The Dog Who Could Fly (17 page)

The dog raced out of the door so fast that his claws scratched on the floor as he turned sharply into the corridor. But Robert could tell that his dog was far from ashamed. The tail that had been jammed
between his legs was now being carried high. It was a sure sign that, if anything, he was rather pleased with himself. As far as he was concerned, this woman was his—
and Pamela’s
—bitter rival, and if he’d managed to throw a monkey wrench in the works, so much the better.

Incredibly, Ann seemed to take the dousing in fine spirits. “Don’t punish your dog,” she implored. “He did his best to warn you he needed to go. Anyway, no harm done. I’ve another pair of stockings in my handbag.”

“But, Ann . . .” Robert stammered. “He’s never done anything like this before . . . How can I make amends?”

She laughed. “Forget it. Though I have to say it’s the first time anyone’s thought my legs looked like a lamppost!”

Ann vanished into the ladies’ room leaving Robert astonished that she could be so cool and understanding. She was truly one in a million. Antis’s attempt to sabotage their budding romance had backfired. Rarely had Robert met such an easygoing type. After all, how many other girls could have his dog pee on their legs and shrug it off with a joke and a smile?

Ann was back a few minutes later, the damage done by Antis fully repaired. They laughed and joked until the train reached Wolverhampton, where Robert had to transfer. Once man and dog arrived at RAF Cosford, Pamela was quick to get herself a pass. Soon the three of them were strolling through the gentle countryside, Robert regaling Pam with the tale of Antis peeing on the shoes of the girl he had met on the train.

Pamela paused to ruffle Antis’s neck. “Serves her right, eh, boy? Good old Antis—he even protects my interests when we’re far away from each other.”

Eleven

The airmen’s huts were horribly crowded, but Robert made sure that Ant—now renamed Antis—always had a blanket bed on the floor by his master’s side.

I
t was a dull and cloudy day in mid-November when three men—Robert, Josef, and Stetka—plus one dog showed up at the guardroom of RAF Honington, in Suffolk. They had their worldly possessions crammed into the same battered suitcases with which they had fled from France, and there was a feeling among them as if they were fresh arrivals at a new school. They were here to receive flight and gunnery training, in preparation for joining 311 Squadron proper.

Robert was sharing a room with Stetka, and of course their dog.
They’d been allocated one on the ground floor, close to a side door, which suited Robert. It made it easier to let Antis in and out to pee during the night. One of the first things Robert did was pay a visit to station headquarters, to speak to the station warrant officer (SWO), to make the standard application necessary to keep a dog on an RAF camp.

The SWO was also the chairman of the sergeants’ mess, and unbeknownst to Robert there was a diktat in the mess rules that no dogs were allowed to be kept in the rooms. There was a note to that effect pinned up on the notice board, but Robert hadn’t seen it. He’d made up Antis’s bed as usual, laying his blanket on the floor next to his own.

The SWO at Honington was called Meade. He had nineteen years’ service with the RAF, and wore the long-service ribbons to prove it. He was tall, thin, and ramrod straight. His hair was cut razor short, his mustache was bristle thin, and it sat atop a mouth like a slit trench. He had no other duties than to be the station disciplinarian, and he was the equivalent of a regimental sergeant major in the army. The SWO ranked next to God on the base, and this one acted very much as if he knew it.

Robert and his dog’s first meeting with SWO Meade didn’t go terribly well. As soon as Meade laid eyes on the dog, his face was like a storm cloud. Muttering something about “damn foreigners turning the place into a menagerie,” he told Robert to get the dog out of his office. Robert did as he was instructed, leaving Antis with Stetka, and then returned to the business at hand of seeking a permit. But he had little doubt already that SWO Meade was far from being a dog lover.

On seeing Robert’s return sans dog, SWO Meade greeted him with a thin, wintery smile. “Now, what can I do for you?”

Robert laid his letter of application on the SWO’s desk. “Permission to keep a dog on the camp, sir.”

