Sergeant Stubby

by Ann Bausum

  Published by the National Geographic Society

  1145 17th Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

  Copyright © 2014 Ann Bausum. All rights reserved. Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without written permission from the publisher is prohibited.

  ISBN: 978-1-4262-1310-6

  eBook ISBN 978-1-4262-1311-3

  Founded in 1888, the National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations. With a mission to inspire people to care about the planet, the member-supported Society offers a community for members to get closer to explorers, connect with other members and help make a difference. The Society reaches more than 500 million people worldwide each month through National Geographic and other magazines; National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; films; books; DVDs; radio; maps; exhibitions; live events; school publishing programs; interactive media; and merchandise. National Geographic has funded more than 10,000 scientific research, conservation and exploration projects and supports an education program promoting geographic literacy. For more information, visit www.nationalgeographic.com.

  National Geographic Society

  1145 17th Street N.W.

  Washington, D.C. 20036-4688 U.S.A.

  For rights or permissions inquiries, please contact National Geographic Books Subsidiary Rights: ngbookrights@ngs.org

  Interior design: Katie Olsen

  v3.1

  For the generations—

  My parents, Dolores and Henry

  My sons, Jake and Sam

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword : A Soldier’s Best Friend

  Introduction

  PART ONE: Two Recruits

  April 20, 1918

  Chapter One—A Dog’s Best Friend

  Chapter Two—Over There

  Chapter Three—Somewhere in France

  Chapter Four—In and Out of the Trenches

  Chapter Five—Summer Campaigns

  PART TWO: War and Peace

  August 6, 1918

  Chapter Six—The Home Front

  Chapter Seven—Follies and Fireworks

  Chapter Eight—Armistice

  PART THREE: Homecoming

  May 1, 1919

  Chapter Nine—Stateside

  Chapter Ten—Touchdown!

  Chapter Eleven—At Ease, Sergeant Stubby

  Afterword

  Research Notes and Acknowledgments

  Appendix

  Time Line

  Bibliography

  Illustrations Credits

  Reading Guide

  FOREWORD

  A SOLDIER’S BEST FRIEND

  I AM A FIFTH-GENERATION U.S. MILITARY COMBAT VETERAN from Saint Simons Island, Georgia. Military service is in my blood—my father served as a United States Army ranger, his father before him served in the Navy during World War II as a patrol torpedo “PT” boat commander in the South Pacific, my great-grandfather served as an infantryman in the Army during World War I (alongside Stubby), and my great-great-great-great-grandfather served in the Revolutionary War. My service is part family lineage, part innate desire to serve my country.

  Today, I am 34 years old and married to my magnificent and beautiful wife, Jenny (also a U.S. Military veteran), and a father to my amazing two-year-old son, Dax. I’m also the proud owner of my dog, Cheyenne. Cheyenne was a gift from God and one of the most important reasons I am still here today.

  My military service began in 1999, when I served for six years in the United States Air Force Security Forces. During my service I endured several incidents that, at the time, I thought wouldn’t affect my personal relationships with family, friends, and colleagues. A short time after arriving in Saudi Arabia in November 2001 for my first deployment in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, I encountered a Taliban sympathizer in a one-to-one confrontation. His weapon was pointed directly in my face during an Entry Control Point Check. At that very moment, I felt paralyzed—as if the world around me froze in time and all I could think about was surviving the next minute, getting out of that shack and back to my hometown. I had never had a weapon pointed at me, yet alone directly in my face, and all I could do was freeze. Then I remembered my father telling me to remain calm and breathe.

  I remember signaling to the man that I was going to lay down my weapon. I took off the combat sling placed diagonally across my chest and threw my weapon at the guard, causing him to drop his gun to avoid being hit in the face by my weapon. It was then that I tackled him. His five-foot-four-inch frame was no match for me at six foot six. While graciously providing him with a few “love taps” of my elbow, I subdued him with a pair of plastic handcuffs while I waited for my leadership to arrive.

  A second incident occurred three years later while I was on patrol in an undisclosed location within Pakistan. I noticed what appeared to be two suicide bombers directly outside the perimeter of the base, and they seemed determined to cross the razor wire barrier with a ladder. One of the men was pointing at the food tent area while wearing a belt of explosives strapped to his chest. Not willing to allow these two men to succeed with a suicide bombing attack against us, my team and I quickly foiled their plan of killing or injuring American troops.

  This time I felt angry as I tried to reconcile why American troops were in a region where our presence was not wanted. Even the foreign military partners we worked alongside expressed their desire for us to be gone. “We want all of you to go home now,” they would say. I can see now that a lot of my anger stemmed from this situation.

