Dog Diaries 07 - Stubby (8 page)

I never did get around to wearing the gas mask the fellows made for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t
appreciate their thoughtfulness. It was just that I’d sooner dive into a sleeping bag than let somebody strap that doohickey on my head. Sometimes after I issued my warning, I didn’t even stick around. I’d hotfoot it off until the deadly cloud blew over. Either way, the stuff never got me again. And I like to think that the King of Battle Gases claimed far fewer soldiers with Stubby the four-legged gas alarm keeping watch.

—

It was April in the lovely land of France. But you’d never have known it to look around. Everything that had once been alive and thriving—trees, flowers, bushes, grass, birds, bugs, bunnies, squirrels—was dead or had wised up and vamoosed.

We were on the move again, trudging through the wasteland to a place called Seicheprey (SESH-eh-pray). It was a tiny town, surrounded by what
was once farmland. On one side, for as far as the eye could see, lay the woods they called Foret de Mort Homme (for-AY de more um). That’s French for
dead man’s forest.
(Cheery, eh?) Apparently, this area was supposed to be the
quiet
part of the Front. We dug our trenches, and all was quiet…for a spell.

The mail came. Nothing cheered the boys up more than mail from home. Letters from sweethearts and sisters arrived, smelling sweet as flowers. Letters from mothers came, smelling like the cakes and pies they packed for their boys. The baked stuff got a little dinged up from handling, but it tasted fine. There were other presents, too: sausages, cheeses, and lumpy, hand-knit sweaters and socks. After mail call, I made it a point to do the rounds. The boys never denied me my share of the goodies.

Then early one fine, spring morning, the enemy hit us with everything they had. They were like a big dog showing us—a little dog—we had no business on their turf. On the second day of fighting, they sent in units armed with weapons like hoses, shooting fire instead of water. The enemy moved fast, hit hard, and burned everything in their path. Then they ran back across No Man’s Land to their trenches. Our guys were fighting mad! When the bugler sounded the call, our guys swarmed over the tops of the trenches and went hard after the enemy. I was right there with them.

As soon as they saw us coming, the enemy unloosed their artillery. My ears twitched at the soft clicking sound that told me a shell was on its way. I hit the ground and buried my nose in my paws. When Conroy saw me, he shouted to the soldiers, “Artillery shell! Hit the dirt!”

Just like me, the men dived for the ground and shielded their heads. Moments later, the shell burst. The earth erupted and resettled itself. I looked up and shook the dirt out of my eyes. Then I ran around to see if anyone was hurt. But the men had picked themselves up and started running again. From that point on, the men kept one eye on the enemy and the other on me. When I dived for cover, they did likewise.

When the enemy saw us charging across No Man’s Land past the barbed wire, they swarmed out of their trenches to meet us. For the first time, my soldiers were fighting hand to hand. Everybody fought in this battle, including the cook (with his meat cleaver) and me (with my teeth).

I saw an enemy soldier sneaking up on one of my boys and gave out a sharp bark of warning. The American whipped around in time to defend
himself. Next, I came upon a German and an American soldier with locked bayonets. The German pushed the American off balance. I snarled and grabbed the German’s bootlaces and tugged, giving the American time to regain his footing. I clung to that boot like a burr. Finally, the soldier was so irritated that he turned on me. But I was too fast. I ran away before he could stab me with his bayonet.

I was staring into the thick of the battle—firing rifles, flashing bayonets, flying fists—trying
to figure out where I could lend a paw, when a grenade landed right by my leg. Before I could run clear of it—
kaboom
—it exploded.

The blast knocked me squeegee, blowing me backward.

The next thing I knew, Conroy had picked me up like a football and was running back behind our lines. I was bleeding all over. He took out his field dressing and wrapped my leg and chest in bandages. He gave me a few gentle pats, then ran back to help our boys.

My leg and chest throbbed with pain while the battle raged on. The bandage was soon soaked with blood, and I tore at it with my teeth. I needed to get to the wounds and lick them. But I was too weak to do the job. I lay back in the dirt, exhausted. As I swirled off into a deep darkness, I wondered whether this was curtains for me.

A D
ECORATED
D
OG

By the time Conroy came back, the sounds of the fighting had died down. He lifted me in gentle arms and ran through the wreckage until we got to the field hospital.

Conroy charged into the tent. “Wounded dog here!”

He laid me on a cot. Soon a familiar face loomed above. Well, what do you know? It was my old pal Dr. Burns.

“Stubby!” said Dr. Burns. “Not you again!”

I tried to work up some enthusiasm, but even wagging my stub took more strength than I had in me. I was hurting bad.

“He followed us over the top and right into battle,” Conroy said to the doc. “You should have seen him. The little man was in there fighting just like the rest of us.”

“Is that true, Stubby?” the doc said with a wide grin. “Are you a fighter? From the looks of you, I’d like to see the other guy.”

