In the Line of Fire

by Collins, Ace;

  A large number of the prisoners couldn’t swim. Somehow Judy sensed this. With no training in lifesaving, she hurried to a drowning man and, as he held onto her neck, swam to floating debris and steadied the prisoner until he could secure a hold. Rather than stay with the man she had just saved, she swam among pools of burning oil to find other hapless prisoners. She continued to navigate the open seas, pulling drowning men to safety, until all those in that area had been saved. Only then, now more dead than alive, did she wearily drag herself from the ocean onto a floating piece of wood.

  With the Singapore trip aborted, the prisoners were pulled from the water, placed on a different vessel, and returned to Sumatra. Once back at the prison camp, Judy was reunited with Williams. The happiness of that reunion was short lived. The Japanese, now running low on resources, needed coal. While Sumatra had coal, it was too deep inland to transport out. In an act of desperation, the prisoners were marched into the sweltering jungle and ordered to build a railroad. Carving an iron road through mosquito-infested swamps and over forested mountains was a death sentence for many. Their days began at seven and didn’t stop until after dark. If the work slowed, the prisoners were beaten and rations were reduced. As one mile became two and two became ten, Judy kept pace. Doing her part, she caught snakes and rats and shared them with the prisoners. Frank Williams and his friends later said they would have given up without Judy. She may have now been little more than a bag of bones, but in her eyes they saw the will to survive. In a sense, she stood for resistance. She was not going to allow the Japanese to win. And her spirit kept energizing men who wanted to give up and die.

  By the summer of 1945, the war in Europe was over, but it was still going strong in the Pacific. During these long hot days the prisoners had no idea if the Allies were winning or losing. They also had no concept that within a few hundred miles American planes were destroying the Japanese fleet. All the POWs knew was they had to keep building the railroad or they would die. The line somehow was extended twenty miles into the jungle, and along the way the tracks were littered with scores of unmarked graves.

  The workload eventually took its toll on Williams. Raging with a fever and weighing well under one hundred pounds, he was tossed onto a bed. A Japanese guard then cruelly suggested that Judy be cooked as Williams’s last meal. The dog, somehow sensing the danger she was in, raced into the jungle. Not having Williams’s whistle to tell her when it was safe to come home, she hid for several days.

  Without Judy, Williams lost his will to live. He was even debating taking his own life on the day the dog found her way to the camp hospital and snuck inside to the man’s bed. As he looked into the feeble, hungry canine’s brown eyes, Williams vowed to live for a few more days if for no other reason than to share his rations with Judy. Less than a week later the stubborn airman walked out of the facility and readied himself to once more work in the jungle.

  The Japanese guards now called those who hadn’t been killed building the railroad “the living dead.” The reason for this moniker was obvious. The prisoners had dropped half their body weight. Their bones pushed their skin in ways that clearly revealed every facet of their skeletal structure. The same was true for Judy. She looked more like a ghost than a living being. Yet even in this condition some of the men and the dog would not give up. Even when prisoners dropped dead beside them and they were forced to dig graves, some kept going. Even when rations were cut to a half a bowl of rice a day, some found ways to survive. As long as the rebellious dog resisted her captors, so would some of the remarkable Brits.

  On August 15, without notice and under the cover of darkness, the Japanese disappeared and the prisoners woke up to find they were alone. Confused, they sat in the heat wondering what had happened. A dozen theories were tossed out, but none were taken seriously until a few hours later when Allied soldiers marched into the camp and announced the war was over. The men who had somehow survived four years in the jungle prison camp were too sick with malaria and beriberi to manage more than a soft cheer. In fact, as the need for resistance was now over, they could barely stand. The marines who freed them that day cried as they offered food and medicine.

