The Bomber Dog (8 page)

Nathan struggled with his extra language
and code lessons before their mission, but Grey revelled in his extra agility
classes and messenger-dog training. The messenger-dog collar was hollow so that
messages could be put inside it, lightweight and made of strong leather. Usually
messenger dogs only wore them when they were taking messages, but on Nathan and
Grey's mission to France he'd wear it all the time as there wasn't
room to take extra collars.

Part of Grey's training involving
searching
for Nathan. He was held while Nathan hid, and as soon as
he was released he raced to find him. The distances over which Grey had to look for
Nathan were increased and increased.

When he did find him there was always
lots of praise, something nice to eat as reward, followed by a game of ball – his
favourite activity.

Sergeant Harris was very impressed and
so were the other soldiers when they heard about it. They came to watch as Grey was
released and went to find Nathan.

‘He'll never find him this
time …'

‘I bet he will …'

‘You've never seen anything
like this …'

Nathan moved from hiding place to hiding
place while Grey was looking for him so he'd leave a trail of scents but the
dog always found him. Grey was taken to different locations and in a forest had to
jump over fallen branches
and cross a small stream before he found
Nathan. But still he found him.

‘That dog is really something, you
know,' Gordon told Nathan back at the barracks. He had his hands in his
pockets and was looking down at his feet. Nathan thought he was probably embarrassed
about the day he'd caught him shouting in German outside Grey's
kennel.

‘Just got to teach him to speak
German now,' Nathan grinned, and Gordon looked up with relief and grinned
back.

‘Look at that!' the
soldiers said the next morning as Sergeant Harris led them all over to the training
field, wearing their parachute gear. In front of them a huge grey barrage balloon,
nearly thirty feet long, floated 600 feet up in the sky.

Grey had seen lots of barrage balloons
before in Dover. They had been up in the sky
ever since he was a
puppy and he wasn't the least bit fazed by this one.

‘Right, you lot,' Sergeant
Harris said. ‘We'll be jumping from that balloon today. It isn't
as far up as a plane will be and it doesn't move as fast.'

The balloon had a box-like cage beneath
it and was attached to a lorry with a winch on the back.

‘You three and the dog
first,' the sergeant said.

Nathan, Grey and two other soldiers
headed over to the balloon and the lorry winch brought it down so they could climb
into the cage.

‘All right, my lovelies,'
said the Women's Auxiliary Air Force officer who was in charge of the balloon,
and she winched them up.

Once they were high in the sky, Nathan
again pressed his fingernails hard into the palms of his hands to steady
himself.

‘The first parachute dog floated
down from a hot-air balloon in the 1700s,' Nathan told the
others, to distract himself from his nerves. But none of them were really paying
any attention and they all looked very nervous. Only Grey was blissfully unaware of
what was about to happen.

‘That's it, Grey,
you'll be fine,' Nathan told the dog, who looked at him with trust in
his clear blue eyes.

Nathan felt bad because he didn't
know if he and Grey were really going to be all right or not. Looking down from 600
feet up only made him feel more queasy. It was such a long way down.

‘You first, then I'll send
down the dog,' Sergeant Harris said.

Nathan just nodded because he
couldn't trust himself to speak.

‘Go!'

As he stepped through the gap into air,
Nathan closed his eyes and for a moment he wanted to scream, but then the parachute
opened and his descent became much slower as he floated gently
down to the ground.

Above him, Grey was floating down too
and he could hear the dog barking. It wasn't a frightened-sounding bark,
though – it was one of excitement. Grey sounded like he was having the time of his
life. And Nathan started to laugh. He laughed and laughed, and with his laughter his
terrible fear of heights, that had been a part of his life for so long, disappeared
into thin air.

Parachute jumping was exhilarating and
it made him feel more alive than he'd ever felt before. He would refuse to let
himself ever feel frightened of heights again and he was looking forward to future
jumps with his incredible dog.

