stop the pain he was feeling. ‘Looks like you're
in a sorry state, dog.'

The old man shook his head as he poured
some water from an earthenware jar into his hand and held it close to Grey for him
to lap at.

‘The name's Elijah,'
he told the dog, as he looked at the painful paw Grey was holding up. ‘Elijah
Buckley and I'd say it's your lucky day – and mine too.' He
gestured to the swastika painted on the side of the plane. ‘It won't
mean anything to you, dog, but this is a German bomber. I feel they owe me a bit of
shelter.'

Only a few days before Elijah had had a
horse and a caravan, but they'd been confiscated by the German invaders. For
the last few nights he'd slept under hedgerows, but tonight he needed
somewhere dry. His bones were too old for sleeping rough in the rain.

‘Back in a
minute,' he told the dog, as he went to collect twigs to make a fire. When he
came back, Grey was licking his injured paw. ‘It'll get infected if you
keep doing that,' Elijah told him. That paw would need seeing to but the dog
wasn't going to like it. ‘Looks nasty.'

Elijah had lived as a traveller all his
life, although he was now without a caravan. His grandmother had taught him the old
ways of healing and now he collected the herbs and plants he would need to help Grey
to get better.

Then he made some gruel on the fire,
added the herbs to it and gave the meal to Grey on a plate. Although he was in a lot
of pain, Grey was still hungry and he licked it all up as Elijah made himself a
separate bowl of gruel without any herbs.

As Grey ate, his eyelids grew more and
more droopy until he could barely keep awake.

‘That'll be enough,'
Elijah said, at last.

The herbs had done their job.

As Grey lay
unconscious on the ground, Elijah cut open the paw and removed the piece of iron
shrapnel, sewed Grey's paw up again and put a poultice on it.

Grey slept for the rest of the day but
in the evening he heard a sound unlike any he'd ever heard before and his eyes
opened wide.

Elijah was playing his fiddle into the
night sky and Grey was entranced by the sound.

‘You like that, do you?'
Elijah asked, noting the dog's interest.

When he stopped playing, Grey made a
small whine of disappointment and so Elijah played another tune and another after
that, until the sky was completely dark and a full moon looked down on dog and man
sitting by the German bomber plane. During the music, Grey would make small sounds,
part whine, part howl, as if he were trying to join in.

‘I wonder where you've come
from,' mused Elijah to himself. ‘Shame to see a nice dog like
you on your own. Got someone looking for you, eh boy?'

And all the while, only a few miles
further along the beach, the Allies and the occupiers fought each other with guns
and mortars and grenades and the sky was bright with rockets and flames.

‘Time for bed,' Elijah
yawned, and he wrapped himself in the pilot's coat, which had been left
behind.

Elijah and Grey slept soundly together
in the body of the plane as the battle continued to free France.

In the morning, Grey was a little better
and he ate some of the fish Elijah had caught while he'd been sleeping the day
before. His paw was still very tender so Elijah wrapped seaweed around it and tied
it carefully in place.

‘No walking for you today,
dog,' he said.

Every day for the next week they ate
fish, and every evening Elijah played his fiddle and
sometimes
Grey joined in and sometimes, when the music was sad, his eyes took on a faraway
look and he lay still and just listened.

By the time the early morning mist rose
over the sea on the seventh day, Grey's paw was healed and he was gone.

As he lit the camp fire to make his
breakfast, Elijah grinned as he remembered Grey's ‘singing'.
He'd miss the dog and wished he could have stayed with him for longer, but a
traveller would never stop a fellow traveller from going on his way.

The bomber was not as cosy as his
caravan had been, but it would do as a home for now.