|
|
"Smokey," the famous World War II Yorkie of U.S. Army Corporal Bill Wynne hangs out in the helmet that also served as her bathtub on a battlefield in New Guinea. Smokey was a decorated hero and servicemen voted her their top pick to be "Mascot of the South Pacific." |
Smokey, the most famous of Yorkie war dogs (yes, there have been others!) was found in a foxhole near Nabxab on New Guinea in Feb. 1944. At first, her rescuers thought she must belong to the Japanese and took her to a nearby prisoner-of-war camp. But it turned out she didn't understand commands in either Japanese or English. The year-old Yorkie soon ended up as the mess mate of Corporal Bill Wynne of Cleveland, Ohio. She was seven inches tall and weighed four pounds. Smokey lived through 150 air raids on New Guinea and was a crew member on 12 air-sea rescues. She became a hero in her own right when she helped build a crucial airfield for Allied war planes.
Bill Wynne, himself, told this story when he appeared on NBC-TV after the war: (An officer of the Communications Section came up and said) `Bill, we have a long pipe to run a wire through under the airstrip. It's eight inches high and seventy feet long and we are stumped as to how to get the wire through. The wire simply has to go through and we wondered if Smokey could do it?'...(when we got to the airfield) I knelt and looked through the pipes and saw that soil had sifted through each of the corrugated sections at the joinings, and in some places the pipe was half filled...in some places, Smokey would have only four inches of headway. I tied a string (tied to the wire) to Smokey's collar and ran to the other end of the culvert...(Smokey) made a few steps in and then ran back. `Come, Smokey,' I said sharply, and she started through again. When she was about 10 feet in, the string caught up and she looked over her shoulder as much as to say `what's holding us up there?' The string loosened from the snag and she came on again. By now the dust was rising from the shuffle of her paws as she crawled through the dirt and mold and I could no longer see her. I called and pleaded, not knowing for certain whether she was coming or not. At last, about 20 feet away, I saw two little amber eyes and heard a faint whimpering sound...at 15 feet away, she broke into a run. We were so happy at Smokey's success that we patted and praised her for a full five minutes.''
Smokey slept on a blanket made from a green felt card table cover in Bill's tent and shared his C-rations and an occasional can of Spam. She lived a long life after the war, traveling all over the world with Wynne and giving demonstrations of her remarkable skills, which included walking a tightrope -- blindfolded!
