On a very cold morning in January 1940, Czech airman Robert Bozdech and French pilot Pierre Duval were on a reconnaissance mission over enemy lines when a German plane shot them down. Bozdech scrambled out, freeing an injured Duval from his harness and dragging him into a snowbank. In search of cover, Bozdech spotted a farmhouse off in the distance, about 300 feet away.
Inside was very little: a dusty, wood dining table, one pot on the stove, logs in piles and broken windowpanes and, in Bozdech’s retelling, faint scratching and soft whimpering. For a moment, he froze, trying to locate the source of these sounds. Just who was in the house?
The noise seemed to be coming from behind an overturned chair near the stove. Bozdech reached for his pistol, slowly moved closer, and steeled himself.
“Get your hands up!” he bellowed. “Now! Or else! Show yourself! Come out from hiding!”
Bozdech heard soft breaths, a little bit of a snuffle, and something that could have been a yawn. He couldn’t believe it. What kind of possible enemy or fugitive could be this lackadaisical?
“Wake up, you bastard!” Bozdech said. “Get up and show yourself!”
Again, nothing.
Bozdech had no choice. Stiffly, he moved his way around the chair, his finger on the trigger, ready to shoot.
Then he saw his threat, as it were: a shaky little ball of fur, now semi-awake, struggling to get on its feet, falling all over itself in its clumsy, sleepy attempt to escape.
Bozdech felt a little ashamed, a little silly and very protective.
“So who left you here, all alone and hungry?” he said. Then he scooped the puppy up and tucked him into his bomber jacket.
In “The Dog Who Could Fly: The Incredible True Story of a WWII Airman and the Four-Legged Hero Who Flew At His Side” (Atria Books), author Damien Lewis recounts the incredible friendship — as documented in the late Bozdech’s own unpublished manuscript — between the wartime airman and his most loyal comrade.
Robert Bozdech was an only child and had always gravitated toward animals. In 1938, when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, Bozdech lost friends and family members to torture and death squads. Alone, he sneaked into Poland. Once a member of the Czech air force, he joined the French air force as a turret gunner.
On that day in January 1940, Bozdech and Duval — who, despite a badly injured leg, had crawled his way to the farmhouse — waited for nightfall. Then they would make a break for it.
At 6 p.m., Bozdech roused a sleeping Duval. They looked at the puppy, weak and famished. They couldn’t take him along — it was too risky — but they left him with water and the little food they had.
“We can’t do more than that,” Bozdech told Duval. “He’ll have to take his chances along with the rest of us.”
Almost as soon as they left the farmhouse, bright flashes erupted from the French and German lines. They were caught in the middle. They began to shimmy along their bellies when Bozdech heard it: The first howl, a long and anguished one, followed by a second.
He and Duval looked at each other. They knew what had to be done.
“Wait here,” he told Duval. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
As Bozdech made his way to the farmhouse, he decided to use a rock. He couldn’t bring himself to use a knife, or even his pistol. Then, as he opened the door and saw this little animal struggling to run to him even though he was emaciated and weak, he couldn’t do it. This puppy was like him: a fighter.
“All right, boy,” Bozdech said. “You’re coming, too.”
That night, all three were rescued by French soldiers, who transported Duval to a hospital and Bozdech to an airfield, where a single-engine plane was waiting. Bozdech climbed into the cockpit, clutching his new compatriot.
“Robert felt a surge of pride in his new charge,” Lewis writes. “Like him, this little dog seemed born to fly.”
Back at the air base, Bozdech’s fellow soldiers went crazy for the dog. He was a German shepherd with a black stripe along his spine — the sign of a purebred and a warrior, they thought. The men named him Ant, after their favorite dive bomber, a Russian Pe-2 the Czech air force called the ANT.
The men spoiled him with food and affection — but as much as Ant loved them, waiting for them to return from patrols and offering his paw as a “welcome home,” it was Bozdech he clung to.
When Bozdech ate, Ant — renamed Antis to avoid confusion with the English “aunt” — sat at his feet. When Bozdech slept, Antis planted himself at the foot of his bed. When Bozdech gave an order — sit, stay, fetch — Antis obeyed.
Then came the first time he did not, standing stock still in the middle of the air base, ears up, eyes locked on a point in the distance.
It took a moment for Bozdech to realize what was happening, but once he did, he yelled for Antis to come. In the offing were a harrowing number of German Dornier Do 17 bombers — planes dubbed “flying pencils” for their thinness and precision.
Antis became known as the squadron’s most infallible protector: faster and more accurate than radar.
As the bombs fell, Bozdech ran for his dog, grabbed him and dove into a trench, clutching Antis so tight, he could feel the dog’s heart pounding. They stayed like that for two hours, until the bombing stopped.
Antis became known as the squadron’s most infallible protector: faster and more accurate than radar. He never failed to predict an enemy attack and, as Lewis writes, “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.”
Not long before Christmas, the French outpost was attacked from above again, Dornier Do 17s flying incredibly low, Antis the only one to sense the attack moments before. But even as the men scrambled, it was too late, and a bomb blast blew them all apart.
