by Damien Lewis
By the time their oppressors had departed, Soo had been beaten so badly that he had to be helped away from the scene. The dog that had until now had viewed him as her protector was forced to take refuge in the empty shadows of a nearby doorway. Into it she crawled, body sore from the kicking, her belly sore from that and the ravening hunger, and her spirit numbed by the trauma and the cold of the long night that lay ahead.
Even though the Japanese sailors were long gone, the lonely puppy sensed that tonight her dream of escape from the Shanghai Dog Kennels had descended into the blackest of nightmares—but as is so often the case, the darkest moment is just before the dawn.
As the sun crept above the city’s grand colonial-style skyline, a familiar figure began to pad her way along the street on which the young dog lay. The lone puppy was shivering and crying to herself and lost in misery—so much so that she almost didn’t notice the pitter-patter of footsteps come to a halt or hear the words uttered in amazement in her direction.
“Shudi? Shudi? Oh, Shudi! What happened? Where have you been?”
The stubby tail of the pointer—now stained off-white with the dirt and soot from her streetside existence—almost failed to wag in any sign of recognition. But the young dog had recognized the soft tones of the voice, just as surely as the little girl from the kennels had recognized the distraught puppy. Her distinctive markings—a sleek liver-brown head, a similarly colored saddle-like marking thrown across her shoulders, plus the large formless splotch of color splashed across her rear right flank—had been instantly recognizable to Lee Ming.
No doubt about it—this was the one that had run away!
In a sprawling city of some 3 million inhabitants the girl from the Shanghai Dog Kennels had by chance chosen to walk that morning past the very door where the lost and injured dog was sheltering. Lee Ming bent, scooped the puppy up, and thrust her deep inside her jacket. With that she ran and skipped through the largely deserted streets, eager to announce her find to the English lady who ran the kennels.
By the time she had reached the big house that lay inside the compound and unzipped her jacket, the puppy had fallen fast asleep.
“Look! Look! I find Shudi!” the little girl announced ecstatically.
The Englishwoman peered doubtfully over the high desk behind which she sat. Spying the puppy, she reached out uncertainly and took the little dog from the girl’s outstretched arms. She pulled her closer, stroked her, and fondled her just behind the ears as she studied the markings and tried to compare them with those in her memory. The puppy opened one lazy eye, saw where she was, seemed to smile exhaustedly, and then slipped back into a sweet sleep.
It was the turn of the Englishwoman to smile. “It is her. It really is the one who ran away.” She glanced at Lee Ming, who was beaming with happiness. “So I think it’s time you gave her a good bath and a dinner, don’t you?”
Lee Ming nodded enthusiastically. There was nothing she’d like more than to feed and comfort the wayward pup. She held out her arms so Shudi could be returned to her and she could whisk her off for some much-needed tender loving care.
The woman handed the pup across. She glanced at Lee Ming curiously. “But tell me, why do you call her Shudi?”
Lee Ming placed the warm but exhausted bundle back inside her jacket. “I always call this one Shudi,” she replied shyly. “Shudi means ‘peaceful.’ Peaceful is how she looks, yes?”
The woman reached out and caressed Lee Ming’s face. “She does. Yes, she does. And Lee Ming—that shall be her name from now on: Judy.”
So it was that the puppy who had run away and come back again against all odds was given a name perhaps most ill suited to her nature: the Mandarin word for the peaceful one—shudi—rendered into “Judy” for whichever lucky Englishman might be her future master.
As the little girl carried Shudi—Judy—off for a good pamper, little did she realize how a dog with such inauspicious beginnings would go on to distinguish herself in the coming bloody and all-consuming conflict . . .
Lee Ming could have no idea how famous the English pointer from the Shanghai Dog Kennels would become once the Second World War drew to a close.
Chapter Two
Even in the summer of 1936, four years prior to the start of the war, the signs of Japanese imperial aggression were sweeping through the streets of Shanghai and across wider China.
