The Bomber Dog (7 page)

Although he hadn't said so to Penny
or his grandparents, Nathan was feeling very worried about parachute jumping, as
well as starting at a new camp where he wouldn't know anyone apart from Grey.
The War Dog Training School had been designed for dogs and dog handlers, whereas the
airbase was designed for the Army Air Corps. He hadn't even properly finished
his basic training and now it looked like he was going to be a paratrooper, as long
as he passed, alongside some of the fittest soldiers there were.

So he was more than a
little nervous as he and Grey were checked in at the gate.

‘I thought it was a joke when they
said we might be getting a trainee paradog,' the guard told Nathan.

‘No joke,' Nathan said.

‘Crazy,' the guard
muttered.

Grey wagged his tail.

Nathan could feel the guard's eyes
watching him and Grey as they walked into the camp. It made him feel uncomfortable
but it didn't seem to bother Grey at all.

As the dog strolled confidently by his
side through the camp, Nathan found it hard to remember him as a stray dog, and he
certainly didn't look like one any more. He looked like a proud military dog,
especially now both his ears were standing up straight. But whether he could be a
paradog remained to be seen.

A squad of soldiers jogged past and some
of them stared at Grey.

‘Eyes front,
soldiers,' the sergeant shouted at them.

‘Come on, Grey,' Nathan
said, and Grey looked up at him and wagged his tail at the sound of his name.

Grey was used to there being lots of
other dogs about at the War Dog Training School, but here there were no sounds of
barking or scents of different dogs in the air. Here he was the only dog, although
other dogs were being trained to parachute jump at other air bases. Nathan
wasn't sure why Grey and he couldn't be trained with those other dogs
and their handlers, but he was a soldier and his job was to obey orders without
question, so that's what he intended to do.

At least there was a brand-new kennel
waiting for Grey.

Grey sniffed at it and detected that the
kennel had had a visit from a mouse earlier in the day. Grey was very fond of mice
and the
smell reminded him of happy times with Molly in the shed
back in Dover, when they would hunt for mice together.

‘Welcome to your new home,'
Nathan said as he clipped Grey's lead to the kennel and went to find his
commanding officer. Grey barked as he left, but Nathan didn't turn back. Grey
barked again and then he whined, but Nathan was gone. So Grey had a long drink of
cool water from the bowl beside his kennel and then lay down to wait for his friend
to come back. He was getting more and more used to Nathan leaving him, and gradually
learning to trust that he would come back for him.

‘You've heard about the
Calais mission?' Nathan's commanding officer, Major Parry, asked
him.

‘Yes, sir,' Nathan said.

‘Well, as Calais is the closest
port to your hometown of Dover, you'll know all about the
Germans' efforts to attack it with the large cannon-like guns they've
aimed squarely at it,' Major Parry explained.

‘Yes, sir. I'm very much
looking forward to the day those guns finally stop firing.'

‘Well, the real story is that the
Calais mission is just a decoy mission and not really going to happen,' the
major said.

Nathan's eyes widened in
surprise.

‘It's a trick to deceive the
German military chiefs,' the major continued.

Nathan thought the trick had worked very
well so far. Everyone was talking about the Pas-de-Calais mission. It seemed the
only logical area for the Allied forces to strike, especially as it was so close to
Britain.

‘The real mission is going to take
place further round the coast, along the beaches of Normandy. We're looking
for men like you, and your dog, to undertake reconnaissance missions and report back
on what guns and
other munitions the Germans have in Normandy,
right up until the moment we attack.'

‘Yes, sir,' Nathan said.

‘It'll be extremely
dangerous and if you're caught …' The major looked down at the
papers on the table in front of him. ‘Well, just don't get
caught.'

Nathan gulped. ‘No,
sir.'

‘You'll need extra language
and code lessons.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And your dog will need extra
infantry training as well as parachute training. It's a lot to ask.'

‘We won't let you down,
sir,' Nathan said.

‘Keep all this under your
hat,' the major told him. ‘Everything I've told you today is to be
kept top secret. Hitler needs to keep thinking our intended landing area is Calais
until it's too late.'

Nathan left the
major's office feeling slightly dazed but very excited too.

He headed back to Grey's kennel
only to find that the dog was no longer alone. There was a black and white cat
sitting on the kennel roof.

‘Don't mind Astor,' a
smiling man told him, as he came over with a bone for Grey. ‘She loves dogs
and she's a great mouser. My name's Bert, by the way. I'm the
camp's chef. Pleased to meet you.'

