Damien Lewis - War Dog: The no-mans-land puppy who took to the skies

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A Potez-63 French warplane, of the type that Robert Bozdech was shot down in leading to him finding a tiny German Shepherd puppy in no mans land.

Aeronautics Aircraft Spotters Handbook, Ensign L. C. Guthman, 1943

R obert Bozdech had a horrible, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as the twin-engined warplane began its shallow dive towards earth. But for once it wasnt fear of being pounced on by one of the enemys deadly Messerschmitt 109s that so unsettled him. In the thick fog that had blown across the landscape they were all but invisible to any marauding German fighters.

No. It was fear of the guns that lurked below that held him in its vice-like grip.

The fog is down so thick, Pierre! he yelled across at his fellow airman. It is foolhardy

And if we return with no photos, we will be a laughing stock, Pierre Duval, the aircrafts French pilot, cut in. Keep your eyes peeled!

It had been a fine morning when the French Air Forces twin-engined Potez-63 fighter-bomber had taken to the dawn skies. Stationed at the aerodrome at St Dizier, Pierre and Robert had been tasked with flying a reconnaissance mission over the German front, from where the massed ranks of enemy armour menaced the supposedly impregnable defences of the French Maginot Line.

It was the winter of 193940 and Germany and France were locked in the so-called phony war. But there was nothing very phony about it from Roberts perspective, when flying a French aircraft which was a hundred kilometres per hour slower than the nimble German fighters that stalked the skies above them. As he hunched over his twin machine guns in the rear-gunners seat, he couldnt help but notice how thick the fog had become. It was condensing in thick rivulets that cascaded down the Perspex turret.

Both a spirited maverick and a man of real principle, Robert had refused to bow to the jackboot of Nazi oppression, as their forces had invaded his native Czechoslovakia several months before. He had escaped and made his way to France, and via a short stint in the French Foreign Legion had returned to what he had learned well in the Czech Air Force, serving as a turret-gunner on a hunter-bomber aircraft. But what he hadnt quite bargained for was the difference in temperament between himself and some of the more flamboyant French aircrew.

Lacking little in terms of sheer guts and bravery, the Czech airmen tended to be a level-headed and a solid bunch. By contrast, Pierre Duval, the aircrafts pilot and captain, had a tendency to be impetuous and unpredictable, as todays mission was about to prove. Sure, it was a brave move to dive headlong into the fog directly above the German lines in the hope that Robert might be able to grab a few reconnaissance photos, but it was also a distinctly suicidal one.

No sooner had the aircraft begun to emerge from the lower reaches of the fog its outer edges trailing tendrils of water vapour like wisps of smoke than the air was rent by the pounding percussions of anti-aircraft fire. The German gunners had heard them coming and were poised to strike. The aircraft was too low to be targeted by flak, but all around them the air was laced with the angry red trails of murderous tracer fire.

Their controlled descent through the mist was over in a matter of seconds. In spite of Pierres desperate manoeuvres the German gunners quickly found their mark. Rounds ripped through the thin fuselage and shattered the Perspex cockpit. As smoke and fire bloomed from the port engine, Robert sensed that they were going down. They were barely two hundred feet above the snowbound earth when he saw the port propeller die completely, and felt the enemy fire tearing into their starboard engine.

Robert braced himself for the impact of a crash-landing or worse. The hard, frozen ground was rushing up to meet them, a wide expanse of glistening snow lit here and there a fiery red by the tracer fire. Barely minutes after theyd first been hit, the belly of the aircraft impacted with a terrible tearing of metal. The stricken warplane lifted once, settled again with an ear-piercing screech and ploughed towards a patch of dark woodland.

The doomed aircraft was thrown savagely around as its left flank caught on a thick trunk, and with a tearing of steel the wing was ripped clean away. By the time it came to a juddering halt, half buried in the snow and with its crumpled nosecone embedded in the thick foliage, Robert had lost consciousness.

He came to with little sense of where he was or how much time he might have lost. For an instant he mistook the thick wisps curling all around him for fog, and then the acrid smell of burning hit him. The very idea that their aircraft might burst into flames at any moment brought him back to reality with a savage jolt.

Choking from the acrid smoke he reached down, groped for the release catch on his safety harness, flipped it free and stretched up to clamber out onto the surviving wing. As he did so he felt a stabbing, burning pain shooting through his chest no doubt the result of the safety harness biting into him upon the sudden impact of the crash-landing.

Having dragged himself out of the shattered turret, Robert half tumbled the short distance to the ground, and began to stumble away from the wreckage. After making a few paces he collapsed into an exhausted heap on the snow, the shock and the trauma of being shot down overwhelming him. For a few seconds he lay there, struggling to regain his breath and fighting back the waves of nausea, before a thought struck him with the power of a speeding steam train: Pierre! Where is Pierre?

Robert searched with his eyes, scanning the wreckage and the tangled, splintered mass of bare winter branches all around him. The fog seemed almost to reach to the ground here, mingling with the steam and smoke rising from the crumpled remains of the aircraft. It was an eerie, ghostly scene, one made all the worse by the fact that there was no sign of the French airman anywhere.

He risked a call: Pierre! Pierre! Are you there?

There wasnt the barest hint of a response. Apart from an angry hissing where the aircrafts hot engines met the snow, all was quiet. The Germans must have seen the fighter-bomber go down. From what Robert knew of how Pierre had thrown the aircraft around during their final few seconds, he figured they must have crash-landed somewhere in the no-mans-land between the French and German lines.

A flare of angry red in the aircrafts fuselage drew his eye. Theyd been carrying over a thousand litres of fuel at take-off, and barely a third of that had been used. Robert sensed what was about to happen and he knew exactly what he had to do. Pierre might well be dead. In fact, being in the front seat of the cockpit he more than likely was. But that wasnt going to stop Robert from making an attempt to find him, and no matter if the aircraft was about to burst into flames.