They’d smuggled Ant onto the ship and had to smuggle him off again—for pets were bound for quarantine or destruction upon arrival in the UK.
Under cover of darkness Robert and his fellows mined out a tunnel leading to the very center of the luggage mountain. They removed one large case and placed it on top of the others, replacing it with one dog trussed up in Robert’s kit bag, and with only a thin passage leading to the outside. It was too narrow and dark for anyone to see into the center, but wide enough to pass food and water to Ant, depending on how long he needed to be kept hidden in there.
The hiding place complete, Robert urged Ant to stay silent and still, for his very life might depend upon it. That done, they left their dog in the midst of the luggage mountain and prepared for stage two of their plan: outright defiance of British law.
At two o’clock the following afternoon the ship’s crew began a final inspection of the Neuralia’s quarters, with a view to taking into custody all animal stowaways. When they tallied up at the end of their search, one was missing. Sergeant Robert Bozdech’s young German shepherd—the handsome dog with a distinctive black streak running down his backbone—seemed to have disappeared. Robert was called before the ship’s officers, but there was little sign now of the amusement that had greeted Ant-the-stowaway’s arrival aboard.
“Sergeant Bozdech, we note you have failed to hand over your dog,” one of the officers began. “We made it quite clear what the rules are, so where is he?”
The Czech interpreter translated, and Robert gave the best shrug he could muster. “Sorry, sir, I haven’t seen him for a good twenty-four hours or more.”
The officer fixed Robert with a withering look. “This is a ship. There’s not exactly far he can go, is there? So, presumably you must know where he’s likely to be?”
Robert shook his head. “Sorry, sir, I couldn’t tell you.”
The officer paused for a long second, letting the silence hang in the air between them. “Quarantine laws in Britain are strictly enforced, Sergeant. Breaking those laws is a very serious offense.”
“I’m not committing an offense, sir. I just can’t seem to see my dog.”
Robert was choosing his words carefully. Strictly speaking it was true that he couldn’t see his dog, for right now he was concealed deep within a mountain of luggage.
The officer stared at him as he pondered his next move. “Very well, but don’t try to tell us that you didn’t know the penalty when your dog is found . . .”
The ship’s crew searched the vessel from end to end, flinging open lockers, rifling through closets, lifting containers, and peering behind doors, but no sign of the errant German shepherd could be found.
Later that afternoon Uncle Vlasta briefed Robert that a Lieutenant Josef Ocelka would be meeting them upon arrival at the Liverpool docks. He was to be their liaison officer for further processing into Great Britain. Lieutenant Ocelka had been persuaded to appoint Joska and Robert himself as the party in charge of disembarking the Czech airmen’s luggage and ensuring its safe transfer to the railway station for transport to their new home—Cholmondeley, just outside Liverpool.
“You’ve been put in charge of all luggage,” Vlasta repeated, looking Robert meaningfully in the eye. “All luggage is to be disembarked safely from the ship.”
“Understood,” Robert confirmed.
• • •
On the dank early evening of July 12, 1940, the convoy steamed up the Mersey and docked at Liverpool. Thunder rolled over the city as the Czech airmen were separated from the other passengers for their deployment instructions, and rain started to pelt down from a glowering sky. Welcome to Britain. On the quayside a crane creaked and squealed as it took up the strain and then jerked a netload of luggage into the air. Robert gazed up at the load’s seemingly perilous progress, wondering what on earth he would do if the cable broke and Ant was plunged into the cold waters of the harbor.
Lieutenant Ocelka, having been tipped off about the smuggling operation, ordered Robert and Joska to move the baggage double-time onto the waiting truck, before the rain soaked it completely. He wanted it out of sight and out of mind before a hidden dog started yapping. By the time they had most of the luggage loaded, Robert had detected not the slightest sign of life from the bulging kit bag in which his dog was concealed.
The last suitcase thrown onboard, he leaped onto the truck’s rear and settled down next to the kit bag. He slipped his fingers through the semi-open top, murmuring quiet words of reassurance, and was rewarded by a good few licks from the hidden animal. So far, all was going to plan.
