The Dog Who Could Fly (4 page)

Robert pictured his mother, whom he had left behind in Czechoslovakia, and wondered if he would ever see her again. His parents had doted on their only son, giving a warm welcome to all his friends in the Czech Air Force. But when the Nazis had rolled into Robert’s homeland in 1938, the family had been torn apart. Relatives had been shot and tortured for daring to resist their Nazi “masters.” Making a break for it alone, Robert had sneaked across the border to Poland, knowing that at any moment he might take a bullet from a German patrol.

From Poland he had enlisted in the French Foreign Legion with the aim of transferring swiftly to the French Air Force. There had been rough times with the Legion in North Africa, before the Air Force finally accepted him—at which stage he’d achieved what he hungered for most, which was to fight the Boche. But now disaster had struck and if he didn’t make it out of here he was as good as dead, which would mean his battle against the invaders was over.

Thank God for an abandoned puppy with attitude, Robert told himself. Their companionship lightened his mood and put added steel in his soul. He heard a whimper from the little fellow. He was gazing up at Robert with dewy eyes, pleading for something.

“What is it this time?” Robert murmured. “What d’you want?”

He guessed the animal had to be hungry. Groping in his pocket, he found some chocolate and a few cookies. He offered a piece of each and the pup sniffed delicately, but would take neither. Suddenly Robert understood why: the poor wretch had very likely never been weaned. He held a piece of chocolate over a lighted hurricane lantern—one that he’d scavenged among the wreckage of the farmhouse—and rubbed the melt along his forefinger. This time the pup could not resist. After a few cautious sniffs and a tentative
lick, he suckled Robert’s finger hungrily until no trace of chocolate remained.

Robert repeated the process over and over again, and he was filled with affection for his new charge. He felt almost ridiculous entertaining the thought—especially in their present predicament—but in his heart he felt the two of them had a lot in common: they were both bereft of family, they were both fighting to exist, and they were both in deep trouble . . . but neither had given up the struggle.

“All right, boy, let’s see what you make of something more solid.”

Robert warmed some more chocolate, but this time he offered the hungry puppy a half-melted piece. The tiny tilted head and the confused gaze revealed the puppy’s puzzlement. He didn’t know what to make of the strange, sweet-smelling solid he was being offered. But finally his pink tongue flicked out and covered it in puppy drool, and seconds later tiny jaws closed over the morsel and it was gone.

The only problem now was that there was nothing with which to wash down the meal. Robert crossed the room, moving toward the doorway, watched at every step by a pair of tiny, shining eyes—as if the puppy feared being deserted again. After a few seconds he reappeared carrying a battered frying pan filled with snow. He warmed it over the lamp, after which he dipped his finger in the meltwater for the puppy to lick. Soon the tiny dog was lapping happily from the pan, having the first real drink of his short life.

“God only knows what we’re going to do with you,” Robert muttered.

Even as he said it, he could not escape the thought that there was something terrible he might have to do before they left—the kindest yet the most dreadful thing possible. Already he was wondering if he would have the heart for the job.

•  •  •

At six o’clock he woke Pierre. “Ready?” he whispered. “It’s time.”

Pierre spent a second or two rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He
looked reasonably well rested—which was a bonus, thought Robert. Pierre glanced around him, realized where he was, and a focus and determination came into his gaze.

The Frenchman gestured at his bloodied and bandaged leg. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” He glanced over at the puppy. He was curled up and sleeping soundly after his meal. “What are we going to do with him? We can’t exactly take him with us and if we leave him behind he’ll starve.”

Robert shrugged. “I’ve taught him to eat and drink. We can’t do more than that. We’ll leave him asleep and close and lock the door so that he can’t follow. We’ll give him some of our rations and a pan of water. He’ll have to take his chances along with the rest of us. Now, d’you think you can make it to the woods?”