  Upon returning from my first deployment to Saudi Arabia in March 2002, I began to act violently toward my family, friends, and even myself. I found myself waking up in the middle of the night with cold sweats, and I would randomly break down, crying uncontrollably, and blame and question myself on how or why I had handled the life-threatening situations I had found myself in overseas. Eight years later I would come to understand that these were all symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, which I was eventually diagnosed with. However, my life would get much worse before it would improve.

  It was around this time that I adopted a young pit bull mix from a rescue in Hampton Roads, Virginia. I named her Cheyenne and I hoped having her would add some purpose to my life. One afternoon in 2002, I finally hit rock bottom on the bedroom floor of my apartment. I sat, legs folded, ready to finish the fight with the demons that had followed me back from the war zone and had been a constant torment: the sudden rages, the punched walls, the profanities tossed at anyone who tried to help me. There was nothing in my room other than dirty military uniforms, some empty bottles of alcohol, and a crushing despair. I took a deep breath. I shut my eyes and tightly closed my lips around the cool steel of my .45 caliber pistol—the same pistol my father bestowed upon me after my completion of military technical training, the pistol my father was issued for his 1966 training in the U.S. Army’s Ranger School. And then something licked my ear. I looked around and locked eyes with Cheyenne. With her head cocked to one side she looked at me as only a dog can, with her big brown eyes full of devotion, as if to say, “What are you doing? Who’s going to take care of me? Who else is going to let me sleep in your bed?”

  For a long minute, I stared into the puzzled face of my six-month-old pit bull. And then slowly, reluctantly, I backed the barrel of my .45 caliber pistol out of my mouth. There is no doubt about it, I owe Cheyenne my life.

  Immediately I felt so relieved, like a 10,000-pound weight had been lifted off my chest. Soon after, my family and friends noticed a significant change in my behavior—a reduced number of outbursts, a better attitude, and no
more attempts at my life—all because of this little pit bull puppy. Cheyenne’s heroics were her unconditional love and devotion to me, a devotion and love that most pet owners can attest to. Devotion that Stubby had his entire life for his best friend and for the soldiers he went to war with. It’s interesting that a torn-eared puppy from a shabby animal rescue saved me. Not my father, or my grandfather, or my friend who endured the same scars of combat while serving alongside me. Cheyenne was the force who pulled me back into society. I couldn’t talk to anybody—not my father, not the counselors—but I could talk to my dog, and she never judged me. Eight years later, my father said to me, “You’re a different person now. All that stuff was taking over your life, son. That dog just listened to you for hours.” Until Cheyenne, I had suffered in silence.

  In January 2010, with the help of a friend, I walked into the Washington, D.C., Veterans Affairs Hospital for the first time to seek additional help in my life. The process to diagnose my PTSD and depression was a very frustrating and time-intensive gauntlet; however, it was worth it. There was some fear about speaking to a person about my military service for the first time, and I was somewhat apprehensive. But Cheyenne helped me become an extrovert, and so telling another person, or persons, proved to not be as difficult as I thought it would be.

  When man and dog can stare death in the face, like Cheyenne and I did, like Stubby and the soldiers of World War I did, and forge on with their lives and their duty to their country, that is the true testament to the bond we share with these animals.

  One year later, I married Jenny Fritcher, an Air Force staff sergeant stationed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. My wife is now months away from graduating with a bachelor’s degree in nursing, and she will soon reenter the U.S. military as a nurse, to help take care of our troops. She has inspired me to pursue my dream of becoming a physician’s assistant so that I may also aid my fellow soldiers in tackling the mental anguish that stems from their military service.

  As much as my formal counseling helped me, I know that all the credit for my mental well-being goes to Cheyenne. With her unconditional love I became a resilient and productive member of society.

  The story you will discover on the following pages about a stray dog named Stubby shows the true humanity of war and the bond that can be borne between a dog and a soldier, even in the most horrific of conditions. Ann Bausum has uncovered the seemingly forgotten story of Stubby and brought to life the engrossing details of devotion and courage that Stubby showed throughout his life to his fellow soldiers.

  With the support Cheyenne provided me as inspiration, I set out on a mission in 2009, with only $2,500 in my savings account, to create the nonprofit organization Companions For Heroes. Companions For Heroes pairs active-duty military, veterans, and emergency first responders dealing with the stress of their service with shelter animals as part of their healing process. My hope was that others would find solace, comfort, and strength in a shelter animal of their choosing, like I found in Cheyenne. In fact, a July 2011 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology revealed that pet owners had greater self-esteem, had greater levels of exercise and physical fitness, and tended to be less lonely than non-owners. These are exactly the qualities needed by veterans with mental health disorders, and my goal for Companions For Heroes is to aid veterans in their recovery while at the same time saving our nation’s shelter animals. As Stubby provided strength and comfort to the soldiers of World War I, I believe Cheyenne and all the animals that have been adopted through Companions For Heroes, in some small fraction, are carrying on Stubby’s legacy.

