The Dog Who Could Fly (12 page)

Ant’s third target was the nurses’ quarters. He soon discovered that the pockets of their starched white uniforms invariably hid the kind of treat that he’d first tasted as a lost puppy on the ends of his master’s fingers.
Chocolate!

One afternoon Robert broke off from his English studies and whistled for his dog to go “walkies,” but was surprised to see him bounding over with a pillbox gripped in his mouth. Inside were six of Ant’s milk teeth—removed courtesy of one of the nurses—and a note of advice about future dental treatment.

“You know, Robert,” one of the Czechs joked, “you should go say thank you to the nurse who cares for your dog. Look—I bet it’s that girl with the gorgeous brown hair.”

Robert looked where his friend was indicating and felt his heart skip a beat. There, framed in the window, was in his eyes the prettiest woman on the entire base. The Czech airmen had met her earlier, when they’d had their medical examination to ensure they were fit for duty. Her name was Pamela. Her father was English but she had inherited her Spanish mother’s olive-skinned beauty. Ever since then they had admired her from a distance, but none had plucked up the courage to approach her.

Robert waved to catch her attention. He smiled and saluted, and she rewarded him with a brief nod. He gestured at his dog—who was sitting at his feet wondering what had happened to walkies—showed his teeth, and mimed as if pulling one out. Pamela shook her head in amusement, which was all the encouragement that Robert needed.

“Well, come on,” he muttered to his Czech friend, “let’s write her a note. How do we start?”

“How about ‘Dear Nurse’?”

“No, let’s promote her,” Robert suggested. “Let’s put ‘Dear Sister.’ She’ll like that.”

A few minutes later Ant trotted over to the window with the note gripped in his jaws.

“Dear Sister,” it read. “I am deeply obliged for the service you so kindly gave my dog, Ant. I should be glad if you would give me further advice regarding his health. Yours truly, Robert.”

Soon the dog was on his way back with a reply that was both short and sweet: “Very well: 7:30 tonight, here. Pam.”

So it was that Ant, barely eight months old, played Cupid for his master and introduced him to his first English girlfriend.

Under Ant’s tutelage the romance flourished. Whenever Robert thought it too wet to go walkies, Ant only had to scratch at Pamela’s door to summon her, and off they went for a long and romantic stroll in the rain. What Ant particularly liked about those evening sojourns was that Robert was so engrossed in his girlfriend that he forgot all about training his dog. While they held hands and strolled through the lush summer woodlands, Ant was spared the tedious exercises in discipline that his master had started submitting him to, and he could hunt rabbits to his heart’s content.

Robert knew that such intensive training would not normally begin until a dog was one year old. But Ant had more experience than most fully grown dogs, and Robert was sure he was ready. He also sensed the need. This quiet period at RAF Cosford couldn’t last. Sooner or later they would be moved on to an operational unit. Once Robert took to the air, Ant would be left without him for long periods of time. Absolute obedience while he was away flying sorties was going to be essential, for unlike the French Air Force, the RAF was beset with rules and regulations that were as rigidly enforced as Britain’s quarantine laws.

Robert had taught Ant to “sit” and to “stay” at an early age, lessons that had proved vital in the bucket smuggling operation that
had gotten Ant safely aboard the
Northmoor.
But to “stay” for a prolonged period of time in his master’s absence was a different discipline entirely.

Over fine summer evenings Robert and Ant walked for miles through fields teeming with rabbits, but with Ant forbidden to leave his place at his master’s side. At first Ant tired of such exercises, and scampered off for a chase in the undergrowth. But over time he began to master the art of patience, something he would become famous for before the war was over. Eventually, the young bunnies grew so confident that they sat smugly on their haunches, as if to taunt him.

Man and dog reached the stage where they could complete the entire walk without Ant once stepping out of line: his bond with his master had trumped his innate hunter instinct. But whenever Robert stopped for a rest and a smoke, Ant would sit in front of him, whimpering and shuffling his bottom around in such a frustrated way that Robert could not resist. A slight nod, and a muttered “
Rabbits!”
and Ant would turn on his rear and fly, his tail trailing like a flag behind him, and the fields emptying in a flash of white tails.

