Marion
Pellicano Ambrose
While
visiting a friend today, she told me about a TV show she had seen, which
documented the life of a very unusual dog named Stubby. After
hearing a little a bit about the show, I felt I wanted to learn the whole story
for myself. I read several articles, watched some videos and checked the web for everything I
could find. So here is the story of Stubby,
WWI Veteran and Hero!
Stubby was a stray Pit Bull Terrier who was
abandoned in New Haven, Connecticut during the time of World War I.
He was a homeless, stray living out of garbage cans. One fateful day, he
wandered on to the parade ground of the Yale University
campus. At that exact time, the 102nd Regiment, 26th
Infantry Division happened to be training to be deployed. A soldier named John
Robert Conroy, took pity on the pathetic little dog and named him “Stubby”
because of his stubby little tail. Conroy started leaving food and water for
the dog and let him sleep in the barracks on occasion. Stubby’s winning personality
and great intelligence soon endeared him to all the other soldiers. This dog
was so smart that he learned the bugle calls, learned to march in formation
with the men and believe it or not, learned to salute superior officers by
raising his forepaw to his brow.
Stubby truly became “one of the men” and
when it came time for the 102nd to ship out, Stubby was conveniently
stuffed in Conroy’s coat and smuggled onto the ship headed for France and the
War. Once at sea, Stubby was allowed on deck and the sailors also fell in love
with him. The machinists’ mate made him asset of his own dog tags.
Eventually, Conroy’s commanding officer
caught wind of the dog aboard. When confronted, Conroy gave the command:
“Present Arms!” Stubby saluted the
officer who immediately gave his blessing for Stubby to stay with the 26th,
even into battle. Stubby became the
official mascot of the American Expeditionary Force and gave support and
encouragement to each of the homesick soldiers on the front lines.
During his tour of duty, Stubby
participated in 17 battles and 4 major offensives. In 1918 he was wounded in
action and almost died, in a chemical weapons attack where the Germans launched
mustard gas. But Stubby was too tough to let a little gas get him, and because
of his experience, he became a “mustard gas detection dog”, letting the men
know there was gas before it got to a lethal level. He would warn the men to
put on their gas masks by running up and down the line, barking and nipping
until they put on their masks. His actions saved countless lives this way.
Stubby was also able to detect artillery
fire before the shells started exploding. This also saved many lives, as Stubby
could sense German ground attacks before the men. They said he could sniff
bratwurst coming from miles away and would warn the sentry by barking or even
biting him until he would sound the alarm.
Stubby spent much of his free time looking for
wounded and dying Allied soldiers to rescue. According to first-hand accounts,
this dog could hear English being spoken and he'd immediately run over and
check out the wounded man. If the wounded man was able to walk, Stubby would
lead him back to friendly lines. If the soldier was too wounded to move, Stubby
would stand there and bark until a medic arrived.
Stubby the War Dog was wounded again in
combat in April 1918, when he was hit with a German hand grenade while
participating in the assault on the German town of Schieprey. Despite receiving shrapnel wounds
to his forelimbs and chest, Stubby survived the grenade blast, lived through
some emergency surgery, and spent his convalescence time cheering up the
wounded men in the field hospital. He returned to action a few months later and
helped participate in the liberation of Chateau Thierry, a deed that impressed
the French ladies living in the city so
much that they made him a chamois blanked decorated with the flags of the
Allied countries to thank him. The men of the 102nd, for their part, made
Stubby a jacket designed to look like an American military uniform, and then
they decorated it with Stubby's name, rank, and medals – medals that included
the Purple Heart, the Republic
of France Grande War Medal,
the Medal of Verdun, and medals for every campaign in which he'd served.
But this thing wasn't done yet. While
serving in the Argonne
Forest during the
Meuse-Argonne campaign of September 1918, Stubby was patrolling the trenches
when he discovered a camouflaged German spy hiding out mapping the Allied
trenches. Stubby must have smelled the bratwurst on this man or something,
becaude he started barking and circling the soldier, the spy made a run for it but Stubby chased
and took him down. Stubby bit the spy in the rear causing him to curse
spontaneously, and in German. He held the spy down until the Americans could
take him into custody. For his bravery and diligence, Stubby was promoted to
the rank of Sergeant, which meant that the dog now outranked his owner, who was
only a Corporal at this time. Stubby became the first dog to be promoted to a
rank the army. When the Americans brought the German spy back to camp they
stripped the prisoner of his Iron Cross and pinned the German military medal on
the dog's jacket instead.
After the war, Sergeant Stubby was smuggled back to the states, where he was an
instant celebrity. He was inducted into the American Legion, offered free food
for life from the YMCA, and whenever he went out of war bonds promotion tours
five-star hotels would relax their "no dogs allowed" policy for the
canine war hero. He went to the White House twice, met three presidents, and in
1921 the American overall commander "Black Jack" Pershing personally
pinned a one-of-a-kind "Dog Hero Gold Medal" on Stubby's military
jacket.
When Robert Conroy ended up attending Georgetown University for law school after the war,
Sergeant Stubby went with him. The dog immediately became the official mascot
of the football team – and to this day the University sports mascot is still a
dog . In addition to hanging out with the players, it eventually became tradition
to bring Sergeant Stubby out on the field during Halftime of football games and
he'd pump the crowd up by running around the field pushing the ball around with
his nose. Nobody had really done anything like this before, meaning that,
Sergeant Stubby might have possibly invented the Halftime Show.
Sergeant Stubby, American war hero dog,
died in 1926, at the (approximate) age of ten. Stubby was preserved and is
displayed in his own exhibit at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History.
And that’s the story of a true American
World War I Hero – Sergeant Stubby.
After dissecting, what better thing to do than eat?We had a
feast and watched them movie “Jaws”. We all slept in sleeping bags and I
projected images of the sea with all kinds of sea life on the ceiling. We fell
asleep to the sounds of my “oceans” meditation tape. In the morning, we were up
early and the mom made us shark shaped pancakes for breakfast. Each student got
a goodie bucket of “shark bait” which included gummy sharks, a sharks tooth
necklace, a small stuffed shark bean bag toy and shark shaped cookies.