The SWO ran a gimlet eye over the paper. “I would have preferred
‘RAF Station, Honington,’ not ‘camp.’ But I suppose it will have to suffice.”

He jabbed a bell push beside him. A bespectacled orderly came running.

“Take that along to the squadron leader for onward transmission.” The orderly scurried out again. “All right, Sergeant, see the orderly room sergeant tomorrow, by which time he’ll have your answer. In the meantime, keep that dog of yours under control.”

“He’s never been a nuisance to anyone, sir.”

“Maybe not to you,” the SWO scowled. “That will be all.”

The following morning Robert called on the orderly room sergeant and found that his request had been granted. Antis was now formally permitted to be at RAF Honington. But when he returned to his room, Robert found an official-looking envelope had been pushed under the door. It had his name, rank, and number written across it in a spidery hand. He opened it to find a typed note on sergeants’-mess-headed paper.

It drew his attention to Mess Rule No. 18, which stated that it was forbidden for any animal to sleep in quarters. He’d been given two hours to get Antis out of his room and to find him alternative accommodation. The note was signed by SWO Meade, Chairman of the Sergeants’ Mess. Robert had known already that he had no friend in that man, but now he could see how determined the SWO was to make life difficult for his dog.

There was no getting around it. Robert was a foreigner who had sworn an oath of allegiance to Great Britain when he joined her armed forces, and as such he had to abide by orders and the law. And this rule, petty though it might at first seem, had the full force of law behind it. Cursing to himself, Robert prepared to search for alternative quarters. He was forbidden to keep Antis in his room: ergo, both of them would have to find somewhere else to billet themselves.

It was a bitter November day as he, Stetka, and Josef scoured the
base. They swung past station headquarters, and Robert threw a dark look at the window of the SWO’s office. Keeping his dog with him had never been an issue on any base before, but for some reason it was here. So be it. They passed the hangars and reached the tarmac of the airfield. They passed the hulking forms of the Wellington bombers they were soon going to be flying, their airframes staked to the ground in case of strong gusts of wind, their guns covered to stop the rain from getting into them.

They reached the long grass that grew up around the airbase’s perimeter and the rolls of barbed wire raised up on wooden platforms that marked its very boundary. In the distance was a group of derelict-looking huts. They looked as if they might well be out of bounds, but as foreigners, the three Czech airmen wouldn’t know this. They approached the first and peered inside. The hut was empty of every scrap of furnishing possible, but there was still a stove inside it, with a metal pipe going up through the ceiling.

The door proved to be unlocked. It creaked open, and Robert made a rapid inspection. There was a pile of old newspaper in one corner, which would help with lighting the stove.

He turned to Josef and Stetka. “Well, it’s hardly Prague Castle, but it’ll do.”

Josef and Stetka stared at him, as if he was going a little mad.

“But surely—” Josef began.

Robert cut him off. “Do you have a better idea?” He glanced at his watch. “The two hours are almost up, so it will have to suffice.” He turned to his dog. “Antis, my boy, this is our new home.”

The three men collected some firewood from the adjacent woodland, piled it beside the stove, then returned to their quarters to get Robert’s belongings and some blankets.

Once they were done settling man and dog in, Josef ran his eye around the bare hut. “Well, there should be enough blankets to keep Antis warm, at least,” he joked.

Stetka, meanwhile, was bent before the stove trying to kindle a fire. At the third attempt it began to smolder. Josef went outside to check that the chimney was drawing.

“That’s not much of a fire for one hell of a lot of smoke,” he remarked. “They’ll spot it a mile off.”

“They can spot whatever they like,” Robert snapped. He was angry and upset at the treatment he’d received, and the rebel within was coming to the fore now. “I was ordered to get my dog out and get him out I have.”

“You’ll probably get murdered in your sleep,” Stetka teased.

“Probably,” Robert confirmed. “I don’t give a damn.”