While Pierre readied himself Robert stared out of the doorway, trying to fix in his mind some landmarks to aim for along their route. He prayed for an overcast night, one bereft of moon or stars, to light their way. It would make navigation more difficult, but at least it would render them invisible to the enemy on the ridge. The faintest illumination might prove fatal, leaving the two men silhouetted against the white of the snowfields.

Before setting out Robert filled the frying pan with melted snow, heaping up a pile of broken cookies beside it. He opened the door, helped Pierre outside, then softly closed and bolted it. With a last look at the darkened room and a silent and regretful farewell to the slumbering puppy, they began the trek to what Robert hoped would be freedom and safety.

They had barely left the farmhouse when a series of vivid orange flashes tore through the night sky from the direction of the German lines. They were followed immediately by a barrage of equal intensity from the French lines to the west. The evening ritual of battery duels had begun. To make matters worse the heavy gunfire was accompanied by flares, which were fired high into the sky to be left hanging
beneath mini-parachutes as they drifted lazily earthward. Each side was using them in an effort to reveal the location of any night patrols that might have been sent out by the enemy, so they could be picked off by snipers.

Pierre and Robert took cover in the outskirts of the orchard. The hot glare of the burning magnesium flares cast a skeletal pattern of black and white across the snow to either side of them. The entire area the airmen had to cross before they reached the sanctuary of the distant woodland was bathed in blinding light—the very thing that Robert had prayed they might avoid.

Pierre uttered a string of muffled curses. “
Mon Dieu
, but we’ll never get through that lot!”

“We’ll make it,” Robert replied firmly. “The snow’s deep and we can find some cover in the shadows of the steeper slopes.”

There was no question anymore of Pierre being able to hobble with the aid of Robert’s supporting arm. The only way to continue their desperate journey would be to crawl. They slithered forward on hands and knees, working their way slowly and painfully over the frozen snow.

Just as they reached the ditch that marked the boundary of the farm a flare burst directly overhead, blinding them. Both men lay flat on their faces in the cover of the snow-filled depression, sweating fear and mouthing silent prayers. The flashes of the German big guns intensified as they hurled their high-explosive shells at the French lines, and their rumbling shook the ground.

The flare went out like a snuffed candle, and in the momentary darkness that followed the big guns seemed to fall silent. Robert was just about to signal to Pierre that the time had come to move again, when a new sound filled the air. It was one that Robert had been dreading. The long-drawn-out howl of a puppy rent the night—a puppy who had just discovered that his newfound source of food, water, warmth, and love had deserted him, just as his mother had.

There was a second howl even more anguished than the first. It was as if the puppy understood that his chances of survival were diminishing with each step that his protector took away from him. He seemed determined not to be left to his fate, as if somehow he knew that his cries for help would force Robert to turn back.

Robert glanced at Pierre. “Wait there,” he whispered. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Pierre sensed the grim resolve in Robert’s words. “I am sorry, my friend,” he muttered, “but you know we have no choice.”

Robert began to crawl back the way he had come. He was under no illusions as to what he must do, and he cursed himself for having been so soft. He felt for the knife he carried on his belt. To use a revolver would be easier, but far too dangerous now that the hour had come for night patrols to leave their posts and lie out listening in the snow—which was what the Germans did every evening as they tried to catch the French off guard.

As he neared the house Robert felt queasy, the nausea rising from the pit of his stomach. Pierre was right, of course—they simply had no choice—but Robert was unsure whether he could summon the courage to do what he had to do, even if their lives depended upon it.

He heard excited yapping as the puppy sensed his approach. He emerged into the open space between the orchard and the house, rising to his feet and blundering forward. He had to silence that dog, or it would bring every German patrol down on their heads. Another flare burst overhead. He threw himself down in the snow barely feet from the doorway, wondering if the howls and yaps had been heard.

The desperate yelping was replaced by a new sound now—that of a dull thudding as a tiny body hurled itself against the door. Small and starved though he was, the puppy was trying again and again to batter down the door so he could be reunited with his erstwhile protector. For a split second Robert glimpsed a pointed nose pitching upward as the puppy tried to leap through one of the broken
door panels, only to disappear again. The puppy was fighting as if for his very life, and if there was one thing that Robert admired it was a fighter.