‘Good dog,' Nathan said as
he released his own parachute and then ran over to release Grey's. Grey wagged
his tail enthusiastically and gave Nathan's face a big lick.

Back at the barracks,
Nathan slapped a pasty-looking Gordon on the back.

‘That was great, wasn't
it?' he grinned.

‘Well, you and the dog certainly
seemed to like it,' Gordon said. ‘Personally from now on I'd like
to keep both feet firmly on the ground.'

Nathan laughed and went to fetch
Grey's dinner before the evening's scheduled first-aid class. The
trainee paratroopers needed to know what to do if they or their fellow soldiers were
injured in the field. Nathan was also taught how to help Grey if he were hurt.

While Nathan attended his class, Grey
and Astor rested close to Grey's kennel until Bert came over to them.

‘Hungry?' he asked, and he
gave a large ham bone to Grey and some just-cooked ham to Astor. Once the camp had
settled down for the night they were joined by Billy, but once again, when morning
came Grey was alone.

‘I don't
understand how your collar keeps coming off at night,' Nathan said as he
rebuckled it round Grey's neck.

Grey wagged his tail and licked
Nathan's hand, ready for another day full of adventures.

The dog still showed no fear of heights
and loved running along the narrow beam and the A-frame during the extra agility
lessons he went to straight after his morning run with the rest of the soldiers.
Soon word got round the men about how good at it he was and they came out to watch
him as he completed the course and then they all cheered him at the end of it.

They watched as Grey crawled on his
belly through a narrow pipe too small for a man to squeeze through to find Nathan
and a treat waiting for him.

‘Good dog, Grey,' Nathan
told him. ‘Good dog.'

Grey kept looking over at the tunnel
he'd
come through, obviously excited and ready to do
more.

‘Let's try him on the split
tunnel,' Sergeant Harris suggested.

‘Sit, Grey, stay,' Nathan
told the dog.

Grey sat and waited as Nathan walked
away from him to the other end of the split tunnel.

‘Grey, come!' Nathan called
and Grey ran into the narrow tunnel, which split into two.

‘Come,' Nathan called again,
and Grey squeezed his way into the narrower of the dark tunnels, crawled along it on
his belly and pushed open a flap at the end to find Nathan, whose face he promptly
licked as Nathan laughed while the rest of the men cheered.

‘Fifteen seconds,' Sergeant
Harris said, looking at his stopwatch as the men applauded.

Grey was very fast for such a large dog.
Best of all, he didn't need to be told over and over what he needed to do; he
picked it up in no time and often correctly guessed what Nathan
wanted him to do even before he'd asked him to do it.

A few days later Nathan fixed the
bicycle parachute harness around Grey's body.

‘Final training jump today,'
he told the dog. They'd made seven jumps so far; three from the balloons and
four from planes.

Grey wagged his tail and then jumped
confidently up into the plane. The routine never varied and the commands and
positions were always the same. That way, in a panic situation, the men would know
what to do without needing to think. Each paratrooper checked the harness of the man
in front of him and Nathan checked Grey's.

Sergeant Harris shouted, ‘Fit
equipment,' which meant it was time for Nathan to attach the parachute to the
harness in the middle of Grey's back. It was heavy for a dog to carry. Too
heavy really, in Nathan's opinion. But once Grey
was out of
the plane and flying through the air he wouldn't notice the parachute's
weight, and if it had been too light it wouldn't have the support or strength
it needed and the dog would end up being tossed around in the wind.

‘Sound off for equipment
check,' Sergeant Harris shouted above the noise of the plane as it made its
ascent. ‘One OK, two OK, three OK …' came the reply from each of
the men. Everyone kept exactly to the script.

Once everyone had called out their
reply, Sergeant Harris shouted, ‘Hook up.'

Nathan clipped the hook from
Grey's parachute bag to the plane's central wire. Then he attached his
own parachute hook to it and everyone else who was going to jump from the plane did
exactly the same.

