Horrie the War Dog
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The lack of a base caused Moody to be peripatetic in his search for work. Each of their three children, Leonie, Ian and Ann, was born in a different part of Victoria. Moody was never able to settle down and he developed a drinking problem brought on by his war and the pressures and consequences of defending Horrie’s life. He also had intermittent nightmares, over his war experiences, including Stuka attacks, the deaths of the girls of the Larissa convent, Horrie and the substitute dog. They never abated. He and Joan divorced in 1957.
Moody married a third time but again he was unsettled, although he held down a good job for more than 20 years as a wool-classer for Southern Farmers, working the many shearing sheds in western Victoria’s Portland and Hamilton districts. His third marriage ended in the late 1960s. In the mid-1970s he became involved with an Adelaide woman, Natalie Thompson. She was a hotelier, which suited Moody’s lifestyle.
There was one further dog ‘incident.’ He was doing some classing at a big grazier’s property in Victoria when a farmer objected forcefully to his then dog, a kelpie, being on his property. It brought back memories of incidents involving Horrie in 1941 at Ikingi with the sergeant-of-the guard, and also with the Nazi spy in the Greek village. Moody got into an altercation with the farmer. This was reported to Moody’s employer, but such was his standing as a wool-classer and admired character that his employer supported him in preference to keeping the major client. In the end the client allowed Moody back on his property with the kelpie to do further wool-classing.
Another event demonstrated the extent of his drinking, when he was picked up by Portland Police after his involvement in a car accident in 1975 at age 64. He was given a blood test. Even though he bad-mouthed the arresting policemen, they did not charge him. This was in part because of his local popularity. When Moody asked for the result of his blood alcohol level, the doctor on duty told him: ‘It’s okay, you’re fine; there was no blood in the sample.’
Brian Featherstone’s situation as the senior cop in Colac, Victoria, was just another reason that Moody would never disclose the true Horrie story publicly. All the Rebels could have been charged with perjury and several other offences for the complicity in the Horrie smuggling and subsequent cover-up. It would have ended Featherstone’s career in the police force. None of the Rebels would have been given land after the war. As it was, their reputations had led to some of them not receiving good blocks in commercial or valued locations.
Moody lived out his days with Natalie at Portland in an old tram car in the bush, and in the depth of winter in Adelaide. In typically cynical, yet fatalistic fashion, he called the tram car The Last Stop. A Rebel to the end, he ran the tram car’s electricity system on kerosene, but had trouble with local authorities for short-circuiting and blacking out the Portland region when using a double adaptor. It led to his tram car being properly wired.
Moody died in 1979, aged 68. His son Ian carried out one of his father’s last wishes that the tram car should ‘not end up on the scrap heap.’ Ian arranged for it to be donated to Portland’s Vintage Car Club where it is on permanent display.
Jim Moody’s efforts on behalf of a lost and doomed dog in a Libyan desert form an integral, if unusual part of the enduring Anzac legend of mateship and high sacrifice. No one who knew Horrie ever doubted that every risk and effort for this exceptional animal was merited. Moody’s love of dogs caused him much personal loss, but he was first to say, without equivocation, it was all worth it for Horrie, the grand dog of war.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Research for the book was undertaken in Australia, the UK, Libya, Egypt, Israel (Palestine), Greece, Crete, Syria and New Guinea. The main sources were varied and included the National Archives of Australia; the Australian War Memorial; the 2/1st Machine Gun Battalion Unit History; the 2/3 Machine Gun Battalion Unit History; 2/1 Anti-Tank History; 2/18th Brigade official history; 6th Division official history. A special thanks to the Tel Aviv based Mike Guy, a former Israeli paratrooper, for his expert guidance through his country and for his contacts throughout the Middle East. Again (as with my previous books on the Middle East: The Australian Light Horse and Bill the Bastard), advice from Susan Scollay on Syria and Lebanon was important for my research there.
Thanks also to those who granted interviews or who let me view data, photos, unpublished diaries, letters and files and other information. They included Major-General James Barry, Ed Bennetts (the son of Eddie and Gladys Bennetts), Ian Bartholemew, Gill Bozer, Betty Featherstone, Jack Grossman, Jane Hickey, Anthony Hill, Thos Hodgson, Carl Johnson, Richard Joslin, Leon Levin, George Manousakis, Tony Maylam, Ian Moody (son of Jim), Joan Moody (second wife of Jim), Leonie Moody (daughter of Jim), Aladin Rahemtula, Andrew Rule, former Ambassador to Syria, Tammam Sulaiman, Greg Thomas, Lyn Thomas, and Sarah Wells.
A special acknowledgement to publisher Sue Hines for her support over five books at publisher Allen & Unwin: Program for Puppet, Blood is a Stranger, Faces in the Rain, Bill the Bastard and Horrie the War Dog.
This book includes dramatisations and re-creations based on information from the above sources.