Thursday 16 May 2013

gallant dogs in war

I recently read in The Age newspaper about the painting by Peter Wegner that won this year's Gallipoli Art Prize. It portrays a dog wearing a gas mask. The report says:
Wegner's Dog With Gas Mask recalls the era when dogs were fitted with specially fitted gas masks and sent to search for wounded soldiers on the battlefields of World War I.

The article mentioned a dog called Judy who was held as a prisoner of war by the Japanese after she helped rescue the crew of HMS Grasshopper, sunk in World War II.

That seemed like an amazing story, so I looked around for more information. Amazing sure is the word for the exploits of Judy the pure-bred liver-and-white English pointer.

I was fascinated to find a copy of a magazine from 1975 with an article about Judy. I loved this magazine when I was young! It was called Look and Learn.

Judy is buried in Tanganyika.

5 comments:

curator said...

What a fascinating story! I can't wait to look into this.

proud womon said...

oh thank you for sharing parlance... what an amazing 'tail' - what an amazing dog - what an amazing friendship!! judy was indeed a hero...

parlance said...

curator, I will be interested to know whether you conclude that the story was partly propaganda. I suspect it might have been exaggerated in order to lift morale after such a terrible war.

parlance said...

proud womon, I thought it was indeed a wonderful story of courage on the dog's part, and loyalty on the human's part, but it made me sad about the way we humans bring other species into our wars.

proud womon said...

yes parlance... individual stories show us amazing courage, but other species have no choice in their use, and are often left to die once they are no longer needed - or they can no longer 'perform'...