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.
It 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.
Robert reached out a restraining hand. “Easy, Antis, easy, boy.”
“Rather than pandering to that feral dog of yours, do you mind answering my question, Sergeant. Who gave you permission to take up quarters here?”
“You turned us out of our room,” Robert replied, “so obviously we had to find ourselves somewhere else.”
“Correction, Sergeant,” the SWO barked. “Nobody turned you out of anywhere. You were simply asked to comply with the rules regarding your dog.”
Robert had been woken from a deep sleep in the middle of the night, only to face an unwanted interrogation by a man he was truly starting to hate. He was sitting in his underclothes, with only a blanket to cover him, and it was clear who had the advantage. He was having real trouble keeping his temper in check.
“Where my dog goes, I go,” he grated.
“Is that so? Is—that—so?” The SWO spat out each of the words slowly and with real vitriol. He jerked his head toward his orderly corporal. “Take this man’s name. To report to my office after parade tomorrow morning. I’ve a mind to put you under open arrest. Make no mistake, Sergeant, we will fix you properly this time.”
The two men gone, Robert sat awake in the darkness, his face and that of his dog lit only by the glow of the stove. What did “fixing” him mean? he wondered. Was he to lose his dog? Was he to be thrown out of the RAF? Was he to lose his chance to take the fight to the enemy, the one thing more than any other that he burned for? Out on that airstrip was a Wellington in which he’d gotten accustomed to slipping behind the twin Browning machine guns as he scanned the skies for enemy warplanes.
Was all of that at an end now, and all due to the petty attitude of a dog-hating, and apparently xenophobic, British SWO?
Robert was damned if that was to be the case. His mind drifted through the months that Antis and he had shared together. This extraordinary dog had come to him as if by a miracle. From the very first he had felt as if the two of them were fated to be together. Ever since that chance meeting he and his dog had acted pretty much as free agents, going where they pleased and taking to the air, to train, to cart, or ship more or less at will. Their lives together had been defined by rule-breaking wherever necessary: after all, their very arrival in Great Britain had involved smuggling Antis past customs and quarantine. Throughout all of that Robert had forged an unbreakable bond with his dog.
For many an evening here at RAF Honington the two of them had sat together in their otherwise deserted hut, Robert with his arm around the German shepherd’s thick neck as he talked to him in low whispers. He’d shared with Antis his innermost thoughts, emotions, and concerns. His homesickness for his native country and for family and friends he’d left behind. His growing affection for Pamela—was this the big Love? His fear for what the future months might hold—for few of Bomber Command’s aircrew ever completed a tour of duty unscathed. As he’d sat there and talked, Antis had growled and snuffled his soft responses, showing that—to Robert’s mind at least—he understood.
No. There was no way that Robert was going to allow the SWO to hurt, harm, or disrespect his dog. It wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he knew exactly what he had to do.
Very early the next morning Robert went and sought out the station’s Czech translator, Flight Lieutenant Divis. They were old friends, and Divis knew well how much Antis meant to his master. Robert discovered the flight lieutenant in his room having an early-morning shave. He blurted out the story of what had happened between him, his dog, and SWO Meade.
“All right, all right,” Divis told him, “calm down a little. I’ll go see the station adjutant this morning, over breakfast, and maybe the CO if I can grab him. I reckon the CO’s taken a fancy to Antis, whenever he’s seen him around the base. Don’t worry—I’ve no doubt we’ll think of something.”
Thanking him profusely, Robert went to stand that morning’s parade, after which he headed straight for the SWO’s office. He knocked on the man’s door determined to fight for his dog every step of the way, no matter what it might cost him. He had almost abandoned Antis once before, back in a shell-torn French farmhouse. He wasn’t ever about to do so again.
“Ah yes, Sergeant Bozdech, do come in,” SWO Meade greeted him. Robert could have sworn he detected a forced air of bonhomie about the horrid man. “Now, I’ve seen the CO and it has been decided—just this once, mind you—to take no further action in this matter. You’re to report for your duties as normal.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Robert, almost choking on the words.
“Not at all, not at all. But you chaps must realize, of course, that the RAF has its standards to keep up, and people in my position are the standard-bearers. We have a job to do and there’s nothing personal about it, of course. Yes, yes. What’s right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong, and I daresay there’s not a man among us would argue with that.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Now, there is a general mess meeting this week, and it may be possible—only may, mind you—to rescind that particular order about animals in sergeants’ rooms, but it’s up to the entire mess as a whole—”
“Please, sir, don’t bother, not on my behalf,” Robert interrupted. “I’m grateful, of course, but Antis and I are quite happy where we are.”
“As you wish, Sergeant,” the SWO remarked, picking up a file from his desk. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll wish you good morning.”
“Good morning, sir.”
As matters transpired, the CO had given SWO Meade a ten-minute lecture that morning on the proper treatment to be accorded England’s gallant Czech allies. “For pity’s sake, Mr. Meade, bear in mind those poor bastards have come one hell of a long way to fight in our cause, and it behooves us to show some forbearance and a proper sense of an English welcome . . .” Hence the remarkable turnaround in the SWO’s attitude.
That evening, when Robert returned to his derelict hut, he found it transformed. There was a pile of freshly cut wood by the stove, plus a bucket filled to the brim with coal. Under one window was a brand-new desk and chairs that must have come straight from stores. There was also a camp bed, and on top of that a pile of neatly folded blankets. Maybe SWO Meade wasn’t such a bad sort, Robert reflected.
Maybe he’d teach the man to become a dog lover after all.