After supper Nathan took Grey for a
walk round the grounds and found that although there weren't any other dogs,
Grey wasn't the only animal at the camp. Over on the opposite side pigeons
were being trained to be messengers. There were chickens that laid eggs for the
soldiers' breakfasts and pigs that ate the food from the pig bins brought in
on the back of a truck once a week. The chickens and pigs
were
kept in a field at the furthest edge of the camp and that's where Billy, the
camp's goat mascot, or lucky charm, lived too.

As soon as Billy saw Grey he came
running across the field to him and the two animals touched noses through the fence.
Grey had never seen a goat before and was very interested in this strange
creature.

After Nathan had settled him in and left
him for the night, Grey was lonely in his solitary kennel until Billy came to join
him.

Billy was supposed to stay in the pig
field when he wasn't being a mascot, but he wasn't the sort of goat that
ever did what he was supposed to do. Billy was the sort of goat who did just exactly
what he liked.

Late at night he trotted over to
Grey's kennel where he found the dog lying outside his kennel, although still
chained to it, not asleep but dozing lightly.

Grey stood up and wagged his tail, a
little
unsure. Billy came closer and let Grey sniff at him. Then
he went over to Grey's food bowl to see if he'd left anything in it,
which of course he hadn't. Both Grey and Billy had large appetites.

Billy turned and trotted off and Grey
tried to follow him but couldn't because of the chain. He barked to let Billy
know he was stuck and the goat turned back and made a bleating sound before heading
off again.

Grey had never tried to escape from his
collar and chain before, but now he found that if he pulled his head backwards, like
a tortoise going into its shell, he was able to squeeze his way out of it. Once
free, he ran to catch up with Billy and the two of them explored the camp together
before being joined by the cook's cat, Astor, on her nightly mouse hunt.

Just before dawn Billy returned to his
field, Astor went home to the kitchen and Grey crept back to his kennel.

While the animals
prowled the camp, Nathan stared up at the bunk above his own and listened to the
sounds of other soldiers snoring and muttering in their sleep. He worried that
he'd made a terrible mistake in agreeing to come here and if he were truly
honest he was completely terrified of having to jump out of a plane. Just the
thought of it made him feel sick. He wished he'd said no, but he felt he
hadn't really had a choice when Lieutenant Colonel Richardson asked him, and
he really didn't want to let the colonel down. He was far more worried about
jumping from the plane than going on an undercover mission once he'd
landed.

As soon as the reveille sounded at 6.30
a.m., Nathan headed over to check on Grey, but as he approached he saw two uniformed
men standing in front of Grey's kennel. They seemed to be shouting at him.
Nathan started running towards them.

‘
Sitzen,
hund!
' yelled one of the men, who wore a pilot's uniform.

‘
Stehan!
' shrieked
the other, who had on Army Air Corps kit.

Grey watched the men attentively, his
head tilted to one side and then the other. He didn't look like he was even on
his lead. They must have released his collar.

‘
Sprechen sie Deutsch,
Hund?
'

Nathan came running over.

‘Hey, what are you doing?'
he yelled. ‘Leave my dog alone. Why've you removed his collar? He could
have run off.'

‘We didn't take his collar
off.'

‘He wasn't wearing it when
we got here.'

Nathan didn't believe them for a
minute. ‘I suppose he took it off himself, did he?' he muttered as he
put a tail-wagging Grey's collar back on him.

‘Didn't you hear?' the
pilot, whose name was Tommy, said.

‘Hear
what?' Nathan asked him.

‘Your dog might be able to
speak.'

Nathan clenched his fists.

‘What on earth are you talking
about?' he said. The two men were a lot bigger than him, but he wouldn't
let them intimidate him and he wouldn't let them hurt Grey.

‘Hitler's got a dog school
that's teaching dogs to talk.'

‘Here, look.' The pilot
pulled a crumpled newspaper clipping from his pocket and handed it to Nathan. It was
about a place called the Asra Talking School for Dogs, based near Hanover in
Germany. The Nazis were sponsoring research into whether dogs could actually speak,
and the article claimed that dogs were being trained to talk and count at the
school.

‘So Hitler really is trying to get
dogs to talk,' Nathan said, and he shook his head in disbelief. The men
weren't joking. He gave the pilot his newspaper cutting back and looked into
Grey's
blue eyes. If dogs could talk he was sure Grey would
be able to. But then he decided Grey didn't need to speak because one look or
movement from his eyes or a tilt of his head was enough to tell Nathan exactly what
he wanted.

‘Successfully teaching a dog to
speak is about as likely as being able to teach one to jump out of a plane,'
Gordon, the other soldier, laughed.

‘It's been done before,
actually,' Nathan told him. ‘Grey won't be the first paradog by a
long shot.'

‘Well, I won't believe it
until I've seen it with my own eyes,' Gordon said.