Their idyllic existence at RAF Cosford ended with a second visit from Dr. Edvard Beneš, who by now had been recognized by the British government as the Czech president-in-exile. The Czech airmen were duly sworn in as serving members of the Royal Air Force and issued their spiffy new uniforms. Their deployments followed. Sadly, the Original Eight were to be split up, the brotherhood of all for one and one for all finally being broken.

Uncle Vlasta alone was to remain at RAF Cosford. Joska, Karel, Gustav, and Ludva were off to join No. 311 Czech Fighter Squadron, based at RAF Honington, in Suffolk. Robert was being sent with Josef—the twenty-six-year-old crack shot of the squadron—to join No. 312 Czech Fighter Squadron at RAF Duxford, in Cambridgeshire.

“It can’t be helped,” the ever-jocular Joska told his disconsolate
brother airmen. “In any case, we’re all going to stay in touch, aren’t we? How about getting together in London at Christmas?”

A rendezvous was fixed: they’d all meet up on December 23 at the Czechoslovak National House in Bedford Place, in London’s West End. Each pledged that nothing would keep him away—but it would turn out to be a rash promise indeed for men heading into mortal combat.

For Robert, the time had come to bid farewell to his sweetheart as well as his five close friends. He and Pamela said their lingering goodbyes in the quiet of an English country lane. Like millions of young couples parted by the war, they were grateful for the magical days they had enjoyed together but terrified that they might never meet again.

So great was the pain for Pamela that as Robert and Ant stood waiting for their train the following day, she appeared on the platform in the hope of snatching a final few moments. Robert could tell by her eyes that she had been crying all night and was struggling even now to hold back the tears. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her, but the presence of the others on the crowded platform restrained him.

Pamela did her best to hide her pent-up emotions by taking Ant’s shaggy mane in her hands and speaking softly to him, but Ant seemed about as uncomfortable as his master with all the heavy emotion. He shook his head free and bounded about as if seeking one last chance to play. Pamela took Robert’s hand, and he felt her grasp tighten as the train rolled in. There was a brief embrace, before man and dog turned away and boarded the train.

“Write to me as often as you can, Robert,” she called after him. “Write in your own language! The interpreter will translate for me!”

Touched more deeply than he had thought possible, Robert waved at the forlorn figure until she had disappeared from sight. That image of her would be a constant comfort during the savage months that
lay ahead. In the meantime, he soothed his own fevered thoughts by whispering sweet nothings into the ear of a young dog who didn’t seem to mind—uttering the kind of words that the airman wished he’d found the time and the opportunity to say to the girl he’d left behind.

•  •  •

The Battle of Britain was nearing its climax by now, and Robert and Josef were expecting a busy time of it at their new base. They had been assigned to a squadron flying the Boulton Paul Defiant fighter, one similar to the Potez 63 warplanes they’d flown over France in that it had a gun turret mounted to the rear of the cockpit. As a gunner, it was Robert’s task to operate the turret, and after the long months spent fleeing from France and retraining, he was desperate to get into the air and into action. But there were just two Defiants available at RAF Duxford, and both were presently unserviceable.

RAF Duxford had been hit repeatedly in Luftwaffe bombing raids and aircraft kept getting destroyed or damaged on the ground. All the newly arrived airmen could do was acquaint themselves with the Defiant’s turrets and her Browning machine guns, in the hope that they would soon get a chance to use them. Come sundown they had to be ready to sprint for the air-raid shelters as flights of German bombers seemed to fill the skies over Cambridgeshire from dusk to dawn.

The majority of those warplanes were en route to hit the industrial heartlands of Birmingham, Coventry, or Liverpool. Even so, as they roared overhead in the darkened skies Ant demonstrated once again his uncanny powers for sensing distant danger—for he’d cast his eyes skyward and whimper and growl at those roaring monsters of the air.

With Robert and Josef spending a great deal of time in the base armory studying the guns, Ant became a good friend to the
armorers. Robert took to leaving Ant there whenever he had to attend briefings—not that they had any aircraft they could yet fly. One evening the armorers were going about their business with Ant in his customary position—belly-down and dozing beneath one of the workbenches—when all of a sudden the dog rose to his feet and began to whimper.