The light by the plane's door was
red and they had to wait for it to turn green before anyone could jump. The pilot
and co-pilot controlled the light switch and they would only give the
parachutists the go-ahead once they were at a steady speed and it
was as safe as it could be for the men to jump. They reached 600 feet.

‘Red on …' Sergeant
Harris shouted.

The wind was strong and the plane was
juddery as it flew up to a height of 800 feet. But it still didn't seem to
worry Grey. He wagged his tail as Nathan rechecked that his harness was secure.

The green light came on.

‘Green on … Go,'
Sergeant Harris said to Nathan.

Nathan jumped out of the plane and a few
seconds later Grey came after him. Nathan could at least hold on to the strings of
his parachute, but Grey couldn't. He had no way of controlling his parachute
and was totally dependent on Nathan to release him from it once they hit the
ground.

As soon as he landed, Nathan released
his own parachute and looked up at Grey coming
down. The
dog's landing was perfect and Nathan ran over to unstrap him from his kit.

‘We did it,' he told Grey,
who wagged his tail and licked his face, bounding in a circle around him,
exuberantly.

That evening there was a graduation
ceremony and Nathan took Grey to the front of the room with him when he and the
other soldiers in his squad were given their coveted red berets and winged
badges.

Grey wasn't given a beret, of
course, but Nathan gave him something even better – a shiny new red ball. Grey
happily chewed on it while Nathan wrote to Penny and his mother to tell them that he
was now officially a paratrooper and Grey a paradog.

He'd only just finished writing
the letter when Major Parry's aide came to find him.

It was time for Nathan and Grey's
mission to France to begin.

It was very late at night but Grey was
instantly awake and wagging his tail as soon as Nathan stopped at his kennel.

‘Time to go,' Nathan
said.

Grey didn't know where they were
going. All that mattered was that he was going with Nathan.

‘There'll be no nice kennel
for you once we're in Normandy, my friend,' Nathan told Grey. ‘And
probably just a dug-out hole for us both to sleep in, if we're
lucky.'

Nathan clipped Grey's lead to his
collar and they headed over to the waiting bomber plane.

‘Up,
Grey,' Nathan said. But Grey didn't jump up as he usually did. He stayed
where he was, then looked up at Nathan and whined, his tail between his legs.
‘Come on now, you like going in planes,' Nathan encouraged him. But Grey
only tried to pull Nathan away too. ‘No,' Nathan told him firmly and
Grey stopped pulling. ‘Good dog,' Nathan said.

He didn't blame Grey for his
momentary terror at all. He didn't want to get on the bomber either, but this
was war and their mission was vital; neither he nor Grey had a choice. They had to
do their job. Thousands of soldiers would be arriving on the Normandy beaches in the
next few weeks and before they got there they needed to know what guns the German
army had so they didn't walk into an ambush.

‘Up, Grey – go on,' Nathan
said. And when Grey again refused to board Nathan picked him up and put him on the
plane. ‘Sorry, but
it had to be done,' Nathan told
him, as Grey gave him a look and whined.

‘Does that dog need a
muzzle?' Tommy the pilot shouted from the cockpit.

‘No, he'll be fine,'
Nathan shouted back. A muzzle would only make things worse.

‘You sure? A crazed dog's
teeth biting us isn't going to help anyone. A bandage wrapped round his mouth
will keep us – and him – safe.'

‘He'll be fine,'
Nathan repeated firmly.

Tommy hesitated. He may well need the
bandages they'd been issued with to treat an injury.

‘Sure as sure?'

‘Absolutely, he's always
been perfectly fine in planes before and ready and eager to jump out – just got a
bit of stage fright, that's all.'

Nathan breathed a sigh of relief as
Tommy nodded and turned back to his instruments. He stroked Grey's furry
head.

The dog was much less
happy about being in the bomber than Nathan had ever seen him before. As the engines
started and the plane juddered, Grey was shaking. He looked utterly miserable – even
more unhappy than when he'd travelled on the train for the first time.

As the plane took off, Astor watched it
from the top of Grey's kennel and Billy watched from his field.