Oddly enough, Robert found himself quite happy in his new digs. He dared not light a fire during the day, for fear the smoke would be spotted. But it got dark early in the British winter, and from five o’clock on he had the stove roaring, and he could snuggle up close with his dog. More to the point, he was flying again. He might not have gone into action against the enemy yet, but he was learning to fight from a warplane that he sensed could do the Germans real harm.

The Vickers Wellington was a twin-engine, long-range, medium bomber. It was used mainly for night bombing raids, hitting targets in occupied Europe and in Germany itself. A sturdy workhorse of an aircraft, it had already earned a reputation for being able to take incredible amounts of punishment and still limp home to base. It possessed self-sealing fuel tanks and armor to protect the cockpit and other key areas, and it could survive the kind of damage that saw similar aircraft go down.

Robert had started flying “circuits and bumps” at RAF Honington, thereby mastering takeoff and landing. Soon they’d be on to “cross-country,” when they would fly simulated long-distance bombing missions. He worked hard on his gunnery, and studied English in the long evenings alone in his hut with his dog. When Robert was
in the air, Antis made himself at home with the sergeant in charge of the armorers. The only drawback to their new existence was that Robert’s greatcoat and three-blanket bed would get horribly cold in the early hours of morning, and then he’d have to cuddle even closer to his dog.

•  •  •

Two weeks prior to Christmas, SWO Meade was once again appointed head of the roster duty for inspecting the base. It was a task that he performed with a thoroughness and relish that none could match. He had a finely honed instinct for seeking out the blanket not folded neatly enough, the shelf not dusted properly, or the supposedly forgotten corner used to hide some broken teacups that a trainee was loath to own up to having smashed. His death-gray eyes missed nothing.

At midnight SWO Meade set out, with his long-suffering orderly corporal in tow, to check on the aircraft. “We’ll have a look around dispersal, shall we, Corporal?” the SWO remarked, sniffing the air in anticipation. “We’ll soon find out if those lazy deadbeats picketed the kites properly. There’s a gale warning and woe betide anyone who hasn’t.”

The orderly corporal would far have preferred to be sleeping in a warm bed, but his was not to reason why. Together, they crossed the airfield and bent to examine the corkscrew picketing irons that tethered the Wellingtons to the ground. They were almost done with their work when the SWO stiffened for a moment. His head came up like a dog sniffing an unexpected scent.

“I say, do you smell that, Corporal?” he barked. “Smoke. I smell smoke. Where the devil’s smoke coming from out here and at this time of night?”

The orderly corporal yawned. “Sorry, sir, can’t smell a thing.”

“Well then, you’re clearly not sniffing hard enough. Sniff again,
Corporal. Sniff again, and deeply. If that’s not smoke then I’m a Chinaman.”

“Well, now I come to think of it maybe there is a bit of a peculiar pong . . .”

“Exactly!” the SWO exclaimed. “Now to track it. It seems to be coming from the direction of those old transit huts. We’ll cut over and have a look, catch whoever’s up to whatever funny business at it.”

The SWO and the corporal were soon at the door of the offending hut. With a flashlight gripped in one hand, the SWO swung the door open violently and shined the flashlight around the room. There in the center by the stove were the unmistakable forms of the Czech airman Bozdech and his damn dog.

“Well, well, well . . .” The SWO’s pencil-thin mustache bristled. “Mind explaining what you are doing here, Sergeant?” He was barely able to keep the glee from his voice. “A Czech foreigner and his damn bloodhound, and both camping out where they shouldn’t be.”

Robert was half awake now, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Beside him Antis was instantly alert, and he hadn’t appreciated the two strangers bursting into their room, or the tone the taller one of them was using to address his master.

The dog rose to his feet, his ears flat against his skull and his hackles raised. He was more or less fully grown now, and once roused to anger he would be a real force to be reckoned with. His lips curled, his canines began to show, and he let out a menacing growl, one that reverberated deep in the dog’s throat. The orderly corporal tried to utter a few words of appeasement at the dog, but the SWO wasn’t so easily scared. He flicked the flashlight directly into the dog’s eyes, which served only to enrage Antis more.