Judy: The Unforgettable Story of the Dog Who Went to War and Became a True Hero

by Damien Lewis

  No problem, the ships’ officers argued. They’d train her to point at the right kind of thing—chiefly the duck, quail, antelope, and gazelle that they were keen to hunt along the Yangtze. But there just seemed to be no way of controlling where this taut bundle of energy would be found next aboard ship. Her inquisitive nose took her to just about every nook and cranny, and it was only ever from one quarter—the Chinese mess boys and cooks—that she seemed to receive anything other than a rapturous welcome.

  No matter what the officers’ intentions, from the very start the ship’s company treated Judy as a much-favored pet. It was as if she was everybody’s companion—which, indeed, as ship’s dog arguably she was supposed to be. Owned by nobody, she was everyone’s dog, and therein lay the impediment to any serious attempts to train her for the gun. Likewise, Tankey Cooper’s strict efforts to regulate her meals proved equally frustrating. Whenever his back was turned, squares of chocolate and even the odd glass of beer were slipped in the young dog’s direction.

  By the time HMS Gnat was ready for departure from Shanghai, in the second week of November 1936, the ship’s captain and chief petty officer—those who had originally procured the dog—had accepted Judy’s shortcomings with reluctant good grace. She was first and foremost a ship’s dog and not a gundog, and in that she was proving herself wildly successful. Not a man among the Gnat’s crew hadn’t warmed to her, and Judy’s presence aboard ship had proved a much-needed boost to morale.

  Having survived the menacing streets of Shanghai, Judy appeared to be set for a long and happy career aboard HMS Gnat, gallant ship of the Royal Navy’s Yangtze gunboat fleet. But as chance would have it, Judy’s next close encounter with mortal danger was but a few turns of the ship’s screw away.

  And once again, it was curiosity that would almost prove the death of her.

  Chapter Three

  For decades the scientific study of dogs—and much of the theory around their training—has relied upon the example provided by their ancient ancestor, the wolf. Unlikely as it may seem, all modern-day dogs—from Pekingese to Great Danes—are descendants of one species, Canis lupus, the gray wolf. Dogs share 99.96 percent of their DNA with the wolf.

  But those genetics have been overlain with up to 30,000 years of selective breeding and, more important, domestication. Many millennia ago humans and dogs began what was to be the most long-lived and enduring man-and-animal partnership of all. The dog was the first animal that we domesticated, and today dogs possess an ability to bond with and relate to humans that no other being can match.

  The belief that dogs would revert to behaving like wolves in the absence of human influence long ruled the way we trained our canine companions. Studies suggested that wolves were pack animals, with two dominant adults—one male, one female—threatening violence or expulsion to subjugate those under them. Using the argument that dogs are essentially wolves, humans were thought to have to dominate their canine pets, to prove they were the master of the pack.

  In recent years much of this thinking has been turned on its head. Most studies of wolf packs were carried out in captivity, generally in zoos. Captive packs were made up of a discordant group of animals thrown together arbitrarily and with little relevance to the wild. Recent studies of wolf packs as they occur in nature prove them to be nothing more menacing than extended family units.

  In nature the wolf pack usually consists of one breeding pair, plus their adolescent offspring, who help the adults bring up new cubs. The pack can turn violent, but only against another pack that tries to encroach upon its territory. Wolves, then, are naturally sociable, family-oriented animals. Within the family unit—the so-called pack—they exhibit cooperation, kindness, and care toward one another.

  Likewise, most dogs simply want to feel part of the family and to enjoy family life, as others in the family unit—whether human or canine—do. Viewed in this context, training dogs by employing dominant behavior, threats, and even physical punishment is about as appropriate as doing so with a child. What dogs respond to best is love, reward, and play—and, crucially, being made to feel an integral part of the family. And luckily for Judy, she’d just fallen into the biggest, most playful and fun-loving family she ever could have wished for.

  Life aboard a Yangtze gunboat was by necessity closely knit and familial. With a crew numbering in the fifties—Chinese cooks and kitchen boys not included—the Gnat’s company wasn’t a great deal bigger than your average wolf pack. Most such packs are happy family units wherein disagreements do happen but are usually resolved harmoniously. Cooperation, not coercion, is the rule.

