Judy, Prisoner of War

by Laurie Calkhoven

  Monsoon season—a time of great winds and heavy rains—was nearly upon us when the Japanese overran Hankow in October 1938. The sailors did their best to keep me away from the Japanese troops, but I kept up my personal war against them. One day I was out for a run along the river with Bonny and Seaman Law when I stopped to snarl at a Japanese sentry.

  He screamed and raised his foot to give me a kick, but I danced out of his way. Then I rose up on my hind legs and growled at him.

  I’m not afraid of you, kicker!

  He grabbed his rifle and leveled it at my head.

  Okay, I thought. Maybe I’m a little afraid.

  Before I even had a chance to run, Seaman Law grabbed the sentry in a big bear hug and threw him into the river!

  Take that, you kicker!

  The sentry rose up sputtering, and we ran for the Gnat. We all had a good laugh about it later, but our skipper didn’t think it was as funny as we did. For the next few days, I had to hide out while Japanese diplomats and officers came aboard. It took a lot of meetings, but they finally decided that they wouldn’t go after Bonny and Law as long as I stayed on the ship and didn’t bother the Japanese troops—at least when we were in Hankow.

  It’s okay, I told Bonny. It’s worth being cooped up, just to see that Japanese sentry get thrown in the river!

  We did our best to do our job and patrol the river over the next month, but seeing the devastation around us caused by the war was tough. More and more of the country was bombed into surrender by the Japanese.

  It wasn’t long before the British government decided they needed newer, bigger, more powerful ships on the Yangtze in case they had to fight the Japanese. I would have to say goodbye to the Gnat and become the mascot of a new gunboat, the HMS Grasshopper.

  In June 1939, most of the Gnat’s crew, including me, were transferred to the HMS Grasshopper.

  The Grasshopper was a good ship, newer and shinier than the Gnat, but I missed all my comfortable old nooks and crannies. Even worse, Law and Bonny, my two best friends, stayed behind as part of a small crew on the Gnat. I had always been good at finding new humans when I needed to, but I was sick of all the constant changes.

  Will I ever be as happy here as I was on my old ship? I wondered.

  I had just started to get used to my new ship when Adolf Hitler, the German chancellor, invaded Poland, which led England and France to declare war on Germany. It was only a matter of time before Japan and Germany teamed up, so we were given orders to sail to England’s stronghold in the Pacific—Singapore—with a stop in Hong Kong along the way.

  The Grasshopper and two other new gunboats, the HMS Scorpion and the HMS Dragonfly, headed to open seas. Before this, I had spent most of my life on the river. As choppy and rough as those waters could be, they were nothing compared with the wild waves on the South China Sea.

  I spent the first leg of the trip losing my lunch. Seasickness is no joke, and when you’re a ship’s dog, it’s especially embarrassing. The crew tried to force me to eat and drink and exercise.

  Just leave me alone, I whimpered. I’m not getting out of bed.

  But they wouldn’t leave me alone. Eating was out of the question, but they were able to get me to drink and walk on the deck. Slowly I began to get my sea legs, and soon I was able to eat. I never got seasick again.

  Even though war raged in Europe and in China, you’d hardly know it in Singapore. There was an active naval presence, but there was also lots of fun to be had. Until I found my own private war.

  It happened—as bad things seem to—when I was off the ship. I went on a visit to the family of a local official with three children who loved dogs. Have I mentioned how awesome kids are to play with? But while I was away, my sailors got into trouble in the form of a monkey named Mickey.

  While I was off playing, the Grasshopper’s new crew agreed to keep the monkey on board while his ship was on duty somewhere in the Pacific. The minute I got home, I realized why Mickey’s men didn’t want him around when they were on duty. He was a menace.

  Mickey took one look at me and jumped on my back.

  I’m not a horse! I barked.

  I jumped and bucked and leaped, but that stupid monkey didn’t let go. I had no choice but to demand help. I sat down and howled until the monkey jumped off my back and threw an arm around my neck.

