When Robert suffered injury on a sortie and was hospitalized, Antis waited for days in the cold and rain beside the runway for his master’s return.
After a long talk with the wing commander, Capka rejoined Robert and the rest. They put the question that was on all of their minds: did Ocelka mean they were clear to fly with Antis whenever they wanted?
“Lady Luck was certainly with us tonight,” Capka told them, “and very likely in the form of one very handsome and brave dog. And yes, Ocelka will turn a blind eye. He figures Antis has been bloodied now and can take it. But, Robert, you’re to get him to the workshop and get him an oxygen mask made up. Ocelka can’t have one of his turret gunners fainting for want of oxygen, and all because he’s sharing his mask with a dog that shouldn’t even be there!”
• • •
Two nights later C for Cecilia was given her next combat mission, for the murderous pace of operations had yet to falter. The threat of an invasion by Germany might have receded, but the power of the Nazis was still in the ascendancy, and the Wellingtons could ill afford to remain on the ground for long. By now Antis had been fitted with his own oxygen mask, one made up for him by the East Wretham fitters. It consisted of a standard pilot’s mask, cut and modified to suit a German shepherd’s long and slender snout, as opposed to the flatter, boxier face of a human.
The mask attached to his head with a special set of straps that ran around the back of his thick and powerful neck, with extra fastenings latching on to his collar. Antis didn’t particularly like the thing, but he proved happy enough to wear it so long as Robert was wearing his. This was crucial. If Robert and Antis were to be able to fly further sorties together, Antis would have to behave himself impeccably when in the air and under attack—conditions that could melt the composure of many a man, if not break him. Antis needed to prove that his innate fear would be trumped by his attachment to his master, even in the most extreme circumstances.
Their target for tonight was Hanover, one of the most dangerous of them all. At first Antis couldn’t quite believe it when his master called for him to jump up the ladder and take up his position in the aircraft. But once he realized this was for real, he offered his paw to shake to Adamek and the other ground crew, climbed the ladder leading into the aircraft’s nose, and took up his place in the gun turret at his master’s feet. As C for Cecilia took to the air there wasn’t a happier dog in all of England.
The sortie over Hanover proved largely uneventful, although it did serve to prove how suited Antis was to combat flying. He wore his oxygen mask whenever Robert did, snoozed at his master’s feet for most of the long flight, and only seemed to become disturbed when a bursting shell from the savage flak tossed the aircraft around more violently than usual. But one look at Robert and he took his cue from his master’s apparently confident and unconcerned manner: If he can do it, so can I.
If he can do it, so can I. The feeling was in many ways mutual. Not only Robert but all the crew got an added sense of peace from having their dog flying into the heart of death with them. It was almost as if they were more worried for Antis’s welfare than their own, and that took much of their anxiety away. That night’s sortie was C for Cecilia’s thirty-second, which signified that sometime soon their first tour of duty would be drawing to a close. But in the coming days and weeks they would need their lucky-charm dog more than any of them had ever imagined.
• • •
The very next sortie flown by Robert was a vital one. Once again 311 Squadron had been tasked to hit the German battle cruiser Prinz Eugen—the warship that had so narrowly escaped their previous attempt to sink her. Sadly for Antis, he was forced to sit this one out, for C for Cecilia had developed engine trouble. Robert joined the crew of Wellington No. 3221-O instead, and it wasn’t every pilot who was happy to bend the rules and have a large shaggy dog as a member of his crew.
The flight of eight Wellingtons reached Brest on the westernmost tip of France after a quiet passage over a dark but peaceful sea. The port lay perfectly quiet and largely without illumination as they came over target. Only as the lead aircraft began its bombing run did the searchlights come to life, probing the night sky, and the antiaircraft batteries started throwing up their vicious fire.
The nineteen-thousand-ton battle cruiser lay to the east side of the jetty, on Dock 8. The Brest smoke screen had been activated by now, a defense designed to blanket the dock in thick smoke so as to obscure any targets. But the wind was in the wrong direction, and it blew the smoke inland, leaving the docks and the battle cruiser in stark relief. The Prinz Eugen was totally blacked out and all but invisible against the dark waters, yet the crews of the Wellingtons knew exactly where she was moored due to their pre-mission briefings.