Using her military might, Imperial Japan would strike a hammer blow through Shanghai and into the Chinese capital, Nanking—a name that would become synonymous with unspeakable terror and brutality. But for now such dark horrors lay far in the future, and much of the city of Shanghai and the Yangtze River remained under the stewardship of the British and Allied gunboat fleets.
The British gunboats were of the Insect class, a name that belied their true purpose, which was to patrol the shallow seas and rivers across the more war-torn reaches of the British Empire. Built by the Lobnitz shipyard on the Clyde, the Insect class ships had initially seen active service during the First World War in what was then Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), patrolling the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
By 1936 they were two decades old and were by no means state-of-the-art warships. But they remained relatively fast, nimble, and well armed. With their flat bottom and shallow draft, they were designed specifically to operate in rapidly flowing rivers like the Yangtze. Known colloquially as the “large China gunboats,” they boasted two Yarrow engines and boilers, each driving a separate propeller set in a shaft sunk into the hull to minimize the chance of snagging in the river shallows.
As Shudi—Judy—settled into the blissful comfort of kennel life once again, one of those British gunboats was just completing her annual refit at the Shanghai docks. She was preparing to return to patrol duties, deterring piracy and banditry on the lower reaches of the Yangtze—covering a length of river stretching almost a thousand miles inland.
HMS Gnat had not been a particularly happy ship of late, and much of the crew’s angst centered on two key aspects of ship’s life that were in distinctly short supply right then. The first was the ship’s stocks of beer. The China gunboats were unique in the Royal Navy in that they carried with them a stock of beer from which, when on operations, every crew member got a daily allowance. But as the captain of the Gnat, Lieutenant Commander Waldegrave, had commented in the ship’s log, there was only a few weeks’ supply of the precious brew remaining, even with strict rationing in force.
Recently a United States Navy gunboat had docked alongside the Gnat. The officers and crew had been invited to share in the British gunboat’s hospitality—chiefly her beer—but only once a week on Saturday nights in an effort to preserve stocks. In exchange, the officers and crew of the Gnat had been invited to the thrice-weekly movie screenings held in the American ship’s cinema.
The second problem was unique to the Gnat among the British gunboat flotilla then on the Yangtze: she lacked a ship’s mascot, which if anything was even more unthinkable than running out of beer. On her sister ships HMS Cricket, Cicada, and Ladybird and the flagship, the Bee, there were variously cats, dogs, and even a ship’s monkey. But the crew of the Gnat possessed no furry, four-legged, or even feathered friend, and so it was that the ship’s captain set his junior officers the task of finding one.
The junior officers had in turn called upon the resources of the Gnat’s canteen committee in an effort to decide which would be the most suitable species of bird, mammal, or reptile to grace the vessel’s deck. The nominations had flooded in, but many—Chinese soft-backed river turtles, giant pandas, and alligators included—were judged as being somewhat impractical and inappropriate, if good for laughs.
The canteen committee decided that any mascot for the Gnat had to possess three essential qualities. First, as the ship’s officers and crew could really do with some female company, she would have to be distinctly feminine. Second, she would have to be easy on the eyes. And third, for practical reasons she would need to be able to earn her ke
ep. So it was that on an early November afternoon in 1943 a delegation of junior officers left the Gnat to pay a visit to the Shanghai Dog Kennels.
Like most gundogs, English pointers are blessed—or cursed—with a surfeit of energy. They have been bred to be powerful, alert, and absolutely tireless no matter what extent of terrain they are tasked to cover. Such are the qualities required of a dog whose purpose is to locate, chase after, flush out, and—very often—retrieve game. Essentially a hunting dog, a pointer should be always at the ready to let fly.
Judy had certainly proved herself ready to let fly when she’d squirmed under the kennel wire and run away. Even for an extremely high-energy breed like pointers, she’d shown herself to have an extraordinary abundance of get-up-and-go. On first consideration, these weren’t perhaps the ideal qualities for a ship’s mascot—one that was going to be constrained to the confines of a vessel that measured 237 feet from stem to stern and 36 feet across. But as soon as they’d spotted her, the junior officers of the Gnat seemed oddly convinced that Judy was the one for them.