  While Judy had yet to find her two-legged “master” aboard the Gnat—someone with whom to bond absolutely—within the first few days of coming aboard she was at one with the closely knit band of the ship’s crew. She was at home with them all. And by the time the Gnat was ready to set sail, Judy of Sussex appeared to have grown well accustomed to life aboard ship. She seemed to be finding her sea legs and to be more than ready for the long voyage into the country’s interior.

  At 0800 hours on November 10, 1936, the Gnat’s crew began stowing away the last of the stores in preparation for the departure. At 0900 hours the special sea-duty crewmen and cable parties prepared to cast off. Like all dogs, Judy had an uncanny ability to read human body language and actions. She dashed about the Gnat, sniffing excitedly as cables were slipped and fenders hauled aboard.

  Ten minutes later the Gnat had slipped anchor, the throb of the twin engines beginning to shake and vibrate the deck. Twenty minutes after that the ship pulled into shore again and tied up alongside the Asiatic Petroleum Company’s wharf, where 68.1 tons of fuel oil were to be pumped aboard. Judy had just endured her first short voyage “at sea,” and all aboard were mightily impressed by how she had behaved. But all of this had been in the comparatively sheltered waters of the Shanghai port. The word Shanghai itself means “on the ocean,” and the city sits at the confluence of the Yangtze River and the East China Sea.

  With the fuel oil pumped aboard, the vessel did an about-face, and at 1220 hours she began to steam to a new wharf, where she would load ammunition supplies. In addition to her six Maxim machine guns mounted aft of the bridge, the Gnat boasted a 12-pounder antiaircraft gun, and a pair of 6-inch Mark VII guns, which were able to fire a forty-five-kilogram shell over a ten-kilometer range. The 6-inch guns were the largest caliber of any gunboat then serving on the Yangtze, lending the Insect class boats a punch that belied their name.

  Life aboard the Yangtze gunboats was colorful, but it was also fraught with danger. Hostile vessels menaced the river waters. The Yangtze was wild and unpredictable in places, and ships could easily be driven ashore or dashed to pieces on the rocky sides of the gorges through which they passed. The constant tension and danger took an inevitable toll, and young sailors needed quality downtime in which to destress and unwind. Shanghai, with its wild bars and subterranean clubs, offered them ample opportunity to do so.

  But as always was the case when young sailors went partying, there were some at least who were loath to leave the joys of the shore behind them. In the past few days Captain Waldegrave had been forced to send two of the Gnat’s crew to the military detention quarters in Shanghai for thirty days’ punishment. No doubt the sailors in question had found the beer supplies aboard the Gnat somewhat wanting, or perhaps they had balked at leaving a local girl behind them.

  But at the same time, the captain had also found cause to issue a number of good conduct badges to his crew, and he had written up at least one for a good conduct medal. Overall, the seamen were pulling together admirably, and the captain put that down in part to the newest arrival among them. But while she’d brought them great joy and a renewed sense of purpose, Judy was about to prove that she could also bring them a great deal of trouble.

  It was on the morning of November 14 when the Gnat finally slipped her mooring for the long voyage upriver. She steamed eastward at first, heading out to sea, before tu
rning west into the churning maw that forms the vast expanse of the Yangtze River delta. Taking full advantage of her fourteen-knot speed and triple rudders—which gave her a tight turning circle, which was crucial for operating in the narrow confines of the river’s higher reaches—the Gnat began to battle against the ten-knot current that was sweeping this massive expanse of fresh water out to sea.

  Here, where the mighty Yangtze drains into the East China Sea, the delta is over twenty miles wide: around the same width as the English Channel at its narrowest. Gazing out over the gray November water, both man and dog would need to remind themselves that this was a river and not an ocean. Wild eddies and currents swept beneath the flat bottom of the Gnat’s hull; powerful waves and swells the size of ocean rollers rumbled past her sides. The cold, muddy, gray-yellow water was heavy with silt, and every now and again a swirling whirlpool spun across their path, sucking nameless debris into its depths.

