Jet the Rescue Dog by David Long

Author:David Long [David Long]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571304943
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2014-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Daisy: keeping morale afloat

ON BOARD A NORWEGIAN TRAWLER SECOND WORLD WAR NORTH SEA, 1942

With Norway invaded and occupied by German soldiers for much of World War II hundreds of courageous Norwegian civilians risked their lives working for the resistance.

For five years these brave men and women attacked the occupying forces whenever they could and wherever they found them. Organising raids to sabotage railways and strategically important bridges, under cover of darkness they would also spy on the enemy’s movements and disrupt their plans. Anything interesting was immediately reported back to the British authorities who supplied arms and expertise to help them in the fight.

Many of these people had been ordinary sailors and fishermen before the war, and they now found themselves sailing secretly from Norway to Scotland and back again. They made the crossing many times rescuing people in Norway who were being hunted by the secret police and on the return journeys delivering the agents and weapons needed to help liberate their country.

Every trip of this sort was dangerous, and the men knew they would be tried and shot if they were ever caught. Designed for fishing not fighting, their trawlers were far from perfect, being mostly old, noisy and painfully slow. There was also the ever-present risk of attack from hostile aircraft and submarines, and the crews were constantly on the look-out for danger. To avoid being spotted they had to make as much as possible of each crossing at night, and even then they could only do it if the moon was obscured by clouds making it dark enough for them to evade detection.

On one of these vessels the crew kept a mascot, a lively little mongrel called Daisy. There wasn’t much for a dog to do on board a boat so she was probably only there to keep the crew company. Having an animal along would break the monotony of the long trips across the North Sea, and by all accounts Daisy was a friendly dog whom the men all liked.

Despite taking great care to avoid being caught, several of these special trawlers were nevertheless torpedoed and sunk. One winter’s night Daisy’s boat was spotted by the crew of an enemy vessel and came under attack. Trawlers are slow so the captain knew he couldn’t outrun it. Instead he ordered one of the crew to tap out a brief SOS message giving their position while the others made an effort to return the enemy’s fire using a couple of machine guns. Unfortunately it was no good, and moments later the night sky was briefly illuminated by a sudden, blinding flash as the Norwegian boat was struck by a torpedo.

Several of the sailors were killed outright and the force of the blast pitched Daisy and the remaining men into the dark, icy sea. The trawler sank in less than a minute and without a life raft to cling to the men were left floating around in the darkness. Their only hope was that someone somewhere had heard the SOS and that another boat would soon be on its way to rescue them.

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