After a short journey they unloaded the luggage and prepared to board the train. But the station platform was milling with British policemen, and worse still, eight of the dreaded Red Caps—British Military Police—were scanning the assembled throng. Few of the airmen doubted that news of a stowaway dog trying to evade British quarantine laws had been passed around the assembled forces of law and order. It was now that Ant—secreted in the kit bag perched beside the Czechs’ luggage, and emblazoned with the name R. V. Bozdech—had to play his part to perfection.
Just minutes before the Cholmondeley train was due in at the station, a platoon of British soldiers marched onto the platform. They came to a halt in unison right next to the pile of luggage and lowered their rifles with a sharp clatter. The butt of one inadvertently struck a kit bag labeled R. V. Bozdech, and a loud and startled yelp issued forth from within. The Czech airmen froze. The British soldiers stared about themselves confusedly. But the Red Caps had also heard the mystery whine, and half a dozen of them began to close in.
The Czech airmen sprang into evasive action. As if eager to be of assistance they started flinging bags to either side, acting like they were searching for the source of the mystery noise. Under cover of the general confusion, one bag marked R. V. Bozdech was flung rapidly from hand to hand until it was well clear of the Red Caps’ focus of attention.
By the time the military policemen had completed their search, not a sign of a dog was there to find. But they weren’t about to be put off that easily. The Red Caps started to fan out across the platform, like dogs on the scent of their prey. Sensing disaster, one of the Czech airmen—the real joker of the pack—went into action. He stepped into plain view, slapped himself hard on the thigh, and let out a yelp like a dog that had just been kicked. He repeated the performance, howling like a beaten puppy as the Red Caps stared at him in consternation.
Eventually one of them turned to the others. “See that bloody Johnny Foreigner taking the micky out of us lot! I’ve had enough of this lark.” He stomped off the platform in disgust, and the other Red Caps followed.
So it was that the search for the contraband canine was abandoned, and Ant was able to finally set foot on British soil. He did so upon arrival at Cholmondeley Castle, in Cheshire, a rest camp for foreign servicemen coming from the chaos and bloodshed of continental Europe.
Cholmondeley Castle was everything that Robert had imagined Britain might be: a vast and rambling mansion complete with turrets, towers, and gargoyles, and surrounded by rolling green hills and verdant woodlands. The tented camp was temporary home to some four thousand non-British servicemen, including those Czechs who would go on to form the Free Czechoslovak Forces—a body of men-at-arms determined to fight the Nazis and liberate their homeland.
Emotions ran high as brother was reunited with brother and soldier with fellow soldier. Ahead of Robert and Ant lay eighteen days of rest and recuperation—time in which to wash and darn their battered uniforms, and for Robert to take Ant on long walks through the grounds, which turned out to be a rabbit-infested paradise. In the evenings Ant insisted on cold-nosing each of the seven airmen’s faces, to check that the brotherhood was present and accounted for. Then he’d fall into a contented sleep alongside his master, one punctuated by a snapping of jaws and twitching of limbs as he dreamed of hunting rabbits.
These were good times, but each man sensed that this was a temporary lull—the calm before the coming storm. They had been at Cholmondeley barely a week when the camp was visited by Dr. Edvard Beneš, the former president of Czechoslovakia who was now setting up a government-in-exile. On a misty July morning all present at the camp—including 120 Czech airmen complete with their war dog—assembled on parade, to hear Beneš’s speech about the Herculean struggle that lay ahead, one that would surely end in the liberation of Europe.
A week later the first of the Czech airmen received their marching orders. Thirty-six of them—Robert and Ant included—were being posted to the Czech Air Force Depot at RAF Cosford, near Wolverhampton. The remaining ninety formed a cordon of honor around the chosen as they were reviewed by the senior Czech commander at Cholmondeley, a colonel and distinguished veteran of the First World War.
“I envy you the chance you are about to be given,” the colonel intoned, his gravelly voice thick with emotion. “Fight for the honor of the Czech motherland, for Great Britain—your adopted home—and strive with all your power to vanquish the Nazi enemy.”
The colonel shook each man’s hand as he marched past, the seven Czech airmen who made up the original brotherhood forming the head of the column, with one very proud war dog and quarantine buster taking up the lead.