Conroy held me down while the doc took a pinching tool and removed the shrapnel buried in my leg and chest. Shrapnel are sharp little bits of metal from the exploded grenade. Each time he removed a piece, I let out a yelp.

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
That Dr. Burns sure earned his name that day!

He tossed the pieces into a can, where they made a
ping-ping-pinging
sound.

Conroy made calming noises.

“This is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you,” Dr. Burns said.

Yeah, right.

When the doc was finished, he put some stinging medicine on my wounds and wrapped me up in fresh bandages tighter than a package sent from home.

Afterward, I fell into a deep sleep and woke up with my teeth chattering. I was cold all over. Conroy was still with me.

“I think he’s got a fever,” he said. “His nose is warm. Is he going to be all right, Doc?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a vet, and I’m not really equipped to treat a dog here. We’d better get him to the Red Cross Recovery Hospital,” the doc said.

Uh-oh. The Red Cross was where they sent the soldiers who were hurt bad. They had more doctors and more medicine.

“I’m going, too,” Conroy said. “The commanding officer told me I should stick with him.”

After that, I passed out. The next time I woke up, I was lying on a cot in a strange new place. Conroy was sitting beside me.

“Hey, boy. You’re coming along okay.”

Slowly, I tried to make sense of where I was. Man, but I was stiff and sore! Around me, there were cots, every last one of them filled with a wounded soldier. All of them looked pretty banged up. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so sick. Before Conroy could stop me, I jumped off the bunk and went to work.

I trotted up and down the aisles, stopping at each cot.
Hey, howya doing, soldier?

Some of the guys were so bandaged up, you could hardly see their faces. But most managed to reach out a hand to pat me. Others were too weak to do much of anything, their skin sweaty and their breathing short. I gave these guys a good, strong swipe of my tongue. I licked whatever part of them I could reach and told them to hop to and start getting better.
I did it,
I said.
I came back from a gas attack and an exploded grenade. You can get better, too.

They kept me at the Red Cross until they were sure my wounds were healed. Every day I was there, I made my rounds. Then I would take position near the entrance, where the medics brought in the wounded. When these boys came in, scared and hurting, guess who was there to offer a friendly face and a warm lick.

Everything’s going to be all right,
I told them.
You’re safe now. The folks here know what they’re doing. Take it from me.

When I was being discharged, the doctor said to Conroy, “That dog of yours is the best medicine these men could have. Come back and visit sometime—but not on a stretcher, okay, Stubby?”

Hey, he didn’t have to tell me twice.

—

I got back to the Front just as the battle was winding down. With the worst over, I went into No
Man’s Land and helped the medics track down the wounded. By then, I knew all the ambulance drivers and medics, and they knew me.

All in all, in spite of casualties, this had been a successful campaign. We were able to drive out the enemy and recapture the village of Seicheprey.

I dared anybody then to call my boys green. The boys of the 102nd Infantry, Yankee Division, were seasoned soldiers and brave men, every last one of them.

By the end of June, we were on the move again, traveling by train to the next battlefield. The men were ragged and dirty. But with a solid victory behind them, they were feeling cocky. We got out at a station northwest of a place called Chateau-Thierry (SHA-toe teary), where we joined up with the French forces and prepared for battle. Again, the men dug trenches. Conroy’s hands had become
hard and calloused from digging. Once we were hunkered down, the American and French soldiers put their heads together and plotted. They whispered to avoid being overheard. The enemy was clever, covering their uniforms with branches to make themselves look like bushes. Then they snuck behind enemy lines and listened in.

While the men were talking, I rested. I was a little out of shape and needed all my strength.

Our plan was to launch a surprise attack on the enemy while they slept. The night before the battle, we all hit the sack early.

“I’ve got butterflies in my stomach,” Conroy said to me. “You watch yourself tomorrow, boy.”

We were up before dawn. Quietly, we ate our rations in the dark. The soldiers checked their gear and weapons. Then, at 4:45, we climbed out of the trenches and started moving toward enemy lines.
In their hobnailed trench shoes, their long coats flapping, they ran silently across the scarred and pitted ground of No Man’s Land, toward enemy territory. I ran with them.

As we came upon their trenches, we saw that, except for a few drowsy guards at the end of their watch, the soldiers were wrapped in their sleeping bags, dead to the world. Somebody on our side blew a whistle, the shrill noise piercing the dawn. The men raised their rifles and began to fire into the trenches, shouting as they bore down.

And that was just the beginning of many hard days of battle alongside the French soldiers. Moving in advance of us, the French tried to take a German-occupied hill and failed. We stalled out behind them. Finally, we pushed through and liberated the town from enemy occupation.

In the days that followed, in dribs and drabs,
the good people of Chateau-Thierry returned to find that the city was theirs once again. They were grateful to the American Expeditionary Forces. One night, torches burned, and soldiers and villagers sat around tables in the square. They pooled together what little food they had to make a feast. The ladies patted me and made goo-goo eyes. Conroy explained to them with his few French words that I was no ordinary pet.