‘Let's be honest –
it's hard enough for a soldier to jump out of a plane, and I should know
because I fly the planes they go up in, so I can't imagine it would be any
easier for a dog,' Tommy told him.

Nathan half agreed with Tommy but what
he said was, ‘If any dog can do it, Grey can. He's going to help our
soldiers and save lots of
lives – maybe even your life; maybe even
mine.' His heart swelled with pride at the very thought of it.

Muttering apologies, Tommy and Gordon
sloped off to the mess hall and it was time for Grey's breakfast.

The parachute regiment didn't have
any dog food yet but Grey certainly didn't mind when Nathan came back with
food that Bert the cook had given him. Eggs and bacon with sausages, black pudding
and potatoes for breakfast was just fine by Grey.

‘You are one lucky dog,'
Nathan told him as he watched him eating.

The dog had become such a big part of
his life now that it was hard to remember what life had been like before he knew
him. How on earth had he managed without a dog before? He couldn't imagine
life without one now.

Grey had almost finished his breakfast
when he started wagging his tail.

‘What's
going on?' Nathan asked, as the dog gulped down the last bit of black
pudding.

He looked over and saw the regimental
goat being led along by the Goat Major on a lead. It bleated as it trotted past
Grey.

‘Meh-eh-eh!'

Nathan grinned as Grey's tail
carried on wagging. ‘Already making friends, I see,' he said.

The men and dogs of the parachute
regiment needed to be exceptionally fit, and daily three-mile runs, which Grey came
on too, were the norm come rain or shine.

Nathan hadn't had nearly as much
physical training as the other men and was also a lot younger and slighter than
them. Although he did his best, he usually ended up at the back.

‘Come on, you slow coaches,'
Sergeant Harris shouted at the running soldiers. ‘This dog can run twice as
fast as you lot.'

Nathan thought that was probably – no
definitely – true. He gritted his teeth and kept running while he
watched Grey wagging his tail as he raced to the men at the front and then back to
join Nathan. The dog easily ran twice as far as the rest of them and yet
didn't seem to be half as tired at the end of the run.

It was a breezy morning and Nathan had
a nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach as he stood with the other soldiers on
the jump practice field.

‘It's no good doing a
perfect jump if you don't land right,' the sergeant told the men and
Grey. ‘Far more of you are going to be injured on landing than at any other
time during your jump. So the first thing you'll have to learn is how to land
safely.'

A crash mat had been placed next to a
six-foot block and each of the trainee paratroopers had to jump from it in turn.

‘Keep your knees
bent,' the sergeant told the first soldier as he jumped off the block.
‘When you come down for real you want to keep your legs up so they don't
get broken.'

The soldier rolled off the mat and
Sergeant Harris nodded to Nathan.

‘You next.'

Nathan gave Grey's lead to the
soldier standing beside him to hold and ignored the dog's whine of protest.
Nathan found even climbing up the block difficult because of his fear of
heights.

‘Get a move on, soldier!'
Sergeant Harris shouted.

Nathan clenched his fists
determinedly.

‘Go!'

Nathan closed his eyes, jumped and
rolled on to the crash mat as Grey broke free from the soldier who was holding him
and raced to Nathan's side.

‘That's how it should be
done,' the sergeant
said as Grey gave Nathan's face a
lick. Nathan stood up and went to join the rest of the men with Grey sticking close
by his side. But although Nathan might have been able to land correctly it
didn't mean he wanted to do it again. He was dreading the next stage of the
training. The distance he would have to jump was going to be a lot bigger very
soon.

In the afternoon everyone was issued
with their parachute kits from the quartermaster's stores. Nathan took Grey
with him.

Because the soldiers weighed a lot more
than the dogs, the canine parachutists needed different parachutes from the
humans.

‘Bicycle parachute for the
dog,' the quartermaster said, handing Grey's parachute to Nathan.

‘Bicycle parachute?' Nathan
asked.

‘Your dog weighs about the same as
an errand-boy's bike,' the quartermaster explained to him. ‘So
we're giving him the same sort of
parachute as we put on the
bicycles we're dropping into France – so you lot can blend in with the locals
if you need to go undercover. Can't just throw the bicycles down from the
planes, can we? They need to land gently if they're going to work
properly.'

Nathan secured the buckles of
Grey's parachute harness as tightly as they would go without hurting him. The
straps went over Grey's back and under his tummy to circle him securely and
then round the back of his legs. The kit needed to be tight so it wouldn't
slip, and was exactly the right size. A harness that moved while Grey was jumping
out of the plane could affect how the parachute performed and be fatal.

The soldiers also wore secure parachute
harnesses. They were able to put their own on but were always checked by another
soldier to make sure they were correctly fitted and had been put on properly. As
well as the harness
and parachute, Nathan had a camouflage smock,
a life jacket and a first-aid kit.

