The Bomber Dog (11 page)

Otto felt much too hot in his German
uniform even though he'd taken his boots off while he fished.

‘It's all right for
you,' he told his German Shepherd guard dog, Wolf. ‘You don't have
to wear clothes.'

Wolf looked at him and panted. He always
preferred the snow to the sun.

‘I guess I don't have to
wear a fur coat like you,' Otto agreed. ‘But if you'd just go in
the water you could cool off.'

But Wolf, like more than one German
Shepherd Otto had known, was not very keen on water and would
only do so much as dip his paws into it if he could help it. Otto was very familiar
with the German Shepherd breed. He admired their courage and intelligence and he had
played a part in gathering as many as he could from French farmers to be trained up
as German war dogs. Four years ago, he had taken a whole litter of puppies from the
Dubois family, not far from here.

Grey caught the scent of fish on the
air, and wandered down to the river's edge. As he lowered his head to drink
the water, Otto spotted the sable-coated German Shepherd, but he didn't let on
that he'd seen him.

A moment later, Wolf spotted him
too.

Grey lifted his head from the river to
see another German Shepherd dog running towards him, barking aggressively. Wolf was
a guard dog who'd been in the army since he was a puppy.

Grey turned to face
this strange dog, the hackles along his back rising. But Wolf, who only moments
before had been snarling at Grey, suddenly stopped and wagged his tail in the hope
of making a new friend. Then dipped his head over his front paws in a play bow. Grey
returned the older dog's play bow and the two dogs ran to greet each other and
were soon nose to nose as they sniffed their hellos, tails wagging constantly. All
their initial hesitancy and fear was forgotten.

Otto strolled over to the dogs, acting
as if he wasn't really interested in Grey, but holding out a tantalizing piece
of bratwurst sausage nevertheless. He dropped it on the ground close to Grey but not
too close.

The smell of the sausage made Grey drool
and he swallowed it down in one gulp.

Otto threw more sausage, and some for
Wolf as well, but this time he dropped it a little closer to himself, though still
without looking at Grey.

Grey ate the second
bit of sausage and looked up hopefully for more, but his wariness was still holding
him back. However, another chunk of sausage appeared, without any alarming movements
from the soldier, so Grey plucked up the courage to approach it and gobble it
down.

In no time at all he was sitting with
Wolf beside Otto and sharing his picnic. He even let Otto stroke him and
didn't realize until it was too late that Otto intended to capture him.

Grey struggled violently against the
noose that Otto slipped over his neck, but it was no good; he was well and truly
caught and there was no escaping. Otto put him into the jeep and started the
engine.

‘What have we here?' The
kommandant asked when Otto returned to the camp with Grey.

‘He's a lost German guard
dog,' Otto said, although he didn't know if this was true. But
the dog certainly looked as though he could be one and this was
the only way he'd be allowed to keep him.

The kommandant nodded. They needed more
dogs to protect the railway gun that had arrived and for which they were now
responsible.

‘No collar on him?'

Otto shook his head.

‘What are you going to call
him?'

‘Max,' Otto said. ‘He
must be a German dog because he's crazy about bratwurst.'

Otto chained Grey to the kennel next to
Wolf's and brought more food for them both. He also found a German collar and
lead for Grey.

‘Now you look like a proper war
dog,' he told Grey, once the collar was on.

Grey tilted his head to one side and
looked up as Otto petted him and imagined he could understand his every word.

‘What stories
you could tell if you could only speak,' he said.

The dog had obviously been trained, but
he didn't know where and he hadn't heard of any German dogs going
missing. Not that this meant that there weren't any missing dogs. This was war
after all, and he knew that situations were often confusing and chaotic.

That night he made sure the dog was tied
securely both with a collar and a harness. He didn't want him running off now
he'd caught him.

Grey pulled against his chain collar but
he couldn't get free because of the additional harness, which wouldn't
let him pull his head back. Finally he lay down and Wolf, who wasn't chained
up, lay down beside him.

