Judy: The Unforgettable Story of the Dog Who Went to War and Became a True Hero (7 page)

Similar inspections followed all over the ship as mess decks, storerooms, stores, engine rooms, galley, and all were given the once-over. Finally seeming to be satisfied, the rear admiral and his aide returned to where they had started—the ship's bridge. From there he began to order the men through every drill known to the Yangtze gunboat flotilla, plus some seemingly yet to be invented.

To the casual observer the ship would have appeared a mass of chaos, but to Captain Waldegrave this was strictly ordered chaos in action. Every man knew his place and his duties as block and tackle groaned and pulleys whirred and the ship was “dressed”—involving a “washing line” of brightly colored flags being raised from stem to stern—then the topmast lowered, the ship's generator stripped down and reassembled, and so on and so forth.

That done, the rear admiral gave the order to “land armed guard,” and the launch was manned and lowered and it motored away from the
Gnat
. No sooner had it left than he announced a “man overboard”—which left the crew in some confusion as to how they were to rescue the fictitious victim, with the launch already halfway to storming some unseen adversary ashore.

“He'll just 'ave to swim until the ruddy boat gets back!” one of the sweating seamen muttered as he ran to a new task.

In quick succession came orders to “action stations,” then “fire all guns”—with quite spectacular results—and “away kedge anchor,” the kedge anchor being a light secondary anchor used to help a ship maneuver in narrow estuaries or rivers. The
Gnat
's crew was becoming more than a little exasperated when Judy decided it was time for her to do something. As would prove to be the case many times in the future, whenever Judy sensed that her family was in distress, she'd find some means to come to their aid.

Without warning she raised her fine head to the skies above the bridge and began to bark.
Aruuf-ruuf-ruuf-ruuf-ruuf
. The barking was continuous and insistent, and the ship's crew recognized it instantly for what it was—a warning. As the barking grew to a fierce crescendo, they felt certain they were facing some kind of imminent danger—though no pirate ships were likely to attack two
British gunboats in broad daylight, and the threat appeared to be coming from the skies.

As for the rear admiral, the orders he'd been issuing had been drowned out by a madly barking dog, and he was turning a noticeable shade of puce. Just as it seemed he was about to lose control and vent his anger on Judy, the cause of her distress became clear. All of a sudden a Japanese warplane swooped out of the seemingly empty heavens and dived toward the British warships. It swooped low over the
Gnat
, flew across the
Bee
at little more than mast height, then pulled up into a steep climb and was gone.

No Japanese warplane had yet engaged a British or Allied ship on the Yangtze, but the meaning of the buzzing was all too clear. Had they wanted to, the Japanese air crew could have bombed or strafed the British gunboat pretty much at will. Japan had more or less total air superiority in the skies above China. The Chinese Air Force was pitifully ill equipped and manned, and no Allied aircraft were able to patrol this far into her territory.

Judy ceased her barking only once the Japanese plane had dwindled into an invisible speck on the horizon. Next, she did a very odd thing. She started to whirl around on the spot as if madly chasing her own tail, and once she was certain she'd completely monopolized the rear admiral's attention, she proceeded to curl up on the floor at his feet.

The rear admiral stared at her for several seconds. She was wrapped comfortably around his gleaming toe caps, seemingly sound asleep after all the barking and whirling. He glanced at the rigid face of Captain Waldegrave and raised one bristly eyebrow.

“Remarkable ship's dog you have here. Sound vibrations, presumably. That's how she did it.” A weighty pause. “But the time is coming, I fear, when we all may need a dog like this stationed on the ship's bridge.”

The rear admiral must have realized that he had nothing in his repertoire to compete with Judy's early-warning demonstration, and the Admiralty inspection was promptly declared over. The officers and crew of the
Gnat
had passed with flying colors—all of
them, including one very remarkable ship's dog seemingly gifted with a miraculous form of canine radar.