Bozdech had no idea how long the assault lasted, but when he came to — he and his men miraculously only battered and bruised — he was in a panic. “Has anyone seen my German shepherd?” he yelled. “Has anyone seen Antis? Is he OK?”
Bozdech’s fellow soldiers tried to calm him. They told him Antis would never abandon his master — the truth. But as Bozdech searched, he grew more frantic. Antis wasn’t in the shelter, wasn’t under wreckage on base or in nearby ruins. Two nights passed, and he barely slept, tormented by the idea that his animal was out there, alone and suffering.
On the third day, Bozdech was proved right. Two mechanics found a ravaged Antis stumbling toward the base and rushed him to Bozdech. The entire squadron watched the reunion, and as Bozdech broke down, clutching his traumatized dog, the mood shifted from jubilation to silence.
After bringing Antis to the infirmary, where he was cleaned and fed and the shears in his paws treated, Bozdech tracked back through the wreckage to find what happened. He followed paw prints to a clutch of bloody dog hair stuck to a crater, and he realized Antis had been blown up in a parabolic arc, landing in this hole and covered by debris.
“With no room to move, he must have felt the walls of mud were pressing him into his grave,” Lewis writes. “The marks on his paws indicated that he had scratched, kicked and clawed his way to the surface. How he stayed alive there for two whole days Robert couldn’t imagine . . . but Antis’ will to live — the thing that had attracted Robert to him in the first place — must have seen him through.”
For a time, Bozdech was transferred to Liverpool, where he was unhappy. Slightly injured in a car accident, he was bound to desk duty. One evening, while on a walk with a nurse named Pam, Antis began whipping himself back and forth, keening the whole time.
“Don’t worry, boy,” Bozdech said. “It’s the docks they’re after. We’re safe enough here.”
Then came the gunfire, the flares and the sound of aircraft. With nowhere to run, Bozdech grabbed Pam and pulled her flat on the ground, by his side. It was Antis he leapt upon, shielding him with his own body.
As soon as the bombing stopped, Antis was up, sniffing through the rubble. That night, Antis clawed upon bricks and concrete and sniffed out six survivors, including a toddler. It wasn’t till after midnight that they finished, Bozdech carrying his dog half a mile back to base, his paws torn and bleeding. Again, they went right to the infirmary.
“Not until he’d finished tending to Antis,” Lewis writes, “did Robert accept treatment for his own gashes, scrapes and bruises.”
By now, the two were inseparable. When Robert returned to his squadron in Suffolk and resumed sorties, Antis would watch him taxi down the runway and take off, and he’d sit still until he could no longer see or hear Bozdech’s plane. Then he’d follow the other soldiers back to the tents, where he’d refuse to sleep or eat until his master returned.
Then came the day toward the end of June, Bozdech preparing for a thousand-aircraft assault over northwest Germany, when Antis disappeared. Bozdech was a wreck. He sent a fellow soldier off to find Antis, to no avail.
It didn’t matter. Bozdech had to go. It was nearly 20 minutes into his flight when he realized what happened: There, in the plane’s belly, was his dog, gasping for air.
Quickly, Bozdech removed his oxygen mask and placed it over Antis’ nose and mouth. They were at 16,000 feet and about to begin bombing, and just then the pilot realized what was going on.
“What the hell?” he said. “Keep him close by your legs.”
Bozdech and Antis took turns with the oxygen mask. After the raid, the two were given a hero’s welcome — even though it was against Royal Air Force rules for an animal to be anywhere near an air raid, let alone in one.
Bozdech came upon Ocelka, his commanding officer. He began to explain: “Sir, please . . . none of us knew that Antis —”
Ocelka interrupted him.
“There’s a very good English expression,” he said. “ ‘What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.’ I believe it’s more often used in connection to matters amorous, but it does just fine for last night’s little escapade.”
And so Antis became a true dog of war, engineers crafting a bespoke canine oxygen mask for all the sorties he’d be flying with his master. He wound up sustaining injuries twice in action, and each time, Bozdech never knew until they’d landed.
“He didn’t whine, he didn’t panic, he just lay at my feet,” Bozdech later said. “He showed courage that perhaps a human being couldn’t show.”
In 1945, when the war ended, Bozdech returned to his native Czechoslovakia, Antis in tow. There, he married and had a baby. But when the Communists began to invade in 1948, he was forced to flee. The Soviet Union was after anyone who had ever been tied to the West, most especially in the armed services.
Afraid for their safety should they be caught with him, Bozdech left his wife and 7-month-old child behind, for good. He was not alone, however: Antis came along, and while attempting several dangerous border crossings, his animal always sniffed out the enemy, guiding him safely to freedom.
The two relocated to England, where Bozdech remarried. In 1949, Antis was awarded the Dickin Medal, an honor bestowed on animals who showed exceptional bravery, loyalty and sacrifice.
“For Gallantry,” it reads. “We Also Serve.”
Antis died in 1953, at age 13. Bozdech, who died in 1980 at age 67, never had another dog, nor did he allow his children one.
“He had sworn that after Antis,” Lewis writes, “that he would never own another.”