Silence Over Dunkerque by John R. Tunis

somewhere back in Bavaria. At any rate, he hardly glanced at the two identity cards in his hand, returned them to the men, and nodded to the squad with a curt command.
    The soldiers slung their rifles over their shoulders and, headed by the Feldwebel, moved past. As they went, the dog was still in her act. Cries of joy and squeals of delight followed the German patrol far down the coastal road.

CHAPTER 18
    I SHOULDN’T HAVE IMAGINED she could swim that far.”
    “They can dog-paddle forever if they really want to. She simply struck out for shore as we did, and found herself lost and alone again. Pretty lucky.”
    “Lucky for us, I’d say. Otherwise we’d have been off for a German Stalag. You never know your luck.”
    Sitting on the ground, the Sergeant held the dog in his arms, examining her legs and paws. Occasionally her tail wagged and slapped the ground, occasionally, too, she winced and whined gently as he looked her over. There were cuts in her pads, several bleeding badly.
    “Yes, right, pretty lucky all round. She seems to me to be nearing the end, even if she was lively there for a minute or two. Look.”
    The panting dog was in bad shape. Her hair was tangled and matted from the salt water. There were ugly wounds on her haunches. All four feet were bleeding, and her ribs showed.
    “First thing she needs is water and food.” He dug out a stone jug from the cart, poured water into a saucer, and placed it upon the ground. She limped over, drank up the plateful. And another, and another. The jug was nearly empty.
    The girl watched their water supply vanish, yet felt gratitude to the dog for diverting the German patrol. She stroked the animal’s matted coat.
    “Ah, la pauvre petite,” she exclaimed.
    The Sergeant then rummaged through the cart, found some hard, stale bread, a half a bottle of milk, and an egg, part of the food for their journey. He broke the egg, mixed it all up in a kitchen basin, and put it down on the pavement. The dog gulped the food, precisely as the two men had gobbled that food brought them in the barn. She ate, drank, then sat down on her haunches, the left paw in the air.
    More, please, she seemed to be saying.
    The Sergeant picked her up in his arms. “No more now, lass. Later, maybe. And since you’re in no condition to walk, you’ll ride.”
    He hoisted her up on the cart where she scrambled on top of a bundle of clothes tied up in a sheet, and crouched, paws forward, ready for anything. The Sergeant took up the handles of the cart, now heavier, and they moved along toward Calais. On top of the pile, the dog licked her bleeding paws.
    Here the girl turned them off the main highway onto a small dirt road. She knew the region by heart, and by avoiding the larger roads, she explained, they could get around Marck. She kept talking about Marck. What was this Marck?
    It was a town a few miles from Calais, full of German patrols, she explained. The back road they were on was longer, harder for pushing the cart than a paved highway, but safer. By twisting and turning on the back roads, they could eventually reach Coulogne, where her grandfather lived and where she was taking them.
    “He is not like my mother, he does not hate the English. Also, he will care for your dog, if indeed he is there, if his house has not been wrecked by the fighting. Tell me, where did you find this poor beast?”
    In his halting French the Sergeant explained how they had discovered the dog at Bergues, how she had attached herself to him.
    Soon they were traversing a region that had seen heavy fighting, with an occasional dead horse in a field, a wrecked artillery caisson, here and there a house, pockmarked by bullets or reduced to a pile of rubble. Other refugees, too, had passed that way. On a stone road marker, someone had written in a childish hand:
    “I have lost my dog, Lou-Lou. White terrier. Josette Bernard, rue de Dunkerque, Marck.”
    The pace was slow, because the pebbly road made the cart