By now she was approaching six months old and had fully recovered from her stint as a Shanghai street dog. She was striking-looking, holding herself with a poise that seemed to mark her out as a true aristocrat of the breed. She carried her head high on a graceful but powerful neck, and her dark eyes—like glistening coals—were set well back from her long, sweeping muzzle. She gazed at these strange men in their smart uniforms who had come to inspect her, displaying the shy reserve natural to a female of the breed.
To the delegation from the Gnat, blissfully unaware of Judy’s epic escape and long sojourn in the back alleyways of Shanghai, she seemed like the perfect lady. As an added bonus she was a gundog, which would mean that any shooting parties sent ashore to secure meat for the galley would have a dog to root out and retrieve game. Though not specifically bred as retrievers, pointers can be trained to chase down and gather anything that has been shot—or at least that’s the theory.
Back at the Gnat the last of the ship’s stores and ammunition was being stowed away belowdecks in preparation for pending departure—including supplies of bread, beef, and fuel (gas and kerosene), plus coal. The last licks of paint were being applied to cover the odd patches of rust on the superstructure. The Chinese mess boys—locals employed to help cook and make tea in the galley—had returned from their shore leave, and they were preparing the first brews back aboard ship.
A gaggle of seamen were milling about on the mess deck, situated in the ship’s bows, preparing to change into fresh white uniforms for one of their final nights ashore. It was then that the head of the coxswain—the officer in charge both of steering the vessel and of managing the ship’s crew—appeared through the open hatch from the main deck above and made an announcement.
“All hands on deck in ten minutes!”
As the sailors pulled on their uniforms, they wondered what on earth might be up. Surely not something that would prevent them from having one of their last nights ashore? In keeping with its wild and exotic reputation Shanghai was a party town par excellence, and no one wanted to be kept from the bars where the beer flowed freely—as opposed to the dwindling supplies aboard the Gnat.
The men gathered anxiously on the foredeck, forming two ranks beneath the long canvas awning that stretched practically from one end of the ship to the other. It lent the vessel a somewhat odd appearance, the lengthy covering resembling almost a roof and making the Gnat seem from a distance like an elongated streetcar at sea. But the awning had proved hugely useful during long patrols up the Yangtze, providing shade to the main deck and shelter from the monsoon rains that would sweep the length of the great river.
“Atten-shun!” the ship’s coxswain called once all were present. “Ship’s company mustered, sir,” he reported to a figure standing close by.
The Gnat’s first lieutenant, R. Haines, stepped forward and mounted an empty wooden ammunition crate, one that would normally carry rounds for the ship’s .303-caliber Maxim machine guns. Three of these light machine guns—a weapon that had become synonymous with the projection of Great Britain’s colonial power—were positioned on either side of the boat, giving her impressive all-around firepower. But right now it was far less warlike matters that the first lieutenant had on his mind. Having given the order to stand easy, he began to address the men, the faint suggestion of a smile flickering across his normally inscrutable features.
“A few weeks back the canteen committee, with myself as chairman, passed a resolution to the effect that we would have a ship’s pet.” He paused, as if checking a sheet of paper in his hand, and then continued, the smile creeping farther into his eyes. “To remind you, we decided on having some female companionship, a lady who would be attractive and could earn her keep. I have studied your very interesting suggestions, most of which I regrettably had to discard.”
The first lieutenant eyed the men ranged before him. “On the Bee they have two cats,” he continued. “The Cricket has a dog—of sorts. The Cicada has a monkey—heaven help them!” A long, weighty pause. “As for the Gnat, from this moment onwards no shooting party will be able to return to ship claiming to have shot twenty-three quail but only one could be found.”
He turned and let out a cry: “Quartermaster!”