  Days later the American ship SS Atenor arrived to take the prisoners home to England. But as he and Judy approached the vessel, a jubilant Williams noted a sign forbidding animals of any kind from boarding. He figured Judy had been loyal to Britain for eight years, it was time the British returned that favor. Williams and his buddies quickly devised a plan. Williams walked onboard while his friends held the dog. When Williams was safely on deck, a few English seamen created a disturbance to take all eyes off the gangplank. At that point Williams called Judy and she raced to his side. The pair then quickly disappeared below deck. Only when they were well out to sea did the airman reveal the dog’s presence. By then it was too late to change course. Essentially, an English Pointer that had never been in Britain was on her way home.

  It took months walking the English countryside and eating normal-sized meals before Williams and his adopted dog were once again healthy. By then the canine POW’s story had become the stuff of legend. Every newspaper in the UK had given her the spotlight. She was even presented the highest honor an English animal could receive: the Dickin Medal. With Williams by Judy’s side, the following proclamation was read, “For magnificent courage and endurance in Japanese prison camps, which helped maintain morale among her fellow prisoners and also for saving many lives through her intelligence and watchfulness.”

  A few months later, Williams accepted a job in Africa and took Judy with him for this new adventure. They remained side by side until her death in 1950. Williams erected a marble monument at her grave complete with a plaque that read, “A remarkable canine. . . . A gallant old girl who, with a wagging tail, gave more in companionship than she ever received . . . and was in her short lifetime an inspiration of courage, hope, and a will to live, to many who would have given up in their time of trial, had it not been for her example and fortitude.” Judy was all that and more! In a moment in history where embracing resistance provided the only way to survive, she led the way.

  SEVEN

  FLIGHT

  The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be?—it is the same the angels breathe.

  —Mark Twain

  Once you have filled your lungs with air, the will to live becomes a transforming force. Once you have been close to death, the empathy and concern you have for others is usually magnified. Once you have experienced loyalty, it is only natural that it be returned ten times over. In World War II, a German shepherd proved the validity of each of these secular proverbs. And while some dogs and a few humans might have equaled Antis’s determination and fortitude, none have ever surpassed it.

  On a bitterly cold night in January 1940, the war between the Axis powers and the Allies had come too close and a frantic family hurriedly grabbed what little they could carry and rushed through snow toward safety in France. In their hurry they forgot one of their prize dog’s offspring. And now, as the hours alone grew into days, that puppy, hidden under a pile of discarded clothing, was nearing death.

  A few miles away, Robert Bozdech held a camera in his hands as he and pilot Pierre Duval attempted to fly through ever-thickening morning fog. Driven out of his native land when the Nazis invaded in 1938, Bozdech was now fighting for France and tonight he had been assigned to do something he’d done on scores of other flights: to photograph German positions. Because he had survived so many high-risk missions, Bozdech was considered one of the luckiest men in the war, but on this night his luck would run out.

  As their plane emerged from the fog, Duval noted a German fighter plane headed directly at them. Though the experienced French pilot attempted a quick turn, the Nazi war bird was far too fast for the aging Allied plane. In the blink of an eye, hot lead tore through the aircraft’s thin metal skin sending Duval and Bozdech into a death spin. Somehow the pilot managed to ho
ld the plane together until it hit the ground. The rough belly landing knocked out both men and the unguided aircraft plowed through a series of snowdrifts before coming to a halt in no-man’s-land. The German infantry was a mile one way, the French a few miles in another direction, and the downed airmen were stuck in an area with no trees or cover.

  Bozdech was the first to come to. After regaining his senses, he scrambled from the plane and searched the area for Nazi soldiers. When he found none, Bozdech pulled the still-groggy pilot from the wreckage. After the short, stocky Frenchman regained his senses, he begged his lean, lanky Czech friend to scramble to safety without him. The ever-loyal Bozdech stubbornly refused. Standing, he noted a farmhouse a few hundred yards away. After determining Duval was too badly injured to walk unaided, the gunner picked up his comrade and staggered through the snow toward the structure.

