Book review: The dog who could fly

Usually I'm the one who passes books to Mulan and Miya as reading suggestions.

This time it was the other way around.

Lately, Mulan and Miya have got interested in fighter planes -- especially those of the First and Second World Wars, and they have been getting fighter plane books out of the library.

One book they learnt about was Damien Lewis' The Dog Who Could Fly, a true story about a dog who flew bombing runs during the Second World War.  After they finished it the girls passed the book on to me and said I had to read it.  So I did.

It was an excellent choice.

Lewis wrote a direct, easily readable, child-friendly account of Robert Bozdech, a Czech airman who escaped via France to Britain during the war.  Flying for the French Air Force, Bozdech was shot down in no man's land, where he found a puppy in an abandoned farmhouse.  He tucked the puppy inside his jacket and crawled to safety.  From that time on Bozdech and Antis the German shepherd were inseparable.  When Germany overran France, they escaped to Britain, where Bozdech again flew bombing raids against Germany.

For many of the bombing runs, Antis flew with Bozdech, usually sleeping calmly at his feet.  A dog-sized oxygen mask was made for Antis, for when the unpressurised planes flew at higher altitudes.

Antis was injured on several occasions, but survived the war as beloved camp mascot and hero wardog.

It is a beautiful story of mutual loyalty between man and dog, and I highly recommend it.

My only complaint is that the narrative is a little too one-sided patriotic.  We can surely all agree that Second World War German command was evil and the German population was far too compliant in following and actioning the evil.  Nonetheless, the German people were still real people with real feelings.  They were not mere objects to be blown up and eliminated.  Too often, Bozdech came across as too single-minded in his determination to take revenge and kill as many German people as he could.  In keeping the storytelling simple, Lewis' writing style created a simplistic narrative which dehumanised the many people who Bozdech killed.

Sadly, for a book which was readable for Miya-aged children, I felt the book glorified war a little too much, with heroic goodies and impersonal baddies.  I think a better book would have been one that worked a little harder to emphasise the tragedy of war and acknowledge the shared humanity with those who happened to have been born on the other side of the border and consequently were drafted to fly the opposition aircraft.