This was a moment of mixed emotions for some. Halfway down that column a gray-haired veteran of the First World War marched with ramrod-straight pride in perfect step beside his two sons. At the front gate he stepped out of the file and, struggling to hide his emotions, smartly saluted his departing boys as they boarded the waiting trucks. He had only recently been reunited with them, but he knew they had to answer the call of duty. He could not have known that before the leaves on the trees had fallen that autumn, both would be dead.
Late that evening the trucks reached RAF Cosford, where the rebirth of the Czech Air Force and its integration into the RAF was being masterminded. Cosford exuded discipline and studied purpose. Two thousand airmen were housed in a large, modern barracks formed of serried rows of wooden huts. A hospital with specialist facilities stood in one corner, flanked by ornamental flower beds. The scale and sophistication of the base convinced the Czechs that the RAF had what it would take to stand against the mighty Luftwaffe.
While Robert was preoccupied with his first assignment—studying a little red book entitled Fundamental English—Ant went about befriending as many as possible who might make life as pleasant as it could be in this brave new land. By now he was growing into a magnificent specimen. The black splash down his spine stood out dramatically from his smooth, golden-brown coat, and he carried his head with real pride. His flanks were lean and he moved with the fluid lope of his lupine ancestors. It was perhaps inevitable that he’d make a lot of very useful friends at RAF Cosford, aided in no small part by his master.
One morning shortly after their arrival a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) found Ant sitting in her doorway with a letter in his mouth.
“Young lady,” it began. “My name is Ant. Will you please shake hands with me?”
Penned by Robert with the aid of his little red book, it was testimony to how well his written English was progressing.
Ant stretched out a paw and made an instant friend in one of the most important places in the camp—the cookhouse. From then on, whenever his nose appeared around the door he could be sure of a warm welcome and some special tidbit. Ant next befriended the two young ladies who called each morning at the base, driving a green van filled with meat. As soon as they’d shaken hands with Ant, a bone fit for a hungry dog was added to their daily deliveries.
Ant’s third target was the nurses’ quarters. He soon discovered that the pockets of their starched white uniforms invariably hid the kind of treat that he’d first tasted as a lost puppy on the ends of his master’s fingers. Chocolate!
One afternoon Robert broke off from his English studies and whistled for his dog to go “walkies,” but was surprised to see him bounding over with a pillbox gripped in his mouth. Inside were six of Ant’s milk teeth—removed courtesy of one of the nurses—and a note of advice about future dental treatment.
“You know, Robert,” one of the Czechs joked, “you should go say thank you to the nurse who cares for your dog. Look—I bet it’s that girl with the gorgeous brown hair.”
Robert looked where his friend was indicating and felt his heart skip a beat. There, framed in the window, was in his eyes the prettiest woman on the entire base. The Czech airmen had met her earlier, when they’d had their medical examination to ensure they were fit for duty. Her name was Pamela. Her father was English but she had inherited her Spanish mother’s olive-skinned beauty. Ever since then they had admired her from a distance, but none had plucked up the courage to approach her.
Robert waved to catch her attention. He smiled and saluted, and she rewarded him with a brief nod. He gestured at his dog—who was sitting at his feet wondering what had happened to walkies—showed his teeth, and mimed as if pulling one out. Pamela shook her head in amusement, which was all the encouragement that Robert needed.
“Well, come on,” he muttered to his Czech friend, “let’s write her a note. How do we start?”
“How about ‘Dear Nurse’?”
“No, let’s promote her,” Robert suggested. “Let’s put ‘Dear Sister.’ She’ll like that.”
A few minutes later Ant trotted over to the window with the note gripped in his jaws.
“Dear Sister,” it read. “I am deeply obliged for the service you so kindly gave my dog, Ant. I should be glad if you would give me further advice regarding his health. Yours truly, Robert.”
Soon the dog was on his way back with a reply that was both short and sweet: “Very well: 7:30 tonight, here. Pam.”
So it was that Ant, barely eight months old, played Cupid for his master and introduced him to his first English girlfriend.