  In the cold and wind, the short walk seemed like a marathon. A dizzy Bozdech was completely out of breath when he pushed the front door open and was greeted by a broken glass, a small table, a stove, and a few pieces of smashed furniture. Judging from the chaos before him, the gunner was quickly able to surmise that whoever recently lived here left in a hurry. Taking a deep breath, Bozdech counted his blessings that for the moment he and his pilot were safe. His plan was to just lay low for several hours, then when night fell again, if Duval had recovered enough to walk, they could make the risky crossing over open ground to French territory.

  As Duval closed his eyes and rested, Bozdech checked out their hideaway. Though he figured the Germans could be just a few hundred feet away and hidden by trees, the area outside was clear. He snuck to the outbuildings to thankfully find them as void of life as the house. Grimly smiling, convinced that he and Duval’s chances for avoiding capture had markedly improved, he pushed back through the snow toward the home. When he reentered the temporary haven, his sense of security was shattered. He heard a strange noise like a person crawling through the snow followed by barely perceptible breathing. His heart climbed up into his throat as he realized he had been wrong and they weren’t alone!

  Pulling his pistol from his belt, Bozdech demanded whoever was there to come out with their hands up. When there was no response he screamed out the orders again. The only reply was a series of light moans. Moving toward the sounds, the gunner kicked over a chair and pulled back a few pieces of discarded clothing to discover, wiggling on the floor, a shepherd puppy not more than four weeks old. It was emaciated and so weak it could barely move. He took a deep breath, nodded, and put his gun away. If he was going to share a home with a German, the Czech refugee was glad it was this one.

  Bozdech had grown up around dogs and cats. When he was a child, his pets had taken the place of siblings. Thus, even in the midst of war, at a time when even his own fate was hanging in the balance, he felt great empathy for this pathetic creature. As he had done with small animals as a child, he whispered a few gentle words of reassurance before reaching down and scooping up the barely alive pup and bringing it up to his face. As the two stared at each other, Bozdech’s heart melted. Pushing the half-dead puppy into his bomber jacket, he started a search for food. All he found were a few pieces of chocolate. After melting a little snow and softening the candy, he used his finger to force the liquid to the struggling German shepherd puppy’s mouth. The famished animal eagerly licked the mixture from his hands. Over the next hour this action was repeated time and time again until the puppy fell asleep. Setting the animal on the floor, Bozdech relaxed and waited for nightfall.

  Just after sundown, Bozdech shook Duval. It was time to see if the pair could crawl two miles across the snow to safety. As their lives depended on them making the perilous trek in complete silence, the puppy would have to be left behind. As he petted the German shepherd for a final time, Bozdech whispered a prayer that someone would find the tiny creature and adopt him even if that someone was a Nazi.

  When the pair emerged from the house, the night was initially quiet. But within seconds of falling to their bellies and beginning their trek, the skies lit up with fire and the men found themselves in the middle of a battle. Digging even deeper into the snow, they crept forward. They made it only a hundred yards when the puppy awoke. Now alone and once again hungry, it began to cry. If any of the nearby German troops picked up on the sounds, the downed airmen would surely be spotted and become sitting ducks.

  Duval was too badly injured to go back and silence the pup, so the responsibility fell upon Bozdech. Crawling through the snow, the gunner entered the house where he was greeted by an excited bundle of fur. This was not the time to play, so the man sadly shook his head and searched the room for something he could employ to mercifully end the pup’s excited yelps. He decided that clubbing the German shepherd with a heavy object was the best choice. After finding a large rock just outside the door, he positioned the now-trusting dog on the floor and lifted his arm. Just as he was about to deliver a fatal blow, the tiny creature wagged its tail. Though Bozdech had grown to enjoy knocking Nazi planes from the sky, he didn’t have the will or the strength to kill this German. Cursing his lack of courage, he picked the dog up and stuffed it into his jacket. He then slowly crawled back to his friend.

  It took the men several excruciating hours to cover the two miles to the woods as they clawed through the snow on hands and knees. During this time the puppy didn’t once cry out and give away their position. Only when they were in the safety of the French-controlled woods did the critter finally complain. As the injured Duval slept against a tree, Bozdech took his small charge from his jacket, held it in his glove-covered hands, and whispered, “We’re safe!” He was still stroking the creature’s tiny head when a French patrol found them a few minutes later.

