by Megan Rix
‘Can’t wait to try something higher.’
‘Looking forward to doing it for real.’
Nathan nodded, although he didn’t really agree at all. He wasn’t looking forward to going any higher or doing a ‘real’ parachute jump.
‘Your dog’s amazing,’ Gordon told him. ‘You’d think he’d been parachute jumping all his life.’
‘Doesn’t seem to have an ounce of fear about jumping out of a plane,’ someone else said.
And Nathan smiled because he did agree with them about that. Grey was truly one totally amazing dog. As Nathan headed back to the kennels with Grey later that day he looked back at the plane. It was almost impossible to believe that he’d actually jumped out of it. He shook his head and looked down at Grey who wagged his tail. If it hadn’t been for the dog, he’d never have managed it.
As frightening as the prospect of more real parachute jumping from a flying plane was, he’d rather do it a hundred times than lose the chance to work with Grey.
Chapter 11
Nathan struggled with his extra language and code lessons before their mission, but Grey revelled in his extra agility classes and messenger-dog training. The messenger-dog collar was hollow so that messages could be put inside it, lightweight and made of strong leather. Usually messenger dogs only wore them when they were taking messages, but on Nathan and Grey’s mission to France he’d wear it all the time as there wasn’t room to take extra collars.
Part of Grey’s training involving searching for Nathan. He was held while Nathan hid, and as soon as he was released he raced to find him. The distances over which Grey had to look for Nathan were increased and increased.
When he did find him there was always lots of praise, something nice to eat as reward, followed by a game of ball – his favourite activity.
Sergeant Harris was very impressed and so were the other soldiers when they heard about it. They came to watch as Grey was released and went to find Nathan.
‘He’ll never find him this time …’
‘I bet he will …’
‘You’ve never seen anything like this …’
Nathan moved from hiding place to hiding place while Grey was looking for him so he’d leave a trail of scents but the dog always found him. Grey was taken to different locations and in a forest had to jump over fallen branches and cross a small stream before he found Nathan. But still he found him.
‘That dog is really something, you know,’ Gordon told Nathan back at the barracks. He had his hands in his pockets and was looking down at his feet. Nathan thought he was probably embarrassed about the day he’d caught him shouting in German outside Grey’s kennel.
‘Just got to teach him to speak German now,’ Nathan grinned, and Gordon looked up with relief and grinned back.
‘Look at that!’ the soldiers said the next morning as Sergeant Harris led them all over to the training field, wearing their parachute gear. In front of them a huge grey barrage balloon, nearly thirty feet long, floated 600 feet up in the sky.
Grey had seen lots of barrage balloons before in Dover. They had been up in the sky ever since he was a puppy and he wasn’t the least bit fazed by this one.
‘Right, you lot,’ Sergeant Harris said. ‘We’ll be jumping from that balloon today. It isn’t as far up as a plane will be and it doesn’t move as fast.’
The balloon had a box-like cage beneath it and was attached to a lorry with a winch on the back.
‘You three and the dog first,’ the sergeant said.
Nathan, Grey and two other soldiers headed over to the balloon and the lorry winch brought it down so they could climb into the cage.
‘All right, my lovelies,’ said the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force officer who was in charge of the balloon, and she winched them up.
Once they were high in the sky, Nathan again pressed his fingernails hard into the palms of his hands to steady himself.
‘The first parachute dog floated down from a hot-air balloon in the 1700s,’ Nathan told the others, to distract himself from his nerves. But none of them were really paying any attention and they all looked very nervous. Only Grey was blissfully unaware of what was about to happen.
‘That’s it, Grey, you’ll be fine,’ Nathan told the dog, who looked at him with trust in his clear blue eyes.
Nathan felt bad because he didn’t know if he and Grey were really going to be all right or not. Looking down from 600 feet up only made him feel more queasy. It was such a long way down.
‘You first, then I’ll send down the dog,’ Sergeant Harris said.
Nathan just nodded because he couldn’t trust himself to speak.
‘Go!’
As he stepped through the gap into air, Nathan closed his eyes and for a moment he wanted to scream, but then the parachute opened and his descent became much slower as he floated gently down to the ground.
Above him, Grey was floating down too and he could hear the dog barking. It wasn’t a frightened-sounding bark, though – it was one of excitement. Grey sounded like he was having the time of his life. And Nathan started to laugh. He laughed and laughed, and with his laughter his terrible fear of heights, that had been a part of his life for so long, disappeared into thin air.
Parachute jumping was exhilarating and it made him feel more alive than he’d ever felt before. He would refuse to let himself ever feel frightened of heights again and he was looking forward to future jumps with his incredible dog.
‘Good dog,’ Nathan said as he released his own parachute and then ran over to release Grey’s. Grey wagged his tail enthusiastically and gave Nathan’s face a big lick.
Back at the barracks, Nathan slapped a pasty-looking Gordon on the back.
‘That was great, wasn’t it?’ he grinned.
‘Well, you and the dog certainly seemed to like it,’ Gordon said. ‘Personally from now on I’d like to keep both feet firmly on the ground.’