Under Ant’s tutelage the romance flourished. Whenever Robert thought it too wet to go walkies, Ant only had to scratch at Pamela’s door to summon her, and off they went for a long and romantic stroll in the rain. What Ant particularly liked about those evening sojourns was that Robert was so engrossed in his girlfriend that he forgot all about training his dog. While they held hands and strolled through the lush summer woodlands, Ant was spared the tedious exercises in discipline that his master had started submitting him to, and he could hunt rabbits to his heart’s content.
Robert knew that such intensive training would not normally begin until a dog was one year old. But Ant had more experience than most fully grown dogs, and Robert was sure he was ready. He also sensed the need. This quiet period at RAF Cosford couldn’t last. Sooner or later they would be moved on to an operational unit. Once Robert took to the air, Ant would be left without him for long periods of time. Absolute obedience while he was away flying sorties was going to be essential, for unlike the French Air Force, the RAF was beset with rules and regulations that were as rigidly enforced as Britain’s quarantine laws.
Robert had taught Ant to “sit” and to “stay” at an early age, lessons that had proved vital in the bucket smuggling operation that had gotten Ant safely aboard the Northmoor. But to “stay” for a prolonged period of time in his master’s absence was a different discipline entirely.
Over fine summer evenings Robert and Ant walked for miles through fields teeming with rabbits, but with Ant forbidden to leave his place at his master’s side. At first Ant tired of such exercises, and scampered off for a chase in the undergrowth. But over time he began to master the art of patience, something he would become famous for before the war was over. Eventually, the young bunnies grew so confident that they sat smugly on their haunches, as if to taunt him.
Man and dog reached the stage where they could complete the entire walk without Ant once stepping out of line: his bond with his master had trumped his innate hunter instinct. But whenever Robert stopped for a rest and a smoke, Ant would sit in front of him, whimpering and shuffling his bottom around in such a frustrated way that Robert could not resist. A slight nod, and a muttered “Rabbits!” and Ant would turn on his rear and fly, his tail trailing like a flag behind him, and the fields emptying in a flash of white tails.
Their idyllic existence at RAF Cosford ended with a second visit from Dr. Edvard Beneš, who by now had been recognized by the British government as the Czech president-in-exile. The Czech airmen were duly sworn in as serving members of the Royal Air Force and issued their spiffy new uniforms. Their deployments followed. Sadly, the Original Eight were to be split up, the brotherhood of all for one and one for all finally being broken.
Uncle Vlasta alone was to remain at RAF Cosford. Joska, Karel, Gustav, and Ludva were off to join No. 311 Czech Fighter Squadron, based at RAF Honington, in Suffolk. Robert was being sent with Josef—the twenty-six-year-old crack shot of the squadron—to join No. 312 Czech Fighter Squadron at RAF Duxford, in Cambridgeshire.
“It can’t be helped,” the ever-jocular Joska told his disconsolate brother airmen. “In any case, we’re all going to stay in touch, aren’t we? How about getting together in London at Christmas?”
A rendezvous was fixed: they’d all meet up on December 23 at the Czechoslovak National House in Bedford Place, in London’s West End. Each pledged that nothing would keep him away—but it would turn out to be a rash promise indeed for men heading into mortal combat.
For Robert, the time had come to bid farewell to his sweetheart as well as his five close friends. He and Pamela said their lingering goodbyes in the quiet of an English country lane. Like millions of young couples parted by the war, they were grateful for the magical days they had enjoyed together but terrified that they might never meet again.
So great was the pain for Pamela that as Robert and Ant stood waiting for their train the following day, she appeared on the platform in the hope of snatching a final few moments. Robert could tell by her eyes that she had been crying all night and was struggling even now to hold back the tears. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her, but the presence of the others on the crowded platform restrained him.
Pamela did her best to hide her pent-up emotions by taking Ant’s shaggy mane in her hands and speaking softly to him, but Ant seemed about as uncomfortable as his master with all the heavy emotion. He shook his head free and bounded about as if seeking one last chance to play. Pamela took Robert’s hand, and he felt her grasp tighten as the train rolled in. There was a brief embrace, before man and dog turned away and boarded the train.
