The note gave the 7th not only the information they needed to redirect fire but also a location for Donovan. A medical crew raced to the scene. As they were tending to the soldier’s wounds, Donovan asked, “Did my dog make it?” The men didn’t have to reply, the sound of redirected American artillery fire gave him the answer. It also meant that hundreds of other soldiers’ lives had been saved.
When Donovan arrived at headquarters, he was placed in an ambulance along with Rags. They rode to the hospital together. When told what had happened, the doctors worked on the dog along with the man and even allowed Rags to stay beside the sergeant’s cot. This accommodation would be temporary.
Donovan was in such bad shape he was assigned to a hospital ship bound for the United States. As he was loaded into the ambulance, Rags watched. When the truck pulled out, the dog followed. But when Donovan arrived at the ship, the canine was barred from entry. For the next few hours, Rags paced back and forth on the dock crying. The story might have ended there if not for the actions of a wounded colonel who spotted the dog. Knowing that he would not be allowed to carry Rags on board, but also knowing that hundreds if not thousands of lives had been saved by Donovan’s “mascot,” he picked Rags up, stuffed him under his coat, walked on board, and then hid the dog in his quarters.
There was a strict no-animal policy on the ship. After the ship was a full hour out to sea, a stray cat was found and tossed overboard. Thus, Rags had to remain hidden in order to avoid the same fate. The colonel called all those who knew the dog’s story together. Using warlike precision the soldiers worked out a schedule for staying with Rags and devised ways to smuggle him food. When the dog barked, the men did too in order to cover the sounds. The ship’s staff came to assume the yelping soldiers were playing some kind of strange game. The band of canine smugglers also bribed medics and nurses attending Donovan to allow Rags visits.
When the ship arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey, the colonel placed Rags into a duffle bag and carried him ashore. When the officer discovered Donovan was being transferred to a hospital at Fort Sheridan in Chicago, the dog was smuggled on the train with the injured communication technician. When they arrived in the Windy City, Rags followed Donovan’s ambulance from the train station to the hospital where the staff refused to allow the dog to enter.
For the next few weeks, Rags spent his daylight hours at the hospital’s front door and his nights scrounging for food. In a sense, though he was thousands of miles and a lifetime of adventures away from his first days in Paris, his life had come full cycle. He was once again homeless and unwanted.
Just before Christmas, Colonel William N. Bispham observed Rags and wondered why a dog was hanging out at a hospital. He made some calls and discovered the full story of a mutt in France who had saved hundreds of soldiers. On the off chance this might be the canine, he pulled rank and took Rags through the front door and to Donovan’s bedside. When the scrawny, hungry dog saw Donovan, his whole demeanor changed. Yipping, he jumped out of Bispham’s arms and leaped into the sick man’s bed. When Donovan’s hand found Rags’s small head, the amazed staff cried.
All across the military camp there was talk about a modern Christmas miracle. Though he had no idea as to how the dog had made his way from France to Chicago, Bispham suggested that this was an act of God and the hospital should welcome Rags’s daily visits to his master. Doctors, who felt that Donovan’s case was all but hopeless, agreed and new protocols were adopted. Bispham also found the dog a place to stay at the base fire station.
For the next few weeks, each morning Rags would leave the fire station, walk to the hospital, and stroll to Donovan’s bedside. Each evening, after the base’s retreat was played, he returned to the fire station. It was Bispham who accompanied Rags for his final visit with the dying Donovan and it was also Bispham who returned the next day to show the dog the empty bed. Somehow Rags understood what the colonel was trying to explain and never again returned to the hospital. He was now simply the firehouse dog.