Both dogs were fast asleep but they
immediately woke up when an enormous freight train pulled into the camp. It was
carrying the massive railway gun from where
it had been hidden
further along the coast, and the train was the only machine powerful enough to pull
it along.

The soldiers were excited to see it
arrive, and jokingly dared each other to climb up. The gun was so vast they
discovered that twenty-two of them could stand side by side along its barrel.The men
who had accompanied it swiftly and skilfully built an igloo-like bunker over the top
to try to disguise the gun from the Allies.

‘You will guard this gun night and
day. With your lives if necessary,' the kommandant shouted to his soldiers. It
was a very important long-range firing gun and he was desperate to make sure the
Allies didn't take it from them, or even destroy it.

‘Alert me immediately if you
detect anything out of the ordinary,' he bellowed.

‘Yes, sir,' said
Otto's colleague, Fritz, saluting and clicking his heels together. He clipped
Wolf's lead to his collar. ‘I'll take the
first watch,' he told Otto. ‘You'll take the second.'

The next morning, Otto took Grey for an
early walk along the beach and through the forest on his lead and harness, so they
could both stretch their legs before they had to take over from Fritz and Wolf.

But, almost as soon as they got into the
trees, Grey caught the smell of a rabbit on the crisp morning air and pulled on his
lead. Otto had had a dog called Gretel in his native Bavaria – she'd loved to
chase rabbits, and sometimes caught them too. He wanted to trust this dog and let
him off the lead but he'd only just caught him and he'd be in trouble
from the kommandant if he lost him.

Instead of letting him run free, Otto
ran through the trees with Grey still on his lead.

‘Watch out for
Wolpertingers,' Otto laughed as they loped along together.

Bavarian folklore said
that horned rabbits or Wolpertingers lived in large forests. As a little boy
he'd been frightened of the stories, but not any more. Now he knew there were
many more real things to be frightened of than imaginary ones.

He missed Bavaria more than he could
ever have believed possible and he longed for the war to be over so he could go
home. But he knew he might not live to see that day.

‘The French Resistance have
reported that the Germans now have an enormous railway gun in this area. Our aim is
to reach it and destroy it before it can do any more harm,' Major Parry told
his men, who had all luckily survived the drop and had set up headquarters in a
bombed-out, half-demolished, one-roomed school. He spread out the large-scale map on
a desk to show them the positions each of them needed to be in. The gun was ten
miles to the north of their location.

‘Green,
you'll come from the rear here …' he said, pointing to the spot
with the pencil he usually kept behind his ear.

Nathan nodded.

‘Timms and George, you move in
from this angle,' the major continued as he outlined the plan. ‘Solomon
and Carter here.'

The men leant forward as he spoke,
concentrating hard.

‘We'll set off at
midnight,' he said finally, when he'd told them all they needed to know.
‘Till then try and get some sleep.'

Nathan lay by the classroom wall and
thought about Grey as the other soldiers made themselves as comfortable as they
could in the school with no roof. He didn't expect to sleep, but was so
exhausted that he was dead to the world almost as soon as he closed his eyes. In his
dream he and Grey were reunited, but then pulled apart as he was roughly shaken
awake. He felt that he'd only
been asleep for a minute but
hours had gone by and it was time to leave.

‘Camouflage up!' the major
said.

Nathan and the rest of the men smeared
their faces and hands with greenish-brown face paint from the small tins
they'd been issued. They left the school just after midnight and trekked
silently through the countryside.

It was just after five o'clock
when they reached their destination and time for the mission to begin properly.
Everyone felt very tense.

Nathan and the other soldiers edged
through the trees, creeping ever closer to the well-guarded gun.

‘Just ahead,' the major
hissed. He indicated to Nathan that he should now head round to the rear of the gun.
The weapon was surrounded by barbed wire, which they would need to cut through.

Through his binoculars Nathan could see
patrolling soldiers and a German Shepherd dog inside the
barbed-wire fence. It was going to be tough to get past the soldiers, but the deadly
railway gun had to be captured or destroyed. It could fire shells up to thirty miles
and cause devastation with a single shot, so the British needed to do everything
they possibly could to prevent the Germans from using it.

