Judy: The Unforgettable Story of the Dog Who Went to War and Became a True Hero (16 page)

After the compulsory savage beating, a new and unspeakable punishment was instituted for any prisoner who had the temerity to try anything so audacious as sabotage. It was Colonel Banno, the camp commandant, who instigated the dreaded solitary confinement cell. At Gloegoer One there was a tiny dark hovel of a hut, one that had once been used to store animal manure. The place still reeked to high heaven.

The only light or air came via the one door, which had thick wooden bars. It had a movable section at the bottom that could be slid aside to allow a prisoner to be shoved and kicked inside. On the colonel's orders any would-be saboteur would be thrown inside the hovel for a period of punishment lasting days, weeks, or even months at a time.

But it wasn't the cell itself that betrayed the colonel's full sadistic bent—it was the accompanying torture. For the long hours of daylight the prisoner wasn't allowed either to sit or to lean against the cell walls. The agony of having to stand for twelve or thirteen hours without a rest was unbearable. But if the man broke and slumped against the walls, he'd get a savage beating from the watching guards. He was allowed nothing to sleep on but the hard stone of the floor, not even a blanket with which to try to fend off the swarms of mosquitoes. And in Gloegoer, the nights were thick with clouds of such blood-sucking, disease-ridden pests.

No sentence in the cell came without starvation—most usually one sparse meal every third day. The only relief from the gnawing hunger and the ache of limbs locked into one position in an effort to remain standing was to gaze through the wooden bars. But even that brought its own kind of torture. The kitchen lay to one side of the cell, and at mealtimes the work parties would pass close by carrying the cauldrons of rice and soup en route to the barrack blocks.

The punishment cell reduced some to tears, others to sheer madness. Occasionally it moved the Japanese sentry placed on guard to pity, and he'd slip a banana or a piece of Japanese chocolate through the bars. Those who did so revealed their human side. They weren't all monsters. They were also taking a massive risk, for if a superior saw one of his men showing pity to a prisoner—especially one singled out by Colonel Banno for punishment—he would be in real trouble.

But in spite of such horrors there were still moments of lightness in Gloegoer One, at least in the early months. That July a rumor circulated around the camp that the Solomon Islands had been retaken by the Allies. The Japanese had seized the Solomons—a chain of islands lying far to the east of Sumatra—during the first half of 1942 in an effort to cut supply lines between Australia and New Zealand and the United States. The Allies had counterattacked with the landings at Guadalcanal and neighboring islands, initiating a series of savage battles fought by land, at sea and in the air.

The news that Allied counteroffensives had begun proved a massive morale booster for the Gloegoer One prisoners. They celebrated as only they could—by holding a special race in the British barrack block. The hut was around 100 yards long, and makeshift hurdles had been put up using empty kerosene cans. Judy was tasked to race up and down the length of the block, leaping the hurdles at each end, ears flapping crazily and tail streaming out behind her, as the prisoners roared and cheered. As everyone agreed, Judy of Sussex was quite the character at Gloegoer One and an incredible boost to their collective morale.

They would defend her with their lives, as Judy would on pain of death defend theirs.

Chapter Thirteen

For Judy the main struggle was to keep out of the guards' clutches while still getting her paws on enough food. In this she was to be aided by a fellow prisoner, one of the first brought into her family of friends from outside of the gunboat crews. Private Cousens of the 18th Infantry Division was one of the many British foot soldiers captured after the fall of Singapore. Cousens had fought alongside Indian and Australian forces in Malaya in an effort to halt the advancing Japanese, most notably in the Battle of Muar.

But after the mass surrender at Singapore, Cousens had ended up as a Japanese POW. Even once he'd been sent to Gloegoer One, Cousens remained a happy-spirited young man, with a cheeky grin and a ready wisecrack for his fellow prisoners. Cousens had a special skill that proved both a blessing and a curse in the camp: he was an accomplished maker and repairer of shoes. On learning this Colonel Banno had set him up as the official Gloegoer One cobbler—but not for the prisoners, of course.

After months of fighting, fleeing, trekking the jungle, and now laboring as POWs, few prisoners had any proper footwear. Instead, they'd fashioned crude wooden sandals, which were fastened to the foot by a length of rag or a scrap of wire flex or whatever else could be found. Real leather boots were the luxury of the victors, which meant for now the Japanese. The upside for Cousens was that it got him out of the more strenuous work parties. The downside was that
he was forced to have regular contact with the Japanese, which was always a hit and miss affair.

Cousens was forever having to visit the Japanese officers' quarters to measure one or another who fancied a new pair of knee-high jackboots. Cousens would take with him a large burlap sack stuffed with half-finished boots for try-ons, strips of leather, knives, hammers and nails, and all the rest of his shoemaking equipment. The visits were invariably fraught with danger. Close contact with the officers was best avoided, in particular Colonel Banno but worse still his second in command, Lieutenant Matsuoka.