A year later Major Raymond W. Hardenberg was transferred to Fort Sheridan. When his two daughters met Rags they brought him home for supper. Within weeks the one-eyed dog was a part of the family. Four years later, when the Hardenbergs were transferred to Governor’s Island, New York, Rags was reunited with many of the men the dog had known in France. The press covered the meeting and the dog’s fame quickly grew to the point that in 1926 the Long Island Kennel Club honored him for his wartime service. Two years later, as America marked the decade anniversary of the end of World War I, Rags marched with the US Army’s 1st Division down the streets of New York. As he had been doing since France, he saluted all the officers he met during that day.
When the 1st Division moved to Washington, DC, Rags went with them. During the last years of his life he remained active, appearing at veteran’s reunions and continuing to perk his ears upward whenever someone mentioned Donovan’s name. In 1936, when Rags died, most of the nation’s newspapers published the story and The New York Times included his obituary on a page normally reserved for humans.
Born into a war-stricken environment, growing up homeless and forgotten, discovered and rescued on a day when the French celebrated democracy, the mutt from a Paris alley went on to save thousands of lives before crossing an ocean and half a continent in a gesture of loyalty that will likely never be equaled by man nor dog. In the end it was the salutes of those who served with Rags that spelled out the full meaning that one tiny mutt had on thousands of hardened veterans. He defined love, honor, and service. And, in a very real way, he helped the Allies win a war.
FOUR
ADOPTION
It’s important to realize that we adopt not because we are rescuers. No. We adopt because we are rescued.
—David Platt
As Sergeant Leland Leroy “Lee” Duncan carefully made his way across the cratered French landscape the smell of sulfur filled the air. After a year of long days and nights on the often muddy and always heavily mined battlefields, Duncan could almost ignore the putrid odor. But he couldn’t dismiss the inhuman nature of this War to End All Wars. In a year, the American had seen enough cruelty and perversion to fill a lifetime of nightmares, and death had been such a frequent visitor that the old Grim Reaper no longer scared him. In fact, they were on a first-name basis.
This was not the way the battle against the Germans has been described in newspapers and at recruiting stations. The war was supposed to be an easy walk in the park for the Americans. Those who encouraged him to volunteer assured Duncan the experience would be little more than a few months camping out with friends coupled with a chance to see Paris. Yet this War to End All Wars was nothing like that. It was death, destruction, cruelty, pain, and suffering all delivered at the same time. It was sleeping in mud and dodging exploding shells. It was making a friend one day and watching him die the next. So the Great War, as the reporters called it, was not great at all. It was terrible and Duncan now believed that if he lived to see peace he would return to the States with nothing but bad memories and visions of death.
Born in Hanford, California, in 1892, Duncan had never had it easy. Deserted by his father and left with a mother who could not provide for him, he spent much of his youth in an orphanage. By the time he was twenty he’d moved to Los Angeles and landed a job at a sporting goods store. Not long after the United States entered what is now known as World War I, Duncan bought into the talk of the glamor of battle, quit his job, and enlisted. He would become one of the first Americans to land on French soil. Wounded in battle, he recovered and became a part of the 135th Air Squadron, where he was assigned to keep the machine guns in top operating condition. He also designed several modifications to the weapons, making them more effective. But on September 15, 1918, while his friends flew, he was delegated to mop-up operations on the always-dangerous French soil.
As they pulled out, an officer warned the sergeant to keep his men on guard. Though it looked clear, there might still be snipers in the are
a. He and his men had hardly had any sleep over the past few weeks and had eaten little more than slop. They were literally used up. So even as Duncan passed the word to stay focused, he wondered if it would do much good. The unit was simply too worn out to be very alert.
Moving across what had been a German airfield but was now just another plot of ground littered with bomb craters and bodies, Duncan searched the horizon for the enemy. Even though the Germans had retreated, the landscape still showed signs of war’s handiwork. Twisted metal and dead horses were on all sides. There were also hundreds of gas masks and thousands of spent shells.
Glancing to his left, Duncan saw a stand of woods. To his right was a group of burned-out buildings surrounded by busted aircraft, and beyond that was an open, flat pasture. It was clear that this had been an airbase only a few days before. It would have to be searched, so the sergeant signaled for a few of his comrades to split off and comb that area.