As Otto and Grey headed back to the
camp, Nathan crept out on to the beach and carefully circled the barbed-wire fence,
looking for a spot at the rear where he wouldn't be seen as he cut through
it.

Otto and Grey had almost reached the
camp when Grey suddenly stopped in his tracks. He'd caught the scent of Nathan
in the air at last and he had to find him.

‘Slow down!' Otto shouted as
Grey took off, pulling him towards the beach. Then he heard the staccato sound of
machine-gun fire. The
British soldiers had been spotted by the
camp's defenders and the battle had begun.

As Grey tried to drag Otto towards the
beach, a sniper in the watchtower spotted Nathan. He carefully tracked him as he
crawled between the sand dunes until he had a clear sight of him. He aimed and
fired, then smiled in satisfaction as he realized his shot had reached its target.
Then the sniper turned to shoot at the other British soldiers who were heading
towards the railway gun from the other direction, but realized there was little he
could do – there were far too many of them for him to be able to stop. Meanwhile,
Nathan had collapsed in agony from the burning, searing bullet wound in his calf and
he crawled on his belly back into the sand dunes where he remained hidden.

By the time Otto had managed to force an
unwilling Grey back towards the railway gun the battle for it was almost over.

‘Noooooo!'
Otto shouted in horror as a gunshot rang out. Everything seemed to happen in
horrible slow motion as he watched Wolf leap in front of Fritz and get hit by the
bullet, just as Fritz let go of the dog's lead and ran for cover.

Wolf gave a howl as the bullet hit him.
He stumbled and fell, but then started crawling on his belly, painfully and slowly,
away from the battle area towards the beach.

On the battlefield it was chaos. The air
was full of the sound of guns and shouting and the smells of gunfire and smoke.

The kommandant couldn't bear to
let the British capture the railway gun he'd been put in charge of. It was
better that no one had it.

‘Destroy it!' he shouted,
‘Destroy the
Bahngewehr.
'

The German soldiers
ran to obey him and blow up the massive weapon as more gunfire burst around them and
hand grenades were thrown.

‘Retreat, retreat!' the
kommandant yelled, as more British soldiers arrived, so the German soldiers ran and
Otto ran too, dragging a struggling Grey with him.

As they drove off, Otto looked behind
him at the beach Wolf had crawled towards. Wolf had been a good dog and had done his
duty but this was war. Hard choices had to be made.

When they regrouped he asked the
kommandant if he could drive back and check on Wolf. The officer said he could so
long as he was careful not to be seen.

‘And if the dog's alive but
not fit for duty then shoot him,' the man added.

Otto had expected to find Wolf close to
the edge of the beach, not far from where he'd
been hit. It
had looked as though the dog had been badly injured. Had someone found him? Had he
been taken by the British soldiers? He felt an awful sense of dread in the pit of
his stomach. What if the British soldiers had shot him?

Grey put his nose down and sniffed at
the spot where Wolf had been lying.

‘Find him, Max, find
Wolf …' Otto urged the dog. Grey whined. As well as a strong smell of
Wolf there was also the smell of Nathan.

‘Find Wolf,' Otto said
again, pointing at the place where Wolf had been, and Grey followed the scent trail
Wolf had left behind. His smell was strong on the ground and easy to track. As well
as Wolf's scent there were spots of his blood. Grey could sense the other
dog's pain and fear and he half ran in his eagerness to find him, with Otto
close beside him, urging him on.

From where he was
hidden in the sand dunes, Nathan watched the German soldier and his dog kneeling
beside a second dog that was lying on the beach. The dog that was uninjured licked
the wounded one as if he were trying to wake it up.

Nathan had bandaged up his calf as well
as he could with the first-aid kit he had, but it would need proper treatment as
soon as he could get it. Stifling a groan of agony he crawled through the sand dunes
with his rifle at the ready.

As he leant over the dog, Otto could see
that Wolf was bleeding and badly injured but not dead, definitely not dead.