Dogs possess eighteen separate muscles with which to raise, lower, or swivel their ears, ensuring they can pin down exactly which direction a sound is coming from. In detecting that Japanese warplane, Judy had demonstrated just how effectively those muscle-driven ears can be used to track distant sounds. But Judy's ability to detect that aircraft—and the threat it embodied—went far deeper than purely physical attributes.

Somehow, Judy had also sensed that this thunderous noise in the sky equated to danger, and since she'd yet to suffer any air attacks, there was no obvious reason for her to do so. As with the pirate ships, she seemed able to sense
danger itself
—and it was that which had so impressed itself upon the rear admiral . . . not to mention all of her fellow crewmates.

A few days after she'd passed her Admiralty inspection the
Gnat
steamed into Hankow harbor, with no more pirates, or Japanese warplanes—or even cess ships!—having menaced her onward passage up the Yangtze. Here she joined the many other British, American, French, and Japanese gunboats floating at their moorings, plus the odd Italian and German ship that also patrolled these waters.

At Hankow the captain's orders were simple. He was to show a presence and fly the flag, looking efficient and warlike to deter any trouble in this vitally important riverside city. Over the eight decades that the Yangtze had been patrolled by the foreign powers, Hankow had grown into the key treaty port and gunboat hub, largely because of its strategic location in the center of the navigable stretch of the great river. As a result, the city offered all the luxuries lacking aboard a ship like the
Gnat
.

The officers' mess on an Insect class boat was fairly well appointed for a vessel her size. The
Gnat
even had a wardroom, set in the forward part of the hull, squeezed between the captain's quarters and the oil fuel tanks. The wardroom was designed to resemble a miniature version of an English gentleman's club, complete with
comfortable armchairs draped in pristine cloth, yellowing copies of
The Times
newspaper on side tables, and white-coated Chinese stewards poised to top up the pink gins when required.

But in spite of such onboard comforts, Hankow promised the officers and men of the
Gnat
an exceptionally good time ashore. Hankow resembled a classic European city of the time in terms of its grand colonial-style architecture, its layout, and its atmosphere. The fashionable Hankow Club offered excellent dining and drinking, cabaret, bridge parties, and tennis, plus good hunting in the surrounding bush. Hankow even boasted a race club, one that resembled Royal Ascot as much as ever it could here in deepest darkest China.

The Hankow Bund—the riverside harbor area where the
Gnat
was tied up—was designed to appear like a waterside promenade at any fashionable European port city. It was dominated by the Chinese customs house clock tower and the splendid white colonnades of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. The ground floor of the bank had been converted into a wet bar and clubroom, complete with billiard table and English-speaking Chinese bar boys.

Once a fortnight the wet room would host a navy opera, to which the assorted Royal Navy crews would invite the public for a sing-along, one that was lubricated by copious quantities of a local beer called EWO Pilsner. Produced by the EWO brewery in Shanghai, the beer seemed to give off a peculiar smell of onions, and it was unusually potent.

The wet room had been nicknamed the Strong Toppers Club after the powerful onion-scented beer quaffed in there. New members could gain access to the club only after an exacting initiation ritual. The newbie had to stand before a panel of three while undergoing the Yangtze River variation of the popular drinking game Cardinal Puff.

Holding his beer in his left hand, he'd announce a toast “to the health of Cardinal Puff,” strike the table once with his right hand, stamp both feet, tap the glass on the table, then drain his beer. The sequence had to be repeated with a fresh beer, only now he had to
drink to the health of “Cardinal Puff Puff” and repeat all the actions two times over. A third successful rendition—only now doing all actions three times over—and he was duly admitted to the club. But any mistake—reciting the lines wrong, getting the actions wrong, or drinking with the wrong hand—would be met with noisy jeers and jibes from the crowd. The unfortunate initiate would have failed, and he'd have to start all over again.

During the long voyage upriver Judy had grown somewhat partial to her beer. As she was by now a fully fledged member of the ship's crew—she had even had the de rigueur christening in the Yangtze—her presence was required at such convivial evenings. Hence Tankey Cooper put together his own version of the Strong Toppers Club initiation ritual especially for her. Before the assembled throng Judy had to bark once, twice, then three times in succession, each outburst of yelping punctuated by a noisy bout of lapping from someone's glass.