Berating himself for his crazy sentimentality, Robert began to search for a log or a rock. Butchering the pup with his knife would feel far too much like savagery and murder. A sharp crack to the skull would spell instant oblivion, and was the most humane way. But as he felt around under the thick snow nothing came to hand.

Robert was growing desperate. Pierre lay injured in a ditch on the far side of the orchard, totally dependent upon him. He had to get this done before the puppy started to howl again. But how could he kill the little guy with his knife, especially when he had taught him to eat and to drink at his own hand?

Robert paused to consider his options. He had been in a few tight corners in the past couple of years, and he had never once given up the fight. The puppy was so close to death but still he was battling all the way. Robert recognized in him the pugnacious spirit he saw in himself. Hearing a desperate, pleading whine from the other side of the door, Robert felt his heart melt. He knew from this distance the puppy would be able to smell him—and Robert’s was the smell he now recognized as that of his savior. Behind him the flare that had been hanging stubbornly in the night sky finally hit earth and fizzled out.

Robert rose to his feet in the darkness, scuttled forward, unbolted the door, and reached inside.

Three

T
he puppy must have fallen after making an extra-determined charge at the door. He was lying on his side making feeble running motions with his paws as if willing himself to make one last go at it. Seeing the door open, he rose unsteadily to his feet, whimpering like a tired child desperate to be picked up by his father.

Robert grabbed the puppy and drew it toward him, two little orbs of glittering light meeting his gaze. The little dog gazed up at him in wide-eyed amazement, as if stunned that he had actually succeeded in summoning the stranger with the chocolate fingers.

Robert felt his resolution falter. “Looking for someone?” he whispered.

Hearing the familiar voice, the puppy tried to nuzzle into Robert’s neck.

He pulled him closer. “All right, boy. It’s all right. You’re coming too.”

Robert felt a pink tongue on his face, as if the dog understood the momentous decision that had just been made. Unbuttoning his flying jacket, Robert placed the puppy snugly against his chest and turned back to the world outside.

A pale crescent moon had risen above the ridgeline. It played strange tricks with the light and shadows, hindering his and the puppy’s progress back through the orchard. The stumps of blasted trees cast ghostly forms, ones that looked like half-hidden enemy soldiers waiting for a chance to strike.

Robert rejoined Pierre, slipping silently into the ditch. To his amazement the Frenchman had little to say when the puppy poked his head out of his flying jacket and gave a mean little growl. In truth Pierre disliked the animal only because it had so endangered their escape, and he understood his friend’s inability to wield the knife. He had strained his ears for a squeal that would herald the coup de grâce, all the time suspecting that it would never come.

“I thought when you set off that I was glad it was you and not me,” Pierre remarked quietly.

As the guns roared to left and right the men edged forward on their bellies, shredding the skin of their hands and knees where exploding shells had churned the ground into razor-sharp ridges of frozen rock and snow. Sensing danger, the puppy stayed perfectly still, insulated from the jarring percussions by the thickness of the fleece and comforted by Robert’s murmurs of reassurance.

But minute by minute Pierre was becoming more and more distressed. Each time he slipped, his face was scraped raw on the jagged crust of ice that had formed over the snow. The guns ceased firing as suddenly as they had started, but it didn’t make the friends feel any less vulnerable. The only sound now was the crunching of frozen snow beneath their limbs, which in the silence sounded deafening. The noise of their passing rang out across the valley, as if signaling to the German patrols:
here we are; come and get us.

Sporadic volleys from machine guns cut through the darkness. It was those weapons that the two men feared most, for if they were spotted the Germans were bound to try to rake them with fire. In their exhausted, disoriented state the pair couldn’t seem to judge the
distance of the guns or their targets. They had no option but to keep crawling. Each yard seemed longer than the last and the outline of the woodland they so longed to reach appeared to be coming no closer.