Scanning the uneven and scarred hillside for mines, Duncan and four of his men slowly made their way to the seemingly deserted German base. A quick examination confirmed the buildings had likely caught on fire after being shelled. The flames then spread to fuel tanks that exploded. As there were no bodies in the destroyed buildings, the base must have been deserted by the time this became the front line. With no signs of life and nothing worth salvaging, Duncan signaled for his group to move forward. Twenty steps later a cry stopped the American in his tracks. Turning his lanky frame back toward the airbase, he pricked his ears and listened. A few seconds later, he heard it again. Somewhere back there, in an area they had somehow missed, an injured man needed their help, and at this moment it didn’t matter if he was friend or foe.
Duncan doubted this was a trap, but he also didn’t think it wise to take his men with him. As the man in charge he would take the risk. If he was walking into something unexpected there was no use in having several killed for his misjudgment.
Moving forward, his rifle ready, the wary sergeant walked back onto the bombed-out base. He first stopped at the burned barracks. Seeing nothing, he moved on. He was cautiously approaching a wrecked hanger when he once more noted an almost imperceptible cry. There was something or someone not that far away. About a hundred yards from where he stood were the remnants of what looked like a crude chicken coop. A wire fence clinging to what was left of wooden fenceposts surrounded the rickety building, constructed of what appeared to be boards salvaged from a home or barn. One puff of wind would have likely blown the entire thing down.
From his vantage point he spotted no signs of human life. So logic urged Duncan to move on and rejoin his men, but the lure of mystery yanked his heart to the side harder than his mind could pull him forward. Thus, the temptation of finding out what was crying overcame his common sense.
Carefully creeping to his right, his gun locked and ready, Duncan leaned against one of the remaining walls of an aircraft hanger and stared into the makeshift shed. It was deserted. The cries must have been the creaking of rusty hinges on a partially open door.
Satisfied there was nothing to worry about, Duncan walked back toward the field only to be frozen in his tracks by another cry. He was now sure this one was coming from behind the shed.
Retracing his steps, he inched into the area, pushed part of the wire fence down with his rifle butt, and stepped into a section of dirt littered with splintered wood. Now he could hear the cries much more clearly. They seemed to be coming from under a large piece of board just to his left. The four-foot by four-foot panel was probably once a part of the decimated hanger he had looked into a few minutes before. It must have been blown to this spot by a mortar shell.
Bending at the waist, Duncan switched his gun in his right hand while using his left to pick up the nearest corner of the wood. As the sunlight illuminated the hole, he spied five squirming creatures. Covered with dirt, ash, and soot, they appeared to be large rats. As he more closely studied his discovery he realized they were actually puppies. The litter was so young their eyes were still closed. A huge smile crossed his lips: in the midst of war he had found life.
The German retreat had likely come so quickly this group of pups was forgotten. It was also possible their mother had been killed in the artillery assault and the airmen decided it was too much trouble to care for the newborns. The only thing Duncan could really be sure of was that these little ones were hungry.
Setting his gun on the ground, Duncan carefully moved the wood to the side, knelt down, and scooped up one of the pups. As it wiggled in his hand, he stroked its tiny head with his index finger.
“Where’s your mother?” Duncan whispered. As the pup yelped in reply the soldier laughed for the first time in weeks. “Yeah, you found a sucker. I’ll take care of you all right.”
A growl awakened Duncan to the fact he was not alone. Just to his right the mother was lurking, likely having returned from scavenging for food. Though she was not happy her puppies had been found, she was too weak to protest with much more than her voice. Setting the pup down, he pulled off his pack and opened a tin. After giving the hungry dog a few bites of food, he gently petted her head and assured the animal everything was going to be all right. As she happily ate, Duncan turned his attention back to the tiny animal he had recently picked up.