That completed, Judy of Sussex was declared in. She was now free to wander regally from face to familiar face, here and there taking a nibble from a handful of peanuts and a lap from a glass of onion-scented beer. Such riotous evenings ended in the traditional rendition of the Yangtze Anthem, to which Judy proved able to provide a remarkably soulful accompaniment as she threw back her head and howled along to the verses.

The Strong Toppers Club was largely a male environment, and Judy was one of the few ladies permitted access. And in her own peculiar way, she seemed to understand what this signified in terms of her acceptance into the bosom of the all-male family that was the crew of the
Gnat
. She'd come a long way from that lonely back alleyway behind Soo's shop on the tough streets of Shanghai, and in
singing along with the ship's company in the Strong Toppers Club, Judy had truly found her tribe.

Chief Petty Officer Jefferey, by now Judy's closest companion, believed their ship's dog was developing a “human brain,” or at least a means with which to view the world of the Yangtze River gunboats pretty much as the sailors did. She appeared to understand every word spoken to her and read every gesture and expression and seemed to have adapted to the nuances of gunboat life as easily as any human crew member had before her.

Early one morning Jefferey took Judy for a walk in the grounds of a smart Hankow hotel, a favorite with visiting Europeans. Man and dog strolled for a mile or so along the approach road, with dense jungle stretching away to their left. All of a sudden Judy darted off into the bush. Jefferey presumed she'd scented some game animal—most likely a deer, for he'd spotted their tracks already that morning.

Moments later he heard a yelp of alarm from somewhere within the bush. He knew instantly that it was Judy. He called her, and shortly she shot forth from the undergrowth. But she was clearly very alarmed, for she was trembling from head to toe. Jefferey had never seen her acting like this before, not even after her near-death experience in the Yangtze. He called the dog to him, but instead she bounded ahead on the road, making toward the hotel and forcing him to hurry after.

As he rushed along some sixth sense made him glance over his shoulder. There in the fringes of the bush was a large forest leopard. The thought flashed through his mind instantly—
so that's what spooked Judy
. It was only when he reached the safety of the hotel that Jefferey allowed himself to imagine another scenario—that Judy had picked up the big cat's scent and gone into the forest deliberately to distract its attention, for the leopard had in fact been stalking him!

Jefferey would never know for sure which it was. But one thing was certain—whenever she sensed that her extended family was in danger, Judy was proving herself willing to risk all to protect them.

Unperturbed by his close encounter with the leopard, Chief Petty Officer Jefferey decided to make full use of their Hankow stopover to put Judy through her paces as a supposed gundog. By now she was approaching eight months old, and she'd grown into a fine-looking animal—muscular, sleek and fit, with a glistening coat, and always ready to run around.

In fact, Hankow had offered her many a chance to hone her fitness, for the various crews were forever holding intership football, rugby, or hockey matches. With both football and rugby the ball proved a little too large for Judy to master, but she had become an absolute demon at hockey. She'd grab the ball in her mouth and streak for whichever goal was the nearest, paying little heed to whichever side she was supposedly playing for. This made for an utterly impartial player, though not one who could be counted upon to boost the
Gnat
's score line.

With serious gundog business in mind, CPO Jefferey organized a dawn hunting expedition. After an early breakfast aboard ship the crew—consisting of Jefferey and Tankey Cooper plus four other keen hunters—set off, with Judy taking up the proud lead. Beyond Hankow in the open bush there was an abundance of king quail—a game bird in the same family as the pheasant—and that was what the hunting party was after.

At the first sign of the distinctive birds taking to the air—a flash of iridescent blue plumage above bright orange feet—the guns roared. As quail were hit and tumbled from the sky Judy looked on impassively, making no move either to point or to fetch. The men took turns using the guns while others acted as retrievers to gather up the fallen birds, and still Judy didn't seem to take the hint or make any moves to join them.