Judy: The Unforgettable Story of the Dog Who Went to War and Became a True Hero Read Free Page B

commences with a tiny bundle of curiosity that ran away from home and ended up serving as the mascot of the doughty Royal Navy gunboat the Gnat . It follows Judy and her fellows’ extraordinary adventures over the years—from the Yangtze River to the Sumatran hell railway and everything in between.
    People often say that truth is stranger than fiction. Undoubtedly, Judy of Sussex’s story is one that anyone would find distinctly challenging to make up.
    It is certainly one that I feel privileged to have been able to tell.
    Damien Lewis,
    Cork, Ireland, December 2013

Chapter One
    The tiny puppy wiggled her nose a little farther under the wire.
    Blessed with a gundog’s excellent peripheral vision, she was keeping one eye on those to her rear—her fellow siblings, plus the kennel staff, who would little appreciate yet another escape attempt. Ahead of her, just a breath away, lay the outside world—the teeming hustle and bustle of life that lay all around but that she and her fellow pups were seemingly forever forbidden from experiencing.
    It was all just so tantalizingly close.
    The English-run Shanghai Dog Kennels had bred the beautiful liver-and-white English pointer puppies to serve as gundogs for various English gentlemen then resident in Shanghai. But this one pup, it seemed, had other ideas. The kennels were like an island of calm amid the sea of chaos that was 1936 Shanghai—chaos to which the puppy poised halfway under the wire felt irresistibly drawn.
    Before her very nose rickshaws—ancient-looking wooden carts pulled by human bearers—tore back and forth as they weaved through the dusty streets, carrying the better-off Shanghai residents trussed up in formal-looking top hats and dress coats. Those rickety carriages fought for space with streetcars and buses, chugging their ponderous way past roadside stalls selling freshly fried and spiced delicacies. And everywhere bright red cloth banners hung from the shopfronts, advertising their wares in exotic-looking Mandarin and Wu calligraphy.
    Why it was only she of her siblings who felt this insatiable urge to see, to smell, and to taste the wider world— to escape —she didn’t know. But ever since birth, curiosity had seemed to get the better of this still nameless puppy. And now here she was, glistening nose thrust under the wire and twitching at the bewitching smells that assaulted it, round and chubby backside still within the safe confines of the kennel, but with only a few more wriggles and a final squeeze required to break free.
    Doubtless, one voice inside the pup’s head was telling her: Don’t do it! But another, equally strident voice was urging— Go for it, girl! In that moment of indecision as she peered beneath the wire the little puppy heard a yell of alarm from behind. She’d been spotted! It was the cry of Lee Ming, the local Chinese girl whose mother lived and worked at the kennels, raising the alarm. Lee Ming was quick and nimble and would be on her like a flash unless she got a move on.
    Tiny forepaws thrashed and scrabbled at the dirt as she fought to squeeze her way under the wire. The wrinkly folds of puppy fat rolled and gave beneath her as she got her belly down even lower and wriggled like a fat fish stuck on an angler’s hook. The bare stub of a tail, sticking out behind her like a long and rigid finger, twitched to and fro as she strove with all her might to break free.
    Behind her Lee Ming came to a sudden halt and reached to grab the disobedient puppy, but as she did so the tiny ball of irrepressible energy gave one last Herculean effort and she was through. An instant and a scamper later and— poof! —the diminutive four-legged figure was gone, paws flying as she was swallowed up into the noise and dust and utter disorder of downtown Shanghai.
    For a horrible moment Lee Ming stared after the puppy that had disappeared, in complete dismay. There were so many dangers stalking those city streets that she didn’t have the