Though he didn’t know it then, the tiny, half-dead, German shepherd puppy would dramatically alter the remainder of Duncan’s life. Within a few years this refugee, found in the middle of a horrific battle site, would become the most famous dog in the world and would pave the way for Duncan to save thousands of other men in another war that was not yet on the horizon. But that was in the future, for the moment the soldier needed to figure out what he could do to help this mother and her offspring.
As a once-deserted and unwanted child, Duncan felt great empathy for the animals. So he picked up the pups, put them in his backpack, attached a length of rope around the mother dog’s neck, and vowed to find a local farm family to take them in. With abject poverty and hunger plaguing most of France, Duncan struck out more than twenty times. During those days his unit spoiled the adoptees. Finally, after more than a month of playing godfather, he convinced one of his commanding officers to take one of the pups, convinced a trio of enlisted men to adopt three more as company mascots, and found a place on a farm for the mother. That left him with a male and female. After a few days dodging enemy bombs that killed others in his unit, Duncan grew convinced the remaining pups were his good luck charms. He christened them—Rintintin and Nénette—popular French dolls modeled after street urchins. Considering where the puppies had been found, the names were appropriate.
In truth, there was no way that the pups should have survived the war. But for the next nine months they managed to dodge bullets, avoid artillery bombardments, and follow their adopted master across hundreds of miles of European battlefields. When Armistice Day was announced and peace finally returned to a region where eleven million military men and another seven million civilians had died, Duncan was faced with a huge problem. Military code strictly prevented all dogs, including those who had served as company mascots, from boarding troop ships back to the United States. Logic told Duncan to find homes for the almost-year-old pups, but they had become as important to him as family. They literally followed him everywhere he went and slept with their muzzles against his body. Thus, using money he had saved as bribes, he managed to smuggle the dogs on board his ship home. By the time they were discovered the ship was well out to sea. And in July 1919, the French-born, German shepherds sailed past the Statue of Liberty and into New York Harbor.
Once in the States, Duncan was assigned to a base in Hempstead, New York, where he found a local breeder who would board Rintintin and Nénette. A few days later, when Duncan got a pass and came to check on his dogs, the kennel owner shared his admiration for the way the pups were trained. Duncan explained he had been forced to teach the pups discipline in order to help them survive in war. He had also taught them tricks to entertain t
he troops who badly needed a morale boost. The breeder asked Duncan if he would like to learn more about working with dogs. The answer was an immediate yes and over the course of the next few months the sergeant was given a complete education in canine training methods. Yet also during this time tragedy hit him with the force of a bomb. Disease ravaged the kennel, spreading illness that developed into pneumonia from one dog to another. Rintintin and Nénette were among those struck. Using all his scheduled leave, a frantic Duncan hand-fed the dogs and never left their sides. For days both lingered near death, their breathing shallow and their athletic bodies losing mass. In spite of hundreds of prayers and hours of ministering, Nénette died in Duncan’s arms, but somehow Rintintin hung on. By the time Duncan’s enlistment ended, the dog had beaten the odds and fully recovered.
In late 1919, the dark sable German shepherd and the now-civilian Duncan boarded a train for California. The man went back to working in sporting goods and in his spare time taught his dog, whose name was now spelled Rin Tin Tin, to aid him while hunting. The canine’s incredible athletic ability wowed Duncan’s friends and they encouraged him to enter the German shepherd in special dog competitions that showcased canine athletic skills. It sounded like a great idea, but that first show proved a disaster. Rin Tin Tin managed to climb and clear a ten-foot wall, but he also threatened every other dog at the show. His growling and snapping at both canines and their handlers caused Duncan to leave in disgrace. To make matters worse, as the pair walked home a delivery truck lost a heavy load of newspapers that fell on top of Rin Tin Tin, breaking his right-front leg. So not only did Duncan lose the contest and have his dog’s behavior prove embarrassing, but he was stuck with a huge veterinarian bill and months spent nursing the injured pup back to health.
In the Line of Fire Page 5