The flight of Wellingtons approached along the waterfront, with terrifying volcanoes of flak erupting all around them. They held steady to their course, and Robert saw the first bombs fall from flight leader 1015-L. A string of 1,500-pounders straddled the position of the warship. The first bomb scored a direct hit on the jetty, and further bombs landed all around the battle cruiser where it lay at anchor, the oily flare of the explosions lighting up the inky darkness.
Robert’s aircraft followed suit, her string of bombs pummeling the location of the German warship, one of the finest in the enemy fleet. Robert felt the thrill he always did when hitting back at the enemy, and he only wished he could have had his war dog there at his feet to share it with him. All eight aircraft made it safely back to East Wretham, and subsequent reports from the French resistance suggested that the battle cruiser had indeed been hit during the raid.
The first days of July proved hugely demanding for 311 Squadron. Robert—and Antis—found themselves flying raids every second night. Essen, Münster, Cologne, Bremen, Hanover, Hamburg, Mannheim, and Brest—C for Cecilia was in action above them all, and such an intensity of operations took a heavy toll. When Robert had first arrived at East Wretham he’d noticed how tired and gray the veteran aircrew looked. Now he understood why.
The need to be constantly alert during the long night missions, coupled with the fear and the overbearing tension, was hugely stressful and draining. Near misses and lucky escapes—hits from machine-gun fire and shrapnel that didn’t bring down an aircraft or wound or kill—these had become the “new normal” for the aircrews of 311 Squadron. They barely warranted a mention in the mess as crews chatted over a beer and decompressed after their missions.
In a sense the enemy fighters that pounced on the lumbering Wellingtons were the lesser of the evils they faced. What ensued was a duel to the death between each bomber and the enemy fighter’s guns, one that the best man would win. It was the searchlights and the flak that were the most terrifying, for there was little the pilot or crew could do to avoid those. Survival was largely down to luck and not being in the wrong place at the wrong time. With luck playing such a pivotal role, C for Cecilia’s lucky talisman—their flying dog of war—was an invaluable morale boost, but Antis’s composure in the air and his bond with his master were about to be tested to the very limits.
C for Cecilia’s next raid was to be over Hanover again. As the aircrew notched up combat missions, so the tension mounted that sooner or later their good fortune was going to run out. But Antis seemed to remain sublimely unaware of both the risks and the dangers, and his joy at every takeoff put added steel in the souls of C for Cecilia’s crew.
Once again the battle-scarred Wellington climbed for altitude over the English Channel. Just prior to topping ten thousand feet—the altitude at which most aircrew found themselves struggling for breath—Robert took his eyes away from the skies momentarily, reached forward, and strapped the oxygen mask to his dog. It had become a strict routine for him and Antis: the dog’s mask went on first and came off last, just in case Robert became unconscious before strapping his dog in, leaving Antis to die of asphyxiation.
C for Cecilia reached her cruise altitude of 15,500 feet and set a course for the German city that was such a vital strategic target for the Allies. With its road junction, railhead, and factories, Hanover was a pivotal link in the supply chain for men and matériel heading to the Eastern Front. Disrupting those facilities was the chief aim of tonight’s mission, as Churchill sought to show solidarity with Britain’s new allies in the east. Hitler’s lightning advance had bludgeoned aside any Russian resistance, and the rate at which the Russians were in retreat did not bode well. They were clearly in need of all the help they could get.
Tonight’s target was the tank factory M.N.H. Maschinenfabrik Niedersachsen, one of Germany’s most important plants making tracked armored vehicles, including the fearsome Panther medium main battle tank, and the Jagdpanther—hunting panther—tank killer. Using the River Leine as a visual marker, the flight of Wellingtons thundered in toward the city’s industrial district, but the flak that blossomed ahead of them was the most fearsome yet. It appeared as a towering inferno thrown before the aircraft, the black bursts of the explosions lit here and there a fiery orange by detonating shells and bursts of tracer fire.
