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

aggression were sweeping through the streets of Shanghai and across wider China.
    Using her military might, Imperial Japan would strike a hammer blow through Shanghai and into the Chinese capital, Nanking—a name that would become synonymous with unspeakable terror and brutality. But for now such dark horrors lay far in the future, and much of the city of Shanghai and the Yangtze River remained under the stewardship of the British and Allied gunboat fleets.
    The British gunboats were of the Insect class, a name that belied their true purpose, which was to patrol the shallow seas and rivers across the more war-torn reaches of the British Empire. Built by the Lobnitz shipyard on the Clyde, the Insect class ships had initially seen active service during the First World War in what was then Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), patrolling the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
    By 1936 they were two decades old and were by no means state-of-the-art warships. But they remained relatively fast, nimble, and well armed. With their flat bottom and shallow draft, they were designed specifically to operate in rapidly flowing rivers like the Yangtze. Known colloquially as the “large China gunboats,” they boasted two Yarrow engines and boilers, each driving a separate propeller set in a shaft sunk into the hull to minimize the chance of snagging in the river shallows.
    As Shudi—Judy—settled into the blissful comfort of kennel life once again, one of those British gunboats was just completing her annual refit at the Shanghai docks. She was preparing to return to patrol duties, deterring piracy and banditry on the lower reaches of the Yangtze—covering a length of river stretching almost a thousand miles inland.
    HMS Gnat had not been a particularly happy ship of late, and much of the crew’s angst centered on two key aspects of ship’s life that were in distinctly short supply right then. The first was the ship’s stocks of beer. The China gunboats were unique in the Royal Navy in that they carried with them a stock of beer from which, when on operations, every crew member got a daily allowance. But as the captain of the Gnat , Lieutenant Commander Waldegrave, had commented in the ship’s log, there was only a few weeks’ supply of the precious brew remaining, even with strict rationing in force.
    Recently a United States Navy gunboat had docked alongside the Gnat . The officers and crew had been invited to share in the British gunboat’s hospitality—chiefly her beer—but only once a week on Saturday nights in an effort to preserve stocks. In exchange, the officers and crew of the Gnat had been invited to the thrice-weekly movie screenings held in the American ship’s cinema.
    The second problem was unique to the Gnat among the British gunboat flotilla then on the Yangtze: she lacked a ship’s mascot, which if anything was even more unthinkable than running out of beer. On her sister ships HMS Cricket, Cicada, and Ladybird and the flagship, the Bee , there were variously cats, dogs, and even a ship’s monkey. But the crew of the Gnat possessed no furry, four-legged, or even feathered friend, and so it was that the ship’s captain set his junior officers the task of finding one.
    The junior officers had in turn called upon the resources of the Gnat ’s canteen committee in an effort to decide which would be the most suitable species of bird, mammal, or reptile to grace the vessel’s deck. The nominations had flooded in, but many—Chinese soft-backed river turtles, giant pandas, and alligators included—werejudged as being somewhat impractical and inappropriate, if good for laughs.
    The canteen committee decided that any mascot for the Gnat had to possess three essential qualities. First, as the ship’s officers and crew could really do with some female company, she would have to be distinctly feminine. Second, she would have to be easy on the eyes. And third, for practical reasons she would need to be able to earn her keep. So