  As the port city faded into the distance, land was barely visible. Instead of the steady hustle and bustle of Shanghai harbor life, a new sound filled the crew’s ears. It was the unearthly hollow rushing of the river as the Gnat fought her way upstream, passing over the sandbanks and mudflats that litter the Yangtze’s final approach to the sea. The noise rose to a deafening roar each time the flat-bottomed vessel clawed over the narrowest of shallows, where the depth decreased to a matter of feet, then died down again as the riverbed plunged to some 100 feet or more in depth.

  During the weeks that she’d spent living on the streets of Shanghai, Judy had become accustomed to the roar of the city—the ceaseless cacophony of engines, voices, industry, and human endeavor. But this was something entirely different. This was the throaty bellow of a wild waterway—the third longest river in the world—tantalizingly close and at its most awe-inspiring. This was the breathtaking power of nature distilled into a surging mass of water, and the wild, untamed strangeness of it all drew Judy to it . . . like a moth to the proverbial candle flame.

  Chief Petty Officer Jefferey was the first to realize the danger. He was moving aft when he caught sight of the dog that he had half paid for nosing around by the ship’s rail. As he yelled out a cry of warning, he saw her slip beneath the rail until she was poised on the polished steel plates of the outboard—the narrow outer edge of the deck. Judy gazed at the frothing water below, seemingly as unheeding of Jefferey’s cries of alarm as she had been of Lee Ming’s a few months earlier at the Shanghai Dog Kennels.

  She danced from paw to paw, uttering excited yelps and barks at the deafening gray monster that churned and roared a few dozen feet beneath her outstretched forelegs. But a moment later Judy lost her footing completely, and with a despairing yelp she plunged out of view. Whoever said that it was curiosity that killed the cat had clearly never met the ship’s dog of HMS Gnat!

  An ashen-faced Jefferey turned and yelled to the bridge, screaming at the top of his voice in an effort to make himself heard.

  “Dog overboard! Dog overboard! DOG OVERBOARD!”

  The cry of “man overboard” is one of the last any sailor ever wants to hear at sea—but even less so on a waterway like the Yangtze. The combined speed of the river’s flow and the Gnat’s forward progress meant that the ship’s mascot was now being carried astern at something like fourteen knots, or a little over sixteen miles an hour. Jefferey’s cry of “dog overboard” was equally unwelcome to those who caught it among a ship’s crew who were growing to love and cherish their canine companion.

  Fortunately, the captain was one of those who had heard, and he took immediate action. “Stop, and full astern! Stop, and full astern!”

  Captain Waldegrave knew for certain what would happen if his ship didn’t rapidly reverse its course. There wasn’t the slightest chance he could turn the gunboat around in time. The climate in east-central China is similar to that in Continental Europe: it is temperate, with warm springs, hot summers, cool autumns, and bitter winters. The Yangtze in November would be icy cold, conditions that would quickly sap the reserves of even the toughest dog as she fought against the vicious currents and eddies. By the time he’d turned his ship around, Judy would have been swept far downstream in the chilly waters and lost.

  She had fallen a little more than a dozen feet from the ship’s rail, but even so she would have gone under, and fresh water has far less buoyancy than seawater, providing less chance of bringing a body back to the surface. All the captain could hope for was that Judy was a strong swimmer, one blessed with a gundog’s natural instinct to fight for her survival—at least until they could come to her aid. Even so, he didn’t rate her chances very highly. Either they got to her in the next few minutes or Judy of Sussex was going to a cold and watery grave.

  By the time the captain had brought his vessel to a stop, man of action Leading Seaman Vic Oliver had readied the Gnat’s launch. Oliver would be on the tiller, with a colleague to operate the engine, and he had a somewhat reluctant Chinese boat boy called Wugle perched in the prow, charged with grabbing the errant dog. The diminutive craft was swung overboard and lowered over the side, but by the time she was in the water Oliver had lost all sight of the missing dog.

  The last he’d seen of her was a distant black speck coursing downriver. He’d tried to fix her location in his mind so that he could steer the launch in the general direction. Unsighted as they now were, he set off on the best bearing he could muster, the speed of the launch combining with the current to propel the boat downriver like a cork fired from a champagne bottle.