Nathan laughed and went to fetch Grey’s dinner before the evening’s scheduled first-aid class. The trainee paratroopers needed to know what to do if they or their fellow soldiers were injured in the field. Nathan was also taught how to help Grey if he were hurt.
While Nathan attended his class, Grey and Astor rested close to Grey’s kennel until Bert came over to them.
‘Hungry?’ he asked, and he gave a large ham bone to Grey and some just-cooked ham to Astor. Once the camp had settled down for the night they were joined by Billy, but once again, when morning came Grey was alone.
‘I don’t understand how your collar keeps coming off at night,’ Nathan said as he rebuckled it round Grey’s neck.
Grey wagged his tail and licked Nathan’s hand, ready for another day full of adventures.
The dog still showed no fear of heights and loved running along the narrow beam and the A-frame during the extra agility lessons he went to straight after his morning run with the rest of the soldiers. Soon word got round the men about how good at it he was and they came out to watch him as he completed the course and then they all cheered him at the end of it.
They watched as Grey crawled on his belly through a narrow pipe too small for a man to squeeze through to find Nathan and a treat waiting for him.
‘Good dog, Grey,’ Nathan told him. ‘Good dog.’
Grey kept looking over at the tunnel he’d come through, obviously excited and ready to do more.
‘Let’s try him on the split tunnel,’ Sergeant Harris suggested.
‘Sit, Grey, stay,’ Nathan told the dog.
Grey sat and waited as Nathan walked away from him to the other end of the split tunnel.
‘Grey, come!’ Nathan called and Grey ran into the narrow tunnel, which split into two.
‘Come,’ Nathan called again, and Grey squeezed his way into the narrower of the dark tunnels, crawled along it on his belly and pushed open a flap at the end to find Nathan, whose face he promptly licked as Nathan laughed while the rest of the men cheered.
‘Fifteen seconds,’ Sergeant Harris said, looking at his stopwatch as the men applauded.
Grey was very fast for such a large dog. Best of all, he didn’t need to be told over and over what he needed to do; he picked it up in no time and often correctly guessed what Nathan wanted him to do even before he’d asked him to do it.
A few days later Nathan fixed the bicycle parachute harness around Grey’s body.
‘Final training jump today,’ he told the dog. They’d made seven jumps so far; three from the balloons and four from planes.
Grey wagged his tail and then jumped confidently up into the plane. The routine never varied and the commands and positions were always the same. That way, in a panic situation, the men would know what to do without needing to think. Each paratrooper checked the harness of the man in front of him and Nathan checked Grey’s.
Sergeant Harris shouted, ‘Fit equipment,’ which meant it was time for Nathan to attach the parachute to the harness in the middle of Grey’s back. It was heavy for a dog to carry. Too heavy really, in Nathan’s opinion. But once Grey was out of the plane and flying through the air he wouldn’t notice the parachute’s weight, and if it had been too light it wouldn’t have the support or strength it needed and the dog would end up being tossed around in the wind.
‘Sound off for equipment check,’ Sergeant Harris shouted above the noise of the plane as it made its ascent. ‘One OK, two OK, three OK …’ came the reply from each of the men. Everyone kept exactly to the script.
Once everyone had called out their reply, Sergeant Harris shouted, ‘Hook up.’
Nathan clipped the hook from Grey’s parachute bag to the plane’s central wire. Then he attached his own parachute hook to it and everyone else who was going to jump from the plane did exactly the same.
The light by the plane’s door was red and they had to wait for it to turn green before anyone could jump. The pilot and co-pilot controlled the light switch and they would only give the parachutists the go-ahead once they were at a steady speed and it was as safe as it could be for the men to jump. They reached 600 feet.
‘Red on …’ Sergeant Harris shouted.
The wind was strong and the plane was juddery as it flew up to a height of 800 feet. But it still didn’t seem to worry Grey. He wagged his tail as Nathan rechecked that his harness was secure.
The green light came on.
‘Green on … Go,’ Sergeant Harris said to Nathan.
Nathan jumped out of the plane and a few seconds later Grey came after him. Nathan could at least hold on to the strings of his parachute, but Grey couldn’t. He had no way of controlling his parachute and was totally dependent on Nathan to release him from it once they hit the ground.
As soon as he landed, Nathan released his own parachute and looked up at Grey coming down. The dog’s landing was perfect and Nathan ran over to unstrap him from his kit.
‘We did it,’ he told Grey, who wagged his tail and licked his face, bounding in a circle around him, exuberantly.
That evening there was a graduation ceremony and Nathan took Grey to the front of the room with him when he and the other soldiers in his squad were given their coveted red berets and winged badges.
Grey wasn’t given a beret, of course, but Nathan gave him something even better – a shiny new red ball. Grey happily chewed on it while Nathan wrote to Penny and his mother to tell them that he was now officially a paratrooper and Grey a paradog.
He’d only just finished writing the letter when Major Parry’s aide came to find him.