As he got closer, Nathan thought that
the uninjured dog looked very much like Grey. Remarkably so. And as Nathan edged
nearer the dog looked directly at him with his distinctive bright blue eyes and
wagged his tail so hard that his whole body seemed to be wagging.

Grey whined and tried
to go to Nathan, but Otto had a strong hold on his lead.

‘
Halten!
'

‘Grey?' Nathan said.
‘Grey, is it really you?'

Grey whined again.

Otto turned his attention away from Wolf
to find himself staring at the barrel of a British soldier's gun, and he
reluctantly raised his hands in surrender.

‘His name's Max,' Otto
told Nathan in halting English. ‘My dog …' Otto said, looking back
at Wolf, ‘needs help.'

‘You have my dog,' Nathan
said, nodding at Grey. ‘Release him.'

Otto let go of the lead and Grey ran to
Nathan and jumped into his arms as if he were no more than a little puppy. In his
enthusiasm he knocked Nathan over and a split second later Otto was the one holding
the gun and aiming it at Nathan.

The two men stared at each other, hardly
daring to breathe. Neither of them had ever shot anyone
before. Neither of them truly wanted to have to do so now.

Wolf whimpered in pain.

‘I have bandages,' Nathan
offered. ‘I can help him.'

Otto nodded and he and Nathan bandaged
Wolf's bullet wound together, united by their desire to help the dog despite
being soldiers on opposite sides.

‘He is your dog?' Otto
asked, nodding at Grey.

‘He is indeed,' Nathan told
him.

‘You could go now,' Otto
suggested as he put down the rifle. ‘I did not see you.'

‘And I did not see you,'
Nathan agreed. ‘All I saw was a man caring for his dog.'

Otto nodded again. He watched as Nathan
and Grey headed off back up the beach. Then he lifted Wolf in his arms and carried
him to
the jeep, talking softly to him all the time. He felt sorry
for the military dogs that were injured or shot or blown up. How were they supposed
to know they should hide when a man aimed a rifle at them? All they'd see was
a big stick. They might not even realize that what came after the loud bang could
hurt or even kill them. How could they know?

Otto recalled the Dubois family and the
day he had taken the German Shepherd puppies from their farm. Now it was time for
him to return Wolf to them.

‘You'll be safe
there,' he told him as they drove off.

Grey was over the moon to be back with
Nathan and almost danced with joy along the beach beside him. As for Nathan, he
could hardly believe that they'd found each other. It was a miracle. A total
miracle. He needed to
have his leg treated properly but he could
wait a little longer for that.

All the time Grey had been gone, Nathan
had carried his ball with him and now he took it from his pocket and threw it.

‘Fetch, Grey!' he shouted,
and Grey raced along the sand after it.

‘This is my parachute dog,'
Nathan said as the two of them finally reached the British camp, after a slow and
painful journey for Nathan who had limped badly all the way.

‘Good to have you back with
us,' the major told Grey.

He stood with the dog as the medics ran
over to clean and bandage Nathan's calf wound. Grey whined when they put
Nathan into the ambulance. He didn't want Nathan to go anywhere without him
and he tried desperately to get in the ambulance too, memories of the way he'd
lost Molly crowding into his mind.

‘We can't
have a dog in here. It's not hygienic,' one of the medics said.

But the major didn't agree.
‘This isn't just a dog,' he told them. ‘This is a paradog
and he could end up saving all our lives before this war's over.'

‘Almost home,' Nathan told
Grey, two weeks later, as the seagulls screeched above them and he saw the majestic
white cliffs of Dover just ahead.

His right hand rested on the top of
Grey's furry head as they stood together on the ship's deck. His left
hand held on to the crutch that he'd need to help him walk for a few more
weeks yet. Nathan and Grey had been inseparable ever since the day Nathan had been
shot and Grey had found him. Grey had even been allowed to sleep in Nathan's
tent each night. And Nathan might not have been able to walk far, but he'd
still
been able to throw a ball for his beloved dog to chase.

On the docks, Penny and Nathan's
mum and grandparents stood waiting for them to reach home.

Grey looked up at Nathan and wagged his
tail.