  The little vessel slammed and bucked her way across the choppy water, which close up appeared like a viscous orange soup as it foamed and boiled around her prow. Oliver figured that by the time they’d got the boat into the water Judy was maybe half a mile astern of the Gnat. At the speed the launch was motoring, he reckoned they’d overhaul her within two minutes—if he had them on the correct bearing.

  He knew full well that if he’d gotten it wrong, they wouldn’t get a second chance. Many men had gone to their deaths in the Yangtze, and a fall into the river this far from land very often spelled the end. Oliver dreaded to think what the chances were for a not yet fully grown dog.

  Time dragged horribly. The boat fought its way across the river’s surface for what seemed like an age. Then, quite suddenly they crested a wave and sped past a black speck just visible off the port side. The men in the launch had caught the flash of white forepaws thrashing about frantically, eyes wide with fear as Judy fought to prevent herself from being dragged under. She was keeping her head above the turbid water, but only just.

  Yelling out snatched words of encouragement, Oliver threw the launch into a tight turn. This time they came back toward her on an interception bearing and motoring upstream. The boat’s progress was far slower and more controlled as she fought the powerful current, and Oliver presumed that this time they had Judy within their grasp. But as they slowed for the pickup and Wugle leaned over the side to grab her collar, the boat pitched on a wave crest, and suddenly he was in the water too.

  Boat boy and ship’s dog went under, and nothing more could be seen of them. Oliver sent the launch around in a second speeding turn. They returned to the spot, but both Wugle and Judy were nowhere to be seen. Finally, a pair of desperate figures broke the surface, and Oliver used the boat hook to drag them closer in. Then all hands were reaching over the side . . . and a sodden ship’s boy and a half-drowned ship’s dog were dragged aboard by the scruff of their necks.

  A ragged volley of cheers echoed across the water from the deck of the Gnat, where what seemed like the entire ship’s company had gathered to watch the drama. Acknowledging them with a wave, Oliver got the launch under way once more, heading back toward the Gnat. Something of a natural-born showman, he gripped the tiller between his knees and sent a short message of confirmation, using the boat’s semaphore—a system of flags held at arm’s length in various positions, each corresponding to a letter of the alphabet—to do so.

  “CHRISTENING COM
PLETE” was the short but entirely appropriate message transmitted.

  Bedraggled and with thick Yangtze river mud in hair, eyes, and ears, Judy and Wugle were the first to be lifted back aboard the ship. They were rushed below for a good hot bath. The scrubbing that Judy received was at the hands of Chief Petty Officer Jefferey himself, who was fast becoming one of her foremost protectors. The bath was laced with disinfectant on the orders of the ship’s surgeon, for the Yangtze wasn’t just laden with silt and mud—it was also thick with sewage from the many towns and cities that lined her banks.

  Jefferey rubbed Judy dry with his own towel before deciding to give her a walk around the vessel, pointing out all the obvious dangers. It was like learning to ride a horse, being aboard ship: if you fell off—or overboard—you just had to get right back on again. At first Judy was noticeably scared to be out on deck. She shivered with fright and gave the ship’s rails the widest berth possible. As the Gnat steamed ahead, she was reluctant even to take a peek at the frothing water surging past to either side of the hull.

  At that Jefferey allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction. At least she seemed to have learned her lesson.

  Captain Waldegrave recorded their near loss in the ship’s log at 1800 hours that day: “a man accidentally overboard and retrieved by the lifeboat crew.” The fact that Judy’s “accident” was officially recorded as happening to a human crew member reflected just how those aboard the Gnat had begun to view their ship’s dog. But while the crewmen were growing to cherish their newest shipmate, many had begun to question if she really would satisfy the third quality they had demanded of her—that of usefulness.

  The night of the accident a shaken Judy did sleep in the officers’ quarters, lying close by Jefferey’s bunk for extra comfort. Usually in life a man will choose his dog. Just occasionally a dog gets to choose her man. After her near-death experience in the Yangtze, Judy was in need of real comfort. But she remained the kind of dog who’d make her own choice of master—or better still life companion—very much in her own good time. There were plenty of ready candidates aboard the Gnat: the ship’s captain, CPO Jefferey, and Tankey Cooper to name but a few. Yet as far as Judy of Sussex was concerned, Mr. Right hadn’t stepped onto her deck just yet.