  Duval was hustled back to the road and quickly transported to a hospital to treat several broken bones. Bozdech and the puppy were examined and fed and then taken to an airfield where a single-engine plane was waiting. Bozdech, who had flown during his stint in the Czech Air Force, was ordered to get in the mechanized bird and hurry back to his base. As the small aircraft left the ground it would mark the first time the dog would fly, but it would not be the last. Once in the air, the still-unnamed pup rested in the pilot’s lap, yawned, and went to sleep. He was so relaxed it was as if the sky was his natural environment.

  Bozdech roomed with seven other refugee Czech airmen now flying for the French. Because he was long overdue from his mission, they were scared that their friend had died. So when Bozdech returned to the base the men threw an impromptu party that included warm milk for the pup. As they took turns holding the new arrival, they debated on a name. It was finally decided to christen the German shepherd after the plane they had first learned to fly in Czechoslovakia: the Pe-2. The small fighter had been nicknamed after a common insect. So the pup was now known as Ant.

  Over the next few weeks the flyers spoiled the dog with food and love and Ant grew to appreciate each of the men. But there was no doubt which one drew his greatest affection and trust. Ant ate and slept with Bozdech. When the man was in the room the dog followed his every move and listened to his every word. Whenever Bozdech left for a mission the dog also shadowed him to the plane. The pup would then wait by the runway until his master returned from each mission.

  By the time the dog was two months old, Bozdech had trained Ant to sit, stay, and heel on command and the obviously intelligent pup never disobeyed an order. But on a cloudy, winter afternoon, a suddenly disturbed Ant ignored the man’s commands for the first time. For seemingly no reason the pup’s face looked skyward, ears erect, as his eyes locked onto the horizon. A confused Bozdech turned in the direction but saw nothing. He tried to get Ant to refocus, but the dog continued to keep his eyes fixed on the sky. Finally, after several minutes, the airman heard the hum of planes and then there were almost unperceivable dots on the horizon. A second later panic set in as Bozdech realized German bombers with a fighter escort were headed their way.

  The Dornier Do 17 was a twi
n-engine light bomber that had the power to inflict heavy damage. Due to their thin frames, they were often described as flying pencils. As these lethal machines grew near, Bozdech grabbed Ant and dove into a trench. It would be the pair’s home for the next two hours as the Nazis bombed the base into oblivion. The damage was so great that it would take more than a week to get the facility back into operation.

  Not surprisingly, from that day forward, the flyers reacted when the pup stopped playing and turned his gaze skyward. The British and French who joined the Czechs at the base also quickly grew to trust the dog’s ability to hear German planes. The instant Ant turned his gaze to the sky, they raced into the control towers to warn the base that an enemy assault that had not yet appeared on radar was coming their way.

  Over the next few weeks, Ant saved countless lives and tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment by warning of Nazi air attacks well before they happened. Just before Christmas, on a night when Ant celebrated his first birthday, the unit failed to understand the reason the dog wanted out of the flyers’ quarters. They continued to ignore his scratching at the door until they too heard the German bombers. As the men and dog raced outside, bombs rained down from the skies and people and equipment were blown in every direction. As Ant barked, Bozdech, less than a hundred feet from where a bomb landed, was thrown sideways and knocked out. When he came to the Nazi planes were gone and his dog was nowhere in sight.

  Dazed and confused, bleeding from wounds caused by flying debris, an anxious Bozdech frantically searched through wrecked buildings and equipment in an effort to find the dog that he had now loved for almost a year. Ant was nowhere. As one day became two the likely truth grew to monstrous proportions: Ant had to be dead. Unable to eat and barely sleeping, blaming himself for not paying attention to his dog’s warning, the flyer turned gunner continued to dig through wreckage. Now convinced his dog had died, at the very least the man wanted a body to bury.