It was time for Nathan and Grey’s mission to France to begin.
Chapter 12
It was very late at night but Grey was instantly awake and wagging his tail as soon as Nathan stopped at his kennel.
‘Time to go,’ Nathan said.
Grey didn’t know where they were going. All that mattered was that he was going with Nathan.
‘There’ll be no nice kennel for you once we’re in Normandy, my friend,’ Nathan told Grey. ‘And probably just a dug-out hole for us both to sleep in, if we’re lucky.’
Nathan clipped Grey’s lead to his collar and they headed over to the waiting bomber plane.
‘Up, Grey,’ Nathan said. But Grey didn’t jump up as he usually did. He stayed where he was, then looked up at Nathan and whined, his tail between his legs. ‘Come on now, you like going in planes,’ Nathan encouraged him. But Grey only tried to pull Nathan away too. ‘No,’ Nathan told him firmly and Grey stopped pulling. ‘Good dog,’ Nathan said.
He didn’t blame Grey for his momentary terror at all. He didn’t want to get on the bomber either, but this was war and their mission was vital; neither he nor Grey had a choice. They had to do their job. Thousands of soldiers would be arriving on the Normandy beaches in the next few weeks and before they got there they needed to know what guns the German army had so they didn’t walk into an ambush.
‘Up, Grey – go on,’ Nathan said. And when Grey again refused to board Nathan picked him up and put him on the plane. ‘Sorry, but it had to be done,’ Nathan told him, as Grey gave him a look and whined.
‘Does that dog need a muzzle?’ Tommy the pilot shouted from the cockpit.
‘No, he’ll be fine,’ Nathan shouted back. A muzzle would only make things worse.
‘You sure? A crazed dog’s teeth biting us isn’t going to help anyone. A bandage wrapped round his mouth will keep us – and him – safe.’
‘He’ll be fine,’ Nathan repeated firmly.
Tommy hesitated. He may well need the bandages they’d been issued with to treat an injury.
‘Sure as sure?’
‘Absolutely, he’s always been perfectly fine in planes before and ready and eager to jump out – just got a bit of stage fright, that’s all.’
Nathan breathed a sigh of relief as Tommy nodded and turned back to his instruments. He stroked Grey’s furry head.
The dog was much less happy about being in the bomber than Nathan had ever seen him before. As the engines started and the plane juddered, Grey was shaking. He looked utterly miserable – even more unhappy than when he’d travelled on the train for the first time.
As the plane took off, Astor watched it from the top of Grey’s kennel and Billy watched from his field.
The steep rise caused a painful pressure in Nathan’s ears.
‘Blow hard while holding your nose,’ Tommy shouted over his shoulder. Nathan did so but poor Grey couldn’t.
The plane flying Nathan and Grey to France banked low over the training camp, then levelled off and flew up into the night sky.
The atmosphere on board wasn’t at all like it had been on the training missions. It was much more intense. Nathan tried to stay calm for Grey’s sake, knowing how the dog picked up on his emotions, but he only just managed to keep his queasiness under control as the plane flew onwards.
At their final briefing before the mission, Major Parry had told them that members of the Resistance would be waiting for them, ready to show them the Germans’ latest guns. Nathan tried to focus his thoughts on the importan
ce of locating these brave fighters and how he mustn’t let them down. The information they’d be waiting to pass on would be crucial to the war effort.
The cloudy sky was perfect for their undercover mission, but, although visibility was low, the worst happened and they were spotted.
Nathan didn’t hear the sound of the second plane above the noise of their own plane’s engine, but Grey did.
‘We’ve got company,’ Tommy shouted as the German plane came closer.
They’d hoped to fly into France undetected, but soon Nathan and Tommy started to hear the unmistakeable sound of ack-ack as anti-aircraft fire shot into the air around them. If they took a direct hit, Grey and Nathan and Tommy would be killed – unless they could get out in time. There was no way Nathan was going to allow himself or Grey to die trapped inside a flying metal coffin. They’d jump out right now if they had to.
‘Hang on, I might be able to outmanoeuvre him,’ Tommy said. He swerved and dipped as he tried to escape the other plane’s guns but the Germans stayed firmly on their tail and shot at them. ‘Incoming from the right,’ Tommy shouted as a second German plane hurtled up to join the first. He might have had a chance of taking on the plane, but tackling two was impossible.
‘Prepare to bail out!’ he shouted to Nathan. Nathan stood up and checked that Grey’s parachute harness was secure one last time. Even in the panic of the situation they were in, the hours of training paid off.
‘Now!’
Nathan pushed an unwilling Grey out of the plane and then jumped himself. His descent was through the clouds; he was cold and wet and almost undetectable from the ground because of the rainy sky.
He couldn’t see Grey or Tommy as he floated down and he knew they could be miles away. The high wind and lashing rain as well as the chaotic circumstances of their jump as they tried to evade the other planes’ guns meant there was virtually no chance of them landing anywhere near each other. But still Nathan hoped against hope that Grey would be somewhere close by and unhurt.