As with the aircraft ahead of him, C for Cecilia’s pilot, Capka, was forced to fly evasive action, throwing the heavily laden aircraft into a series of turns as he tried to thread a course through a seemingly impenetrable wall of explosions and arrive over the target. As the Wellington lurched this way and that, Robert reached down to caress the ears of his dog in an effort to comfort him. He had his eyes glued to the heavens above, in case an enemy fighter might dive to attack, but few German pilots were likely to risk doing so when the flak was so thick.
Robert himself had no idea how they made it through the flak unharmed. Their bombs released, Capka banked away from the monstrous storm of high explosives and jagged shrapnel that rent the skies all around them. But C for Cecilia had been driven off course as a result of all the twists and turns she’d been forced to make, and the needles of the fuel gauges showed the juice was running low. In level, straight flight and at normal cruise speed the Wellington’s fuel consumption was manageable, but flying such maneuvers as Capka had been forced to make, and at close to their top speed, he had burned up the gas.
C for Cecilia crossed the British coastline three-quarters of an hour behind their flight schedule, testament in itself to how far they’d erred from their intended course. Every turn of the aircraft’s twin radial engines brought her nearer to their base, but at the same time sucked up the remaining fuel. Capka had to land the warplane at their East Wretham base by the most direct and quickest route possible. There was one major problem: as he pushed northward, the entire expanse of East Anglia turned out to be blanketed in thick fog.
As the first rays of dawn flared over the pencil-thin horizon, the aircrew gazed down upon a scene that under different circumstances would have appeared quite magical. Golden rays of sunlight lit up the rolling cotton wool of the fog bank in a thousand shades of pink and orange. But few of the crew had eyes or thoughts for how beautiful the summer mist might look: the fog lay to a height of six hundred feet above ground level, and it spread to the far horizon in every direction. There was no way they could land at RAF East Wretham—or any other base within their sight—and the fuel gauge was flickering on zero.
Capka’s voice echoed over the aircraft’s intercom as he calmly informed the crew of their predicament. It had been fairly obvious to all, even without their captain laying it out for them. Robert glanced at the dog sleeping peacefully at his feet. As was Antis’s wont on such sorties, once their aircraft had turned for home—bombs gone—he seemed to sense that the worst of the night’s adventures were over, and went to sleep.
“I’ll fly a holding pattern and keep trying to speak to control,” Capka informed them. “Stand by.”
Robert felt the Wellington shift course imperceptibly, and he sensed Capka had put her into a graceful turn. For twenty minutes the aircraft circled the airbase as Capka kept radioing East Wretham. For all he knew, the fog might be clearing at ground level as the dawn rays burned it off, and a landing might just be possible. Trouble was, he couldn’t seem to raise anyone. Dawn and dusk were never the best times to try to make radio contact, due to the fast-changing atmospheric conditions at those times of day, which tended to interfere with radio communications.
When Capka finally managed to get through, he was told the Met forecast was for no change, at least not for the next hour or so. The Watch Office at East Wretham had been firing Very lights at regular intervals, and if none had been spotted by C for Cecilia’s crew, that proved how thick and impenetrable the fog must be. Unfortunately, conditions were equally bad at neighboring airfields.
As all the crew were plugged into the aircraft’s intercom, they’d all heard the bad news. They also heard the final order given to Capka.
“Climb to ten thousand, set a course for the coast, and abandon your aircraft. Good luck.”
The logic behind the order was simple. Ten thousand feet was the optimum height at which to abandon an aircraft: it would give the Wellington plenty of glide altitude, more than enough to ensure it was over the waters of the North Sea before it crashed. It was also about the maximum altitude the crew could parachute from without needing breathing equipment. If they bailed out, the aircrew would most likely live, but they’d sacrifice their aircraft. New Wellingtons were churning off the production lines daily: it was finding crews to fly them that was the real challenge, especially with the attrition rates suffered by squadrons like their own.
All of that made perfect sense apart from one thing: they had a canine crew member, and no one had thought to make a parachute for their dog.