An exceptionally ugly man, Lieutenant Matsuoka was better known to all as Piggyeyes. He was feared and hated by his own men as well as the prisoners. The next senior in rank was the so-called camp doctor, a man whose giant two-handled sword was so large that it seemed almost taller than he was. The Japanese guards knew their doctor to be so incompetent and careless that they would quietly consult the British or Dutch medics if ever they were ill.

Below the doctor came the camp interpreter, who on the face of it appeared rather like Colonel Banno, a kindly, almost distinguished-looking old man. But looks can be deceptive. Many thought the interpreter to be just that—a harmless, friendly sort—until the day he was spotted smashing a Dutchman's head against a concrete block wall, and for no other reason than that the prisoner was tied up in the punishment block and hence made an easy target.

The most junior officer was Takahashi, and he was the exception that proved the rule. Takahashi either was quietly pro-British or he'd realized that Imperial Japan was unlikely to win this war and was cleverly hedging his bets. He was supersmart, an archdisciplinarian, and one whom many Allied soldiers would have considered to be a good officer. He was scrupulously fair to all prisoners regardless of rank or nationality.

On one occasion, Takahashi came to the British hut late one night and passed a brown paper bag to the hut honcho—its leader. “Keep well hidden,” he whispered before leaving. The bag contained a photograph of Winston Churchill beneath which was the caption
“The man of the hour.” At other times he'd notice a prisoner turn his face skyward as an aircraft flew overhead, scrutinizing it for Allied markings. When invariably it turned out to be Japanese, he'd shake his head and remark, “Never mind. Better luck next time.”

More was the pity when Takahashi was transferred to Changi, an infamous POW camp in Singapore. With Takahashi gone, Cousens was left having to deal with the old guard, who were unrelentingly unpredictable and capable of fits of savage violence, seemingly without provocation. Yet Cousens proved himself willing to risk all in the cause of keeping Judy alive, and in doing so he exemplified a simple truth about her existence in Gloegoer. In this awful place, Judy had gone from being a ship's mascot to being the mascot of an entire community of prisoners of war. She had become the talisman of the Gloegoer One camp.

In her dogged survival and her unfailing humor and her sense of occasion, Judy embodied the spirit of the thousand-odd prisoners who inhabited this place. They had come to see her as a symbol of their resistance, and her renown had spread far and wide. As she had become Gloegoer's mascot, so in a sense the thousand prisoners had become her wider family. But Cousens, through his cobbling and his brave generosity, would enter into the first tier of her companions.

Cousens had gotten into the habit of sitting in the shade of an overhanging roof, where he could work on his shoes and boots in the open air. The Japanese provided him with the leather to do so, and like everything that was in very short supply, its use was carefully monitored. But as he cut the leather to craft a new pair of boots, he would hack off a piece especially for Judy, who was very often to be found lying at his side. It was tough and only just bordering on the palatable, but it was after all animal skin, and it never proved too unpalatable for a half-starved dog.

Over the days and weeks Cousens the cobbler grew to care about Judy deeply, especially her welfare. He knew full well that she couldn't survive on the odd scrap of tough leather. As with the rest of the prisoners, the weight was slowly dropping off her. Her flanks
showed sharp and bony through her coat, which was losing the last of its shine. What they all needed—man and dog alike—was food in bulk, and the only way to get that would be to steal it off those who had it—the Japanese.

Since he was part of Judy's core of diehard companions, it was only natural that Cousens would recruit Les Searle to be his partner in crime in his harebrained yet audacious scheme. Cousens waited until he had a large and heavy sack of boots to deliver to the camp officers, whereupon he enlisted Les Searle as his fellow sack carrier. When he explained his intentions, Les balked at what Cousens was planning. The irrepressible cobbler intended to use the boot delivery as an excuse to steal a bulk consignment of rice from right under the noses of the Japanese officers.

The two men crossed the camp compound, heavy sack held between them, with Les Searle feeling like a fly walking into a very hungry and venomous spider's web. Having delivered the boots to the officers' quarters, they now had an empty sack into which they managed to manhandle their intended loot—a sack stuffed full of rice set aside for the officers' consumption. With the booty hoisted between them, they hurried back to the British hut, fearing every moment to be discovered. As luck would have it, the theft went without a hitch. It was the aftermath that neither man had anticipated or prepared for.

The next day a pair of Japanese guards entered the British hut and announced a surprise inspection. No one doubted they were searching for a large sack of rice that had mysteriously gone missing. Les Searle and Cobbler Cousens had hidden the purloined rice rolled up in a blanket and stuffed beneath one of the sleeping platforms. But one thrust from a guard's bayonet would soon uncover the theft.

As the guards moved systematically down the length of the hut, both men felt the fear rising in their guts. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife as bit by bit the guards neared the hiding place.

Ever since meeting her, Les Searle reckoned that Judy could sense just about every human emotion there was. Fear, happiness, sorrow,
loss, dread—somehow she was able to pick up on them all. Right then, she must have sensed the utter terror that seemed to have gripped the hut or at least held two of her closest companions—the rice thieves—in its thrall. She could feel that the air was replete with mortal danger, for the guards would happily decapitate a prisoner with a savage swipe of a shovel or bayonet him to death for a far lesser misdemeanor than this.