  The sailors, instead of helping me, thought it was hilarious.

  Stop laughing, I howled at the crew. It’s not funny!

  Thankfully, I figured out pretty quickly that the annoying ball of fur was attached to a sort of metal leash, so I simply ran out of its range.

  I did my best to avoid the screeching thing for the next few days, staying far enough away that he couldn’t dive onto my back again. And okay, I’ll admit it—I may have used that distance to drive Mickey a little crazy. That’s what I was doing when George White came on board.

  Coxswain White joined the Grasshopper at Keppel Harbor in Singapore. He marched up the gangway to report for duty, only to have Mickey the monkey dive-bomb his head. Mickey snatched White’s sailor’s cap and jumped up and down, taunting him.

  Sailors nearby burst into laughter.

  Let’s see how you handle this, sailor.

  White was up to the test. He grabbed Mickey, snatched his cap back, and tossed that cheeky monkey onto the deck.

  That’s when White spotted me. “You’re laughing your head off, aren’t you?” he asked me.

  I am, I barked.

  From then on, White was one of my special humans.

  I had a new ship, a new special human, and Mickey would soon be put off the Grasshopper forever. Life in Singapore was going to be good—if only the war would stay far away.

  And for eighteen months it did. We shuttled between Singapore and Hong Kong, but tensions between England and the Japanese Empire continued to grow. Japan wanted the food, minerals, and oil in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Dutch East Indies, and was willing to go to war with any country standing in her way. That included England and the United States.

  At 0400 hours on December 8, 1941, World War II officially came to the Pacific. It was still December 7 across the international date line in Hawaii when Japanese warplanes dropped bombs on the United States naval base in Pearl Harbor. At the same time, bombs rained down on Singapore, the Philippines, and other islands in Southeast Asia. Japan also landed troops in Malaysia to try to push into Singapore by land. The attacks were a complete surprise.

  I barked and barked as the planes approached, and my guys ran for the antiaircraft guns, but gunboats didn’t have the speed or the gun power to put up much of a fight. We weighed anchor and pulled out to sea. England’s real battleships, the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, set sail from Jamaica to come and help, but two days later a Japanese submarine spotted them. Bombs soon rained down on them from the skies while torpedoes hit them from under the sea. In just two hours, England lost any ability to stop the Japanese in the Pacific. America’s fleet was also destroyed in the first round of attacks.

  We were at war, but how would we fight back?

  Our land forces were being overrun, and the Grasshopper, along with the Dragonfly and the Scorpion, spent days zigzagging across the sea or creeping along the coast, hoping our small size would make us hard to see and easy for Japanese bombers to ignore. We moved freely only at night, searching for enemy targets to attack or British troops to rescue. My dog ears became more and more important, letting the gunships know when warplanes were near.

  One night, British soldiers who were battling the Japanese on land got cut off from the rest of the troops. There were 1,500 men stuck in the jungle who needed to be rescued. Creeping through the jungle at night in search of them, I knew not to bark. I did nudge our leader’s arm when I sensed the Japanese were near, and we all stopped until the danger passed. I didn’t even scratch my neck, knowing that my jingling collar could give us away. We found the troops and led them out of the jungle and onto the gunships right under the Ja
panese soldiers’ noses!

  Take that, you kickers!

  Another time, though, on a similar rescue by the Grasshopper and the Dragonfly, we ran into trouble. We had found our soldiers and were nearly back to the ships when the Japanese spotted us. There was a short battle while we got the British soldiers on board, but a sailor from the Dragonfly named Les Searle was shot in the leg. He made it back to the ship and later to the hospital in Singapore. I visited him, and all the other wounded soldiers, whenever our ship’s medic made the trip.

  Get well soon, friends, I thought.

  Keeping the troops’ spirits up became a more important part of my job, especially as the war news got worse. By the end of January, most of the area was in Japanese hands. Singapore, Britain’s stronghold, was under siege and on the verge of collapse. Everywhere I looked, there was rubble. Refugees streamed toward the harbor, hoping to find a way off the island before the Japanese arrived.