Ant started to walk backward and forward down the length of the building as if he were somehow trapped, his taut tail whipping to and fro in a clear sign of distress and alarm. The armorers had heard rumors of the dog’s incredible early-warning abilities, and they stopped what they were doing to listen for any signs of approaching aircraft. But all they could hear were the throaty tones of a Hurricane’s engine being tested nearby.

As they turned back to their work Ant’s body went rigid. He unleashed a low, rumbling growl, baring his teeth at the heavens. Finally he lunged at the nearest man, grabbed at his pant leg, and started tugging hard. Ant seemed to be trying to drag the man toward the door, and the armorer could sense the creature’s exasperation and near panic. He glanced at the others, anxious not to make a fool of himself over a false alarm. After all, Ant was only a dog.

Finally one of the men suggested they had nothing to lose in heading for the shelters. The man whose pants had been gripped allowed Ant to drag him outside, whereupon they all ran for the nearest shelter. At that moment a lone Dornier
Schnellbomber
came tearing out of the clouds above in a shallow dive, its engines screaming at full throttle. Before the armorers or their dog could reach cover, the
Schnellbomber
leveled off at treetop height, roared across the base, and released its bombs.

Six black objects tumbled end over end, looping their way toward the airfield. Ant could have no idea what they were exactly, except that they had been released by his master’s sworn enemy, and that they presaged mortal danger. He raced ahead several paces
in front of the armorers, and the last they saw of him was a black streak diving into the bomb shelter. At that moment the bombs struck, the
Schnellbomber
having sown a stick of high explosives across the runway.

Fierce blasts tore across the airfield. Miraculously every bomb missed its target, but for the armorers a vital lesson had been learned. Never again would they ignore RAF Duxford’s phenomenal “radar dog.” The main impact of that air raid would be on Ant’s reputation. Word of the radar dog—who was more attuned to the dangers of approaching German aircraft than the sophisticated tracking systems British scientists had invented—spread like wildfire.

The name of Ant the canine radar was beginning to be heard far and wide.

Eight

S
everal weeks later Robert was transferred to RAF Speke, in Liverpool, to help strengthen the city’s defenses against the fearsome nightly bombardment from the Luftwaffe, but still he had no aircraft to fly. Confined to so-called desk duties—and separated from all of his original Czech flying brotherhood—he became disillusioned and listless.

Two things served to break the monotony of those early days at Speke, but neither was particularly welcome. First, a decision was made of necessity to change Ant’s name. He’d chosen to chase a black cat up a tree in a nearby terrace of houses. Robert had shouted at and scolded his dog, but the cat’s owner had somehow mistaken Robert’s calls of “Ant, you fool!” to refer to her—as in “Aunt, you fool.” Apparently, the way the Czechs spoke the dog’s name it sounded more like the British pronunciation of “Aunt.” The lady cat owner had taken real umbrage and had ended up yelling angrily at Robert.

Everyone had grown very fond of his name, which many took as being short for Anthony. But even so, the last thing Robert wanted to do was rub his English hosts the wrong way. Reluctantly, with the help of his fellow Czech fliers, he decided to change the dog’s
name by adding “is” on the end—so it became “Antis.” It was a minor enough change so as not to confuse the dog, but should avoid any unfortunate misunderstandings in the future. Henceforth that was how he was known.

Second, Robert was involved in a minor car accident and injured his wrist. It wasn’t in any way serious, but it meant that he was most definitely grounded. He whiled away the hours with his nose stuck in his
Fundamental English
manual and he found himself daydreaming of Pamela.

The summer nights were starting to grow shorter, and as rain swept over the city from the Irish Sea, Robert’s mood grew blacker. He began to neglect even Antis’s daily walks. He paced to and fro in their hut with the little red book grasped in one hand, muttering to himself in a variety of tenses as he rehearsed the words he might write to the girl he’d left behind.

“I think I’m getting the hang of this,” he’d murmur as he tried a certain English phrase, his spirits rising for a moment. Then he’d glance at Antis slumped in one corner, and as the dog’s eyes flicked up from where his head rested on his forepaws, Robert could see more than just a hint of reproach in his look.