Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Squadron No. 311. - The dog who could fly: the incredible true story of a WWII airman and the four-legged hero who flew at his side

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Copyright 2013 by Damien Lewis

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Originally published in 2013 in Great Britain by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Books hardcover edition June 2014

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Jacket design John Vairo, Jr.

Jacket photographs: front photograph RAF Museum at Hendon; photo of planes George Cairns/Vetta/Getty Images

Back cover and spine photographs by the Bozdech Family

Author photo Steve Clarke

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4767-3914-4

ISBN 978-1-4767-3916-8 (ebook)

There is an old belief

That on some solemn shore,

Beyond the sphere of grief,

Dear friends shall meet once more.

CHARLES HUBERT HASTINGS PARRY

Na mnovstvi nehledte ; never mind their numbers.

MOTTO OF 311 (CZECH) SQUADRON

For Robert, Pip, and Nina, for allowing me to tell the story of your father and his dog

I n the early hours of a bitterly cold January day in 1940, a French Potez 63 fighter-bomber aircraft was shot down over the German front line. The French pilot and his Czech gunner survived the devastating crash landing, and in the epic escape bid that followed one of the most remarkable and enduring mananimal partnerships of the Second World War was forged.

I first heard about the relationship between the Royal Air Forces flying dog of war and Czech airman Robert Bozdech in a passing comment made by British soldier and bestselling author Captain David Blakeley ( Pathfinder and Maverick One ). Blakeleya fellow dog loverhad read two of my previous books about extraordinary mandog partnerships forged on the front line of war Sergeant Rex and Its All About Treo , both of which were coauthored with the modern-day bomb-detection dog handlers whose stories they portrayed.

Blakeleys comment was: If you want to read a truly amazing story of a man and dog at war, look up Ant and Robert Bozdechs story, from the Second World War. Itll blow you away.

My curiosity piqued, I went on to read as widely as I could about their story (see the references at the end of this book). But one thing struck me most powerfully: while the tale of the heroic man-and-dog duo who fought with Bomber Command during the Second World War had seemingly been told, it remained something of a riddle wrapped up inside a mystery in an enigma. Their story was supposedly related in the 1965 book One Man and His Dog , but Robert Bozdech was not the author of that book. It was written by the late author and journalist Anthony Richardson, and in its pages Robert Bozdech was strangely referred to as Jan Bozdech. Altogether, my reading of it seemed to raise as many questions as it answered.

The deeper I dug the more curious it all became. There was originally talk of a film to be made by 20th Century-Fox based upon the heroic duos life story, but for reasons unexplained it had never gone into production. I wondered why. This of any story cried out to be turned into a dramatic and compelling movie. There was talk of Robert Bozdechs dissatisfaction with the book as it was published, but it remained unclear as to what exactly had troubled him. Did that perhaps explain why the book hadnt used his real name and why the film had never been made?

But most intriguing of all to an author such as myself, there was talk of an original manuscript written by Robert Bozdech, one telling the story of his airborne adventures with Ant, but one that had never seen the light of day. I wondered if such a manuscript had really ever existed, and if so what story it might reveal. Surely, it would tell the full and unexpurgated account of Robert and Ants extraordinary adventures as written from the heart by the man who had lived it? If such a manuscript had been written it would have been penned sometime in the early sixtiesover fifty years agowhich raised the question of whether a copy still existed today.

There was only one way to answer these many questions, and that was to make contact with the surviving members of the Bozdech family. After the war, Robert Bozdech had made Britain his permanent homeafter a short sojourn in his native Czechoslovakiasettling with his veteran war dog, taking British nationality, and raising a family. I found out that Roberts son, Robert Bozdech Jr., lived in a picturesque part of the west of England in what turned out to be the family home. I corresponded with Robert, we spoke on the phone, and in due course I traveled to south Devon to meet him, along with his two sisters, Pip and Nina. The rambling house seemed to have been shaped and formed by those who had lived there for so long, Mrs. Maureen Bozdech only recently having passed away. I was given a gracious welcome, and over tea and cake the questions to which I had for so long sought answers began to resolve themselves.

Robert Bozdech had helped with the writing of Richardsons One Man and His Dog , but the two men had not gotten on at all well. In fact, it seemed they had had some blazing arguments along the way. 20th CenturyFox had indeed resolved to make a film based upon that book, but for some reason it had fallen by the wayside. Most surprisingly of all, Robert Bozdech had not been able to reveal his true nameVclav Bozdechor publish his own story in his own words, because of fears of reprisals against his family in his native Czechoslovakia. Shortly after the Communists took control in Czechoslovakia, Robert found himself a target of pogroms, intimidation, and threats, as did so many Czech airmen, sailors, and soldiers who had fought in the Allied cause. In a form of collateral damage resulting from the Cold War, any Czech with military links to the West was seen as being a potential enemy of Czechoslovakia, a state that then formed a part of the Soviet bloc. Hence it was that Roberts story had been effectively silenced by threats of violence, imprisonment, and worse emanating from the country of his birth.

It was then that I put the million-dollar question to the late Robert Bozdechs family: had their father actually written his own version of his and Ants story in a book or a diary, one that had never seen the light of day?