The steep rise caused a painful pressure
in Nathan's ears.

‘Blow hard while holding your
nose,' Tommy shouted over his shoulder. Nathan did so but poor Grey
couldn't.

The plane flying Nathan and Grey to
France banked low over the training camp, then levelled off and flew up into the
night sky.

The atmosphere on board wasn't at
all like it had been on the training missions. It was much more intense. Nathan
tried to stay calm for Grey's sake, knowing how the dog picked
up on his emotions, but he only just managed to keep his
queasiness under control as the plane flew onwards.

At their final briefing before the
mission, Major Parry had told them that members of the Resistance would be waiting
for them, ready to show them the Germans' latest guns. Nathan tried to focus
his thoughts on the importance of locating these brave fighters and how he
mustn't let them down. The information they'd be waiting to pass on
would be crucial to the war effort.

The cloudy sky was perfect for their
undercover mission, but, although visibility was low, the worst happened and they
were spotted.

Nathan didn't hear the sound of
the second plane above the noise of their own plane's engine, but Grey
did.

‘We've got company,'
Tommy shouted as the German plane came closer.

They'd hoped to
fly into France undetected, but soon Nathan and Tommy started to hear the
unmistakeable sound of
ack-ack
as anti-aircraft fire shot into the air
around them. If they took a direct hit, Grey and Nathan and Tommy would be killed –
unless they could get out in time. There was no way Nathan was going to allow
himself or Grey to die trapped inside a flying metal coffin. They'd jump out
right now if they had to.

‘Hang on, I might be able to
outmanoeuvre him,' Tommy said. He swerved and dipped as he tried to escape the
other plane's guns but the Germans stayed firmly on their tail and shot at
them. ‘Incoming from the right,' Tommy shouted as a second German plane
hurtled up to join the first. He might have had a chance of taking on the plane, but
tackling two was impossible.

‘Prepare to bail out!' he
shouted to Nathan. Nathan stood up and checked that Grey's
parachute harness was secure one last time. Even in the panic of the situation
they were in, the hours of training paid off.

‘Now!'

Nathan pushed an unwilling Grey out of
the plane and then jumped himself. His descent was through the clouds; he was cold
and wet and almost undetectable from the ground because of the rainy sky.

He couldn't see Grey or Tommy as
he floated down and he knew they could be miles away. The high wind and lashing rain
as well as the chaotic circumstances of their jump as they tried to evade the other
planes' guns meant there was virtually no chance of them landing anywhere near
each other. But still Nathan hoped against hope that Grey would be somewhere close
by and unhurt.

His parachute landing was soft because
of the early summer floods and he jumped to his feet, unclipped his chute, tore it
off and stuffed
it in a bush to hide it as quickly as possible.
Then he looked around for Grey. It was very dark and he could barely see anything
because of the lashing rain. He made a whistling sound through his teeth. He
couldn't call out in case he alerted the enemy, but there was no response to
his whistle and, as Nathan waded knee deep through the flooded fields, he felt sick
with dread.

The army had prepared them all as well
as it could, but one of the things Nathan's group of soldiers hadn't
been taught how to do was swim.

He whistled quietly again as he circled
the area, hoping for an answering bark or a whine or anything at all, but there was
nothing – just a terrible silence.

Grey didn't have a life jacket.
They weren't designed for dogs to wear and Nathan didn't know whether
Grey could swim or not. He'd been told that dogs can swim instinctively, but
he didn't know if this was really always true or
not.

If only he'd taken Grey swimming.
If only he could be sure. But it was too late now.

Then an even worse thought came to him.
Even if Grey could swim he wouldn't be able to get out of his parachute. He
needed someone to remove it, and that person should have been Nathan.

‘Grey,' Nathan called out.
‘Grey!'

As if from nowhere, a hand appeared and
clamped itself over his mouth.

‘Shut up! Or we'll all be
killed,' a voice with a French accent ordered him.