‘Are there life jackets for
dogs?' Nathan asked, but was told that the life jackets the soldiers were
wearing, jokingly referred to as Mae Wests, weren't suitable for dogs.

‘He's not going to be
landing in the sea; they're just a precaution,' the quartermaster
reassured him.

‘Do we really have to wear all
this while we're practising,' Gordon muttered, and Sergeant Harris heard
him.

‘Yes you do, soldier, yes you do.
Those parachutes have got to become as much a part of you as its shell is to a
tortoise. Understand?'

‘Yes, sir,' Gordon said.

Sergeant Harris divided the soldiers
into three squads: A, B and C. Nathan and Grey were in A squad.

‘Let's see if you lot can
manage to jump from
a plane that's got its engine off and is
down on the ground,' Sergeant Harris said. ‘A squad, line up.'

Grey and Nathan stood with the other
soldiers from their squad in a line outside the rear door of the plane. It had no
steps up to the door and Nathan knew Grey wouldn't be able to climb the narrow
bar ladder. Grey looked up at him. The tension in Nathan's body had
transferred down his lead again and he knew something was wrong. He whined.

‘It's OK, Grey, good
dog,' Nathan said, trying to reassure Grey and himself at the same time.

‘Ready, soldier?' Sergeant
Harris said.

‘Yes, sir,' Nathan lied. The
very thought of climbing the ladder made his head swim, and his knees were feeling
very wobbly indeed.

The only one who knew how awful he truly
felt was Grey, and Nathan tried hard not to let his own fear affect the dog's
performance. Grey
was doing so well that Nathan owed it to him to
keep going. He couldn't let him down.

‘I'll pass your dog up to
you, soldier,' Sergeant Harris said.

‘Thank you, sir,' Nathan
replied.

He climbed up the thin metal ladder and
waited at the plane's doorway for Grey.

Sergeant Harris bent to pick up Grey but
before he could get a grip on him Grey struggled up the awkward ladder all by
himself and into the plane after Nathan.

‘Good dog. Carry on,' the
sergeant said.

There were no seats inside the plane and
the men and Grey sat on the floor, against the sides. Along the centre was a thick
wire for the jumpers to hook their parachute clips to. They then waited for the
pilot to let them know when it was safe to jump. Nathan would clip Grey's on
for him, but because today was their first day of training the plane wasn't
actually going to leave the ground and so the central wire wasn't being
used.

‘You first,
soldier,' Sergeant Harris told Nathan.

Nathan swallowed hard and dug his
fingernails into the palms of his hands. He went with Grey to stand at the exit door
and tried not to look down, but couldn't help it. The plane hadn't even
left the tarmac, the engine wasn't running and the plane was perfectly still,
but nevertheless he really didn't want to jump out.

Nathan tried to steady his breath as he
checked Grey's parachute. He felt as if he was going to faint, but he knew he
couldn't.

‘On the green light,'
Sergeant Harris said.

Nathan looked at the red light that
turned to green. He took a deep breath.

‘Go green!'

Nathan closed his eyes as he stepped out
of the plane into thin air. As he fell he tucked himself into a ball and rolled on
to a mat on the ground to reduce the landing impact.

‘Come,
Grey!' Nathan yelled, and Grey immediately leapt out of the stationary plane
after him. Nathan grabbed his collar and they ran out of the way as the next trainee
paratrooper jumped from the plane.

Grey enthusiastically licked
Nathan's face.

‘Yes, you're a good dog, a
very good dog, a very clever dog!' Nathan told him as Grey wagged his tail and
hopped around him.

Nathan was dreading having to do it
again.

‘That was great, wasn't
it?' the trainee paratroopers said as they slapped each other on the back and
congratulated themselves once they'd all jumped.

‘Can't wait to try something
higher.'

‘Looking forward to doing it for
real.'

Nathan nodded, although he didn't
really agree at all. He wasn't looking forward to going any higher or doing a
‘real' parachute jump.

‘Your dog's amazing,'
Gordon told him.
‘You'd think he'd been
parachute jumping all his life.'

‘Doesn't seem to have an
ounce of fear about jumping out of a plane,' someone else said.

And Nathan smiled because he did agree
with them about that. Grey was truly one totally amazing dog. As Nathan headed back
to the kennels with Grey later that day he looked back at the plane. It was almost
impossible to believe that he'd actually jumped out of it. He shook his head
and looked down at Grey who wagged his tail. If it hadn't been for the dog,
he'd never have managed it.

As frightening as the prospect of more
real parachute jumping from a flying plane was, he'd rather do it a hundred
times than lose the chance to work with Grey.