  By early February 1942, the first Japanese troops entered Singapore. We were forced to evacuate the island, and the only escape was by sea. Everyone in the city—soldiers, government workers, the English, and the Chinese families who worked for them—was faced with finding a place on a ship or being made prisoner of the Japanese. Bombs fell while people crowded the pier to fight for a spot on anything that would float, from the smallest fishing boats to yachts and gunboats.

  On February 13, the Grasshopper became home to a lot of frightened mothers and children. Each person was met with a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate by my good friend George White. My job was to wag my tail, lick little fingers, and bark hello.

  Welcome to the Grasshopper, I told them. You’re safe here.

  It was after midnight before we were finally able to leave the harbor. I found a spot between two of the children and kept them calm until they were able to fall asleep. I tried to sleep myself, but my ears were listening for the sounds of Japanese warplanes so I could warn my sailors if they came near.

  The Grasshopper and the Dragonfly planned to sail at night and anchor near one of the hundreds of small volcanic islands during the day. With luck, we’d make it to Java and larger ships that could take us safely to India or Australia—far away from the Japanese war machine.

  But as I’ve already warned you, luck wasn’t on our side.

  Dawn broke and we were nowhere near land. It was just after nine o’clock when I heard it—a plane coming toward us.

  Danger! I barked, pointing in the direction of the noise. Danger!

  A Japanese flying boat, or seaplane, was suddenly overhead. It dropped a bomb over the Grasshopper, but luckily, it missed. The children hid their heads and screamed, and I watched as the seaplane turned to head for the Dragonfly. It dropped a bomb that landed close enough to cause damage.

  The seaplane disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, but its primary job wasn’t to drop bombs. It was a search plane. We knew our position had been radioed to other Japanese forces, which meant enemy ships and planes were already on their way.

  We headed for the Lingga Archipelago, a small island chain where we hoped to hide from incoming bombers. We were within two miles of land when the warplanes arrived—more than a hundred of them.

  I barked and barked—Get away from us. We have children on this ship—but there was little we could do. The attacks came every five minutes, wave after wave of bombings. Somehow we managed to avoid them all.

  The captain of the Dragonfly knew we had women and children on board, so he steered the ship away from us, hoping to bring the Japanese with him.

  Meanwhile, the Grasshopper zigzagged through the water for nearly two hours, trying to avoid the relentless bombings. We managed to escape attack after attack, but we were still a half mile from land when a bomb hit. I had just gone belowdecks to check on my men there when it happened.

  Boom!

  The bomb hit the part of the ship where most of the women and children were staying. I had been with them just seconds before.

  The skipper managed to get the Grasshopper close to shore. Lifeboats were lowered, and my men helped the civilians who were still alive board them. Once the civilians were off the ship, the order came that no captain ever wants to give:

  “Abandon ship! Abandon ship!”

  Sailors jumped into the waist-high water and tried to make their way to shore. I should have been with them. I wanted to be with them. But I was trapped beneath a pile of metal lockers that had fallen over on top of me. I had just enough room to stand, but I couldn’t move backward or forward, and there wasn’t enough room to turn around. I tried to push the lockers aside, but they were too heavy. Water rushed in. I remembered when I had fallen into the Yangtze and struggled to keep my head above water.

  You didn’t drown then, I told myself. You won’t now, either.

  Two more bombs fell nearby but didn’t hit the ship. The water level settled around me. It came up to my neck but didn’t cover my face. I could breathe. The planes started firing their machine guns, and I howled, hoping someone would hear me.

  No one did.

  I was trapped and alone.

  I have to get to my people, I thought. They need me.

  I waited and waited. Hours went by, and then I heard something. A human was walking around the wreckage. I sniffed, trying to place who it was, but all I could smell was burning oil and gasoline.

  Is it a Japanese kicker? I wondered. Or is it one of my guys?

  The noise got louder.

  I whimpered, quietly. If it was a kicker, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be found.