It was a member of the French Resistance
who had been waiting for them, as planned. The man released his hand from
Nathan's mouth.

‘My dog,' Nathan whispered.
‘We parachuted together …'

The man had never met Nathan or Grey
and so Nathan knew he couldn't possibly begin to understand
the bond he and the dog had.

‘I have seen no dog,' he
muttered. ‘And there's no time to look for it now. Come on!'

The man pushed him roughly forward and
Nathan knew he had no choice but to go. He needed to report back about the guns; his
comrades at home were counting on him. The man from the French Resistance introduced
himself as Jacques Dubois, and he and Nathan waded on through the flooded field.

‘They've brought more guns –
big guns,' Jacques told him as they reached the edge of the field where Nathan
saw that he had a motorcycle waiting for them. He pulled away the tree branches
he'd used to hide it. ‘They took them to the Merville gun battery. I
will show you.'

He climbed on to his motorcycle and,
after one last desperate look behind him to see if Grey was there, Nathan climbed on
too.
Jacques started the engine and they drove – without
headlights so it would be harder for the enemy to spot them – towards the German gun
battery. All the time Nathan prayed that Grey was all right; that he wouldn't
be caught; that wherever he'd landed someone would help him remove the
parachute that he couldn't remove for himself.

He felt desperately guilty as he
imagined Grey lying injured and afraid. Had he landed safely somewhere? Often
parachutists landed in trees and were stuck there unless they managed to cut
themselves free. But Grey didn't have a knife or hands that could grip one. He
was solely dependent on someone to release his parachute for him.

For a moment Nathan wondered if it would
have been better for Grey if they had never met. Nathan felt it certainly
wouldn't have been better for himself, but if Nathan hadn't rescued him
Grey could have gone back to life as a stray
dog in Dover. It had
been a tough life admittedly, but maybe better than being lost in France.

‘
Voila
,' Jacques
said as the motorcycle stopped. ‘From here we walk.'

Nathan helped Jacques to hide his
motorcycle under more foliage and they set off to trudge through the rain for the
last mile towards the Germans' gun enplacement. It was well protected not only
with barbed wire, but also by a minefield through which Jacques led Nathan
carefully.

‘Over there,' he said as he
handed Nathan a pair of wire-cutters to cut through the barbed wire. The huge gun
fort, made of concrete and steel to protect the guns within, lay just ahead. It was
hard to see exactly what was inside the fort, but there were holes in it for the
largest of the guns to poke through. The guns could do devastating damage to the
Allied forces and the British needed to know about them as soon as possible.

But Nathan wanted to
see more so that he would have more intelligence to report. They crept closer and
were just inside it when they were almost spotted.

‘
Wer ist das?
' a
voice asked.

Nathan and Jaques ran to hide as
footsteps approached.

‘Miau, is that you?' the
German soldier said. He stopped in front of the large cannon-shaped gun behind which
Nathan was hiding.

Nathan held his breath as a cat miaowed
and came running to the soldier.

‘Aha, was it you catching mice
again?' the soldier said as he lifted the cat into his arms.
‘Let's see if we can find you some milk, little Miau.'

As soon as the German soldier had gone,
Nathan and Jaques ran. They made it safely out of the gun battery, but as they were
running through the minefield a shot rang out.

‘My leg,' yelled Jacques.
‘I've been hit!'
Then, ‘Go, go, go!'
he shouted, as Nathan instinctively went to help him.

‘No!' Jacques begged,
holding up his hand as Nathan knelt beside him. ‘Too risky to save me. Tell
them there is also a railway gun …'

Nathan pulled Jacques's arm round
him and dragged him to his feet.

‘You must report what you see. If
you do not, all this will be a waste,' Jacques begged.

But there was no way Nathan would leave
Jacques to be taken prisoner or maybe even shot.

‘They need the railway-gun
information too,' he said, through gritted teeth, as he half dragged the much
heavier man away through the torrential rain. Although the rain was drenching both
of them to the skin, it would at least make them harder to see.