A figure emerged from the door behind him, one that led into the ship’s superstructure and up to the bridge. A few paces to his rear a head appeared at knee level, peering curiously around the door frame. As the quartermaster—the ship’s storekeeper—pulled gently on a leash, the rest of the figure stepped into the light. It was a four-legged creature—a white English pointer with dramatic liver-colored markings across her head and body.
The quartermaster moved to where everyone could see. All eyes were on the dog. Not yet fully grown, she had an odd, endearing, floppy kind of a walk as she padded across the deck on paws that still seemed too big for her body. Man and dog came to a halt between the first lieutenant and the phalanx of ship’s crew ranged before him. Judy proceeded to plunk herself down, her well-bred ladylike air evaporating as a large floppy pink tongue lolled out from what appeared to be a decidedly goofy grin.
It was as much as the men could do not to dissolve into laughter.
The first lieutenant swept his arm theatrically across the dog now squatted before him. “Here she is, then, gentlemen. Meet the first lady of the gunboats. Meet Judy—RN!”
Judy was given a right royal welcome by the crew of the Gnat. They picked the nickname Judy of Sussex for her in keeping with her purebred, aristocratic kind of attitude. Sussex was chosen for no other reason than that it was a very long way from Shanghai and because several of the ship’s crew hailed from that part of England.
The natural choice for the important post of Keeper of the Ship’s Dog fell to Able Seaman Jan “Tankey” Cooper. Tankey was in charge of the ship’s food stores and fresh water, but more important, he was also the ship’s butcher, which meant he was able to lay his hands on a regular supply of bones.
Via Tankey, Judy was allotted an open-topped box—an empty ammunition crate—positioned near the ship’s bridge, plus a ship’s blanket, as her sleeping quarters. But in the coming weeks and months she would be found as often as not elsewhere, so much preferable was it to be curled up fast asleep with one of the ship’s crew.
Judy was even given an official ship’s book number. Every man serving in the Royal Navy had a unique set of letters and numerals assigned to him, for example, JX125001. It identified him as serving in one of four pay grades: 1. Seamen and Communicators, 2. Stokers, 3. Officers, Cooks, and Stewards, 4. All others. Judy’s number identified her with the “MX” prefix, meaning she was an “All others” and that she had joined the service after 1925, before which a different system of numbering and lettering was in place.
Judy’s ship’s number didn’t confer any wage-earning status on her, for it hadn’t been formally logged with the Admiralty yet. But had the officers of the Gnat so desired,
they could doubtless have gotten away with it, for the ship’s number system was famously confused and confusing. Many a Royal Navy sailor had the same number as another, only one letter in the prefix differentiating the two.
But in any case, Judy would have little need of money now she was aboard the Gnat. Life as a ship’s dog was going to prove as fine an approximation to doggie paradise as any—or at least in the early months it would. On the Gnat, Judy of Sussex was going to have everything she could wish for or that money could buy, including a surfeit of food, good company, warmth, and companionship.
Being a gundog and one intended to earn her keep, Judy was supposed to be kept away from the crew, in the officers’ quarters positioned—unusually—toward the front of the ship. Indeed, it was the ship’s captain, Lieutenant Colonel Waldegrave, plus the chief petty officer, Charles Jefferey, who had forked out the money to buy her on behalf of the ship’s company. As such, they reckoned they had every right to keep her to their quarters and to train her “for the gun”—to act as a ship’s officers’ gundog.
Pointers are bred to do just as their name suggests—to point out prey. A pointer is supposed to adopt a rigid pose whenever a game animal is scented. Though it can differ from dog to dog, classically speaking, an English pointer is supposed to adopt the following pose: head lowered, tail held horizontal in line with the head, one leg raised and bent at the wrist, paw pointing to guide the hunter to the target.
But as the officer’s mess boy aboard the Gnat was among the first to point out, in Judy’s case there seemed to be a fatal flaw in her pointing abilities. In her first forty-eight hours aboard ship she seemed to go rigid or to point at only one thing: whenever she could smell the delicious aroma of dinner wafting around the Gnat, she’d point unerringly at the ship’s galley!