“Write to me as often as you can, Robert,” she called after him. “Write in your own language! The interpreter will translate for me!”
Touched more deeply than he had thought possible, Robert waved at the forlorn figure until she had disappeared from sight. That image of her would be a constant comfort during the savage months that lay ahead. In the meantime, he soothed his own fevered thoughts by whispering sweet nothings into the ear of a young dog who didn’t seem to mind—uttering the kind of words that the airman wished he’d found the time and the opportunity to say to the girl he’d left behind.
• • •
The Battle of Britain was nearing its climax by now, and Robert and Josef were expecting a busy time of it at their new base. They had been assigned to a squadron flying the Boulton Paul Defiant fighter, one similar to the Potez 63 warplanes they’d flown over France in that it had a gun turret mounted to the rear of the cockpit. As a gunner, it was Robert’s task to operate the turret, and after the long months spent fleeing from France and retraining, he was desperate to get into the air and into action. But there were just two Defiants available at RAF Duxford, and both were presently unserviceable.
RAF Duxford had been hit repeatedly in Luftwaffe bombing raids and aircraft kept getting destroyed or damaged on the ground. All the newly arrived airmen could do was acquaint themselves with the Defiant’s turrets and her Browning machine guns, in the hope that they would soon get a chance to use them. Come sundown they had to be ready to sprint for the air-raid shelters as flights of German bombers seemed to fill the skies over Cambridgeshire from dusk to dawn.
The majority of those warplanes were en route to hit the industrial heartlands of Birmingham, Coventry, or Liverpool. Even so, as they roared overhead in the darkened skies Ant demonstrated once again his uncanny powers for sensing distant danger—for he’d cast his eyes skyward and whimper and growl at those roaring monsters of the air.
With Robert and Josef spending a great deal of time in the base armory studying the guns, Ant became a good friend to the armorers. Robert took to leaving Ant there whenever he had to attend briefings—not that they had any aircraft they could yet fly. One evening the armorers were going about their business with Ant in his customary position—belly-down and dozing beneath one of the workbenches—when all of a sudden the dog rose to his feet and began to whimper.
Ant started to walk backward and forward down the length of the building as if he were somehow trapped, his taut tail whipping to and fro in a clear sign of distress and alarm. The armorers had heard rumors of the dog’s incredible early-warning abilities, and they stopped what they were doing to listen for any signs of approaching aircraft. But all they could hear were the throaty tones of a Hurricane’s engine being tested nearby.
As they turned back to their work Ant’s body went rigid. He unleashed a low, rumbling growl, baring his teeth at the heavens. Finally he lunged at the nearest man, grabbed at his pant leg, and started tugging hard. Ant seemed to be trying to drag the man toward the door, and the armorer could sense the creature’s exasperation and near panic. He glanced at the others, anxious not to make a fool of himself over a false alarm. After all, Ant was only a dog.
Finally one of the men suggested they had nothing to lose in heading for the shelters. The man whose pants had been gripped allowed Ant to drag him outside, whereupon they all ran for the nearest shelter. At that moment a lone Dornier Schnellbomber came tearing out of the clouds above in a shallow dive, its engines screaming at full throttle. Before the armorers or their dog could reach cover, the Schnellbomber leveled off at treetop height, roared across the base, and released its bombs.
Six black objects tumbled end over end, looping their way toward the airfield. Ant could have no idea what they were exactly, except that they had been released by his master’s sworn enemy, and that they presaged mortal danger. He raced ahead several paces in front of the armorers, and the last they saw of him was a black streak diving into the bomb shelter. At that moment the bombs struck, the Schnellbomber having sown a stick of high explosives across the runway.
Fierce blasts tore across the airfield. Miraculously every bomb missed its target, but for the armorers a vital lesson had been learned. Never again would they ignore RAF Duxford’s phenomenal “radar dog.” The main impact of that air raid would be on Ant’s reputation. Word of the radar dog—who was more attuned to the dangers of approaching German aircraft than the sophisticated tracking systems British scientists had invented—spread like wildfire.
The name of Ant the canine radar was beginning to be heard far and wide.