  The footsteps got closer, and I whimpered again.

  And then there were hands reaching for me and shoving the lockers aside. It was my friend George White, the man who had conquered Mickey the monkey. White had found me!

  As soon as I could, I shook myself dry and licked his face. He was safe, and he had found me!

  We went up on deck and White shouted to the people on the beach. “Hey, I found Judy! She’s alive!”

  There was a cheer, and I barked at them to let them know I was okay. Then White and I gathered up all the food we could find. He made a raft from loose timber and we rowed toward shore.

  I joined the survivors of the Grasshopper. There weren’t nearly enough of them. Most were hidden at the edge of the jungle on what was a small, uninhabited island. The first thing I smelled was fear. I also smelled hunger and thirst mixed with worry.

  “Did anyone find fresh water yet?” White asked the captain.

  The captain shook his head. “No water anywhere,” he said. He eyed the survivors. “We won’t last long without it.”

  I patrolled the beach, keeping an eye out for the Japanese. That’s when I smelled it—water! I pawed through the sand.

  A British Royal Marine who had come on board in Singapore noticed. “Hey, Chief, I think your dog’s found a bone or something,” he told White.

  I didn’t have time to correct him. If he had a dog’s nose, he’d know. I had found an underground spring.

  White came over to check out what I was doing. At that very moment, water bubbled up out of the wet sand. He put his fingers in the stream and licked them.

  “Water!” he yelled. “Judy’s found us fresh water!”

  He helped me dig, and soon there was a small fountain of water. White and the men caught as much as they could in pots, and everybody—including me—had a good drink. We made hot cocoa and rice for dinner.

  One of the survivors raised his cup and toasted me.

  “To Judy!”

  Everyone else did the same, and there was a chorus of “To Judy! To Judy!”

  I raised my head and wagged my tail, happy to have been able to help. Then I snuggled down between two of the civilian survivors—the two who I could sense were the most frightened and needed me the most.

  A couple of hours later, a small whaler boat ran ashore on our beach. I bounded over when I realized who had come to talk to our captain. It was Les Searle, the Dragonfly sailor I had
visited in the hospital. He was as happy to see me as I was to see him.

  He told us the story of what had happened to our sister ship after she tried to draw the Japanese away from us.

  The Dragonfly had taken a direct bomb hit, and then two more. Explosions ripped the boat apart while sailors desperately tried to launch a lifeboat and rubber life rafts. It took only minutes for the Dragonfly to sink beneath the sea.

  The water was filled with men, clinging to rafts or bits of the wreckage. The planes returned to shoot at them with machine guns. Bullets ripped across the surface of the water while men dove below to try to stay alive.

  The survivors made their way to an atoll, a small island formed from coral, not too far from the island we had washed up on. They didn’t have super senses like mine to find water, so they were in serious trouble. They also had a number of wounded men and no medical supplies. Searle and White set out to collect the Dragonfly survivors and bring them to us.

  The fire on the Grasshopper was still burning when White and Searle came back with the survivors the next morning. Ammunition left on our ship led to one small explosion after another. The sounds mixed with the moans of the wounded, and then there was one final explosion that took the whole ship.

  I stood next to White and watched the Grasshopper go up in flames. If he hadn’t found me, I would have died in that explosion.

  I licked his hand. Thank you, friend. You saved my life.

  Over the next few days, more survivors from other islands found us, and they brought news. The nearby island of Singkep held a Dutch colonial government office, and there were rumors of a rescue operation there. One of my men set sail on a small fishing craft for Singkep to find out if it was true.

  While we waited, I did my best to make sure all my humans were doing okay. We survived on coconuts and the water I had discovered. I also killed lots of snakes, but no one was desperate enough to eat them—at least not yet.

  Finally, five days after we abandoned ship, we spotted a tongkang, a small wooden cargo boat, heading toward our beach. The Dutch on Singkep had sent it to us so the survivors could be ferried off our desert island. I don’t know how many trips it took to transport us all, but I stood guard and made sure I was one of the last to leave.