Just as the nearest guard seemed poised to reach beneath the sleeping platform and thrust his bayonet into the forbidden bundle, Judy came tearing into the hut with something gripped between her jaws. Upon spying her, the guard closest to the hidden rice sack froze. An expression approaching fear spread across his features as Judy charged down the length of the hut, her ears flying, her eyes glowing red and crazed, and her jaws wide with the macabre object that she had grasped between them.

In her mouth was a gleaming human skull.

She tore past the guards, leaping any obstacle in her path, reached the far end, and in a rerun of the recent hut hurdling races, she turned and started back on her second lightning-fast lap. The guards began to scream crazily at the dog and yell at each other in alarm. As every prisoner knew, the Japanese guards coupled their predilection for savagery with a seemingly unreasoning fear of anything to do with death. Skeletons, bones, graves, skulls—all of it had them utterly spooked.

As Judy raced past them for a second time, skull gripped tightly in her mouth, their cries rose to ones of sheer panic. Cobbler Cousens and Les Searle were expecting at any moment to hear a shot as one or another of the guards leveled his rifle and fired upon the camp's beloved mascot. Judy must have sensed it too. With a final mad dash between the two guards, she turned and sprinted from the hut, skull still grasped firmly in her yawning jaws.

No one had a clue where Judy had gotten the skull. Presumably, she must have dug it up from the camp graveyard. But of one thing Les Searle and Cobbler Cousens were certain: she'd done what she had in the full knowledge of the grave danger two of her closest
family were in and of the impact her actions would have upon their would-be aggressors.

Few in the hut who were aware of the rice theft doubted that Judy knew what she was up to. Hers had been a mission of trickery and deception. She'd sought to trick the guards into believing she was some kind of a hellhound—a devil dog possessed by the spirits of the dead. In that she had succeeded spectacularly.

The guards were utterly spooked. Ashen-faced and babbling away to each other, their voices unusually high-pitched and squeaky with fright, they turned after Judy and hurried out of the hut. With that the impromptu inspection was over, the purloined sack of rice lying miraculously undiscovered.

As December 1942 approached and with it the dire prospect of their first Christmas as POWs, the men were to receive a morale boost as fantastic as it was unexpected. In the officers' hut they had managed to cobble together a clandestine radio. Its very existence was a closely guarded secret. Only a handful of officers were in on it, and for very good reasons. Were the radio to be discovered, the men of Gloegoer One would lose a very fragile link with the outside world, quite apart from the terrible consequences facing those who had been operating it.

News was disseminated from the radio in dribs and drabs and only as the operators saw fit so as not to raise the suspicions of the camp guards. More often than not it was released long after the event had taken place, when the officers perceived a real need to boost camp morale. Perhaps that was why in the run-up to that first Christmas in captivity the news of the heroic raid on Saint-Nazaire was made known.

Earlier that year British commandos had launched one of the first—and among the most daring and successful—cross-Channel raids on occupied France. An ancient British destroyer, HMS
Campbeltown
, was packed full of explosives and rammed into the vitally important dry dock at the French port of Saint-Nazaire. The charge was hidden inside a sarcophagus of concrete and steel secreted in
her bows, and it was fitted with delayed-action fuses. By the time it exploded, the dry dock was destroyed and the commandos had gotten ashore to sabotage the dock machinery.

Five Victoria Crosses would be awarded for the raid, in which 169 were killed and 215 were captured, mostly commandos who had fought until they were surrounded and all out of ammunition. When news of this stunning operation—which became known as the Greatest Raid of All—was circulated around Gloegoer, the men jumped to the conclusion that the long-awaited liberation of Europe had finally begun. Finally, the English lion had found her roar, and those who had for so long felt utterly defeated—including one doggedly defiant English pointer—began to hope and to believe once more.

As they headed out of Gloegoer's gates on their work parties, Les Searle and others began to take up the words of a poem written in Judy's honor. It had become like a sacred chant, embodying the spirit of those who found hope where there was precious little to find, embodied in the mascot of Gloegoer One. They would sing it as they marched to bolster flagging spirits.

In light of the Saint-Nazaire raid, the POWs started to examine the possibility of escape with newfound vigor. It had been discussed endlessly during the long months of captivity, but it had always been viewed as nearly impossible. Getting out of camp would be easy enough, but then what? A white man couldn't exactly blend in with the local population. Plus it wasn't as if this was a German POW camp in Europe, where the escapee could head for the nearest border with a neutral or friendly country.

The only escape route lay hundreds of miles across the India Ocean. An escapee would need to lay his hands on an oceangoing
vessel, and to get one he would need serious money, which few if any had anymore. But most of all he'd need the help of the locals, and they were fully in the thrall of the Japanese. Moreover, Colonel Banno, the camp commandant, had warned that anyone caught trying to escape would be tortured and then shot, as would all the men in his hut who had helped him make his getaway.