  —David E. Sharpe

  Disabled Combat Veteran, U.S. Air Force Security Forces

  Founder and Chairman, Companions For Heroes

  www.companionsforheroes.org

  INTRODUCTION

  THIS MUCH I KNEW FOR SURE: THERE WAS A WAR. THERE was a soldier. And there was a dog.

  I discovered the dog by accident in late 2009. He wandered into my world in much the same way he had wandered into the history of World War I—randomly, unplanned, unanticipated, and with wonderful consequences. I was researching a photo caption for a book about that war, and I needed some instant information about one of the dogs pictured in a political cartoon, a so-called American bull terrier. To my surprise, an Internet search started turning up random sites about a dog named Sergeant Stubby. The animal’s story seemed so incredible that at first I did not believe it could be true.

  The sites claimed that the dog had contributed heroically to the outcome of World War I, a war so horrendously destructive that it had claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Americans in a matter of months, and yet somehow Stubby had survived. How could one dog have been so capable, endured such dreadful combat, and gained such fame? And yet those were Stubby’s claims: Veteran of 17 battles, captured a German spy, shook hands with President Woodrow Wilson, et cetera, et cetera. Seriously? Surely someone had made him up. And then I clicked on a link from the Smithsonian. And there he was. Catalog Number 58280M, lifelike and ready for action. Lifelike and ready to befriend someone new.

  In the years since our initial acquaintance, Sergeant Stubby, the character I first encountered, has become just plain old Stubby to me, shorn of the military rank that has been bestowed on him in recent years by his fans and the power of the Internet in the age of (mis)information. In his lifetime, and for generations afterward, the dog didn’t need a rank to be adored, and he doesn’t for me, either.

  Full disclosure: I am not a dog person. All of the dogs from my childhood met tragic ends. Pooh the cocker spaniel: hit by a car. Benet the Chihuahua: disappeared. Checkers the Dalmatian: hit by the mail truck. Checkers II, another Dalmatian: put to sleep as the result of illness. By the time I’d reached adulthood, I’d grown to dislike dogs. They slobbered a lot, made family members sneeze, and chased my outdoor cats. With the exception of Pooh, I’d never truly bonded with a dog, so the idea of writing a book about one was beyond improbable.

  Then I met Stubby.

  One thing I’ve learned after 15 years of writing nonfiction is that I don’t choose my topics so much as they choose me. It’s the ideas that I can’t get out of my head that end up on my computer screen. Stubby grabbed hold of me in the way good stories do: with a smile, coming to mind unexpectedly, and showing up with growing frequency. Doggedly, one could say. Stubby wandered into my head with the endearing persistence of a pet anticipating the arrival of the dinner hour. “Are you ready yet?” he seemed to ask each time. “Is it my turn?” Until finally it was his turn and I was ready to dive into his story.

  I knew it would be a challenge. The trail of Stubby’s past had long since grown cold. He was famous for his role in World War I, for goodness’ sake, and the entire trail of World War I seemed to have gone cold. How could I expect to learn about one dog out of thousands who had befriended one soldier out of millions in a fight that had occurred an ocean away, a fight that had largely been erased from the national conscience of the fighters’ home country?

  As his fame grew, Stubby learned how to pose for photographers. In 1924 he paused for pictures on the White House lawn following a visit with President Calvin Coolidge.

  However, having become captivated by Stubby’s story, I stepped willingly into my sleuthing shoes and headed into the fifth dimension of the past. My travels took me to Washington, D.C., for work at the Smithsonian and Georgetown University. They drew me to the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, Missouri; the cities and countryside of Connecticut; the campus of Yale University; and the archives of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I dipped my face into the Internet “pensieve” of archived news clippings, and cherished war medals, and maps of battlefield landmarks. The deeper I dug, the more leads I found, until by chance and good fortune I discovered living descendants of Stubby’s best friend and caregiver—J. Robert Conroy—and answers to questions that had otherwise eluded capture in the historical record.

 
As I began to research the life of Stubby, I rather thought my arm’s length personal view of dogs might add objectivity to my work, but I would be dishonest to maintain this claim. Instead my subject charmed me just as he had charmed the soldiers of World War I, the news writers of the day, and every U.S. President of his lifetime. Halfway through my research I found myself checking books out of the library that were totally unrelated to my project. How to choose a dog, profiles for different breeds of dogs, how to care for a dog, and so on. For no rational reason, I, the dog hater, began to think about acquiring a dog.

  That is the power of Stubby.

  One of the many visits I made while under Stubby’s spell was to the storage areas of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. I wanted to see a jacket that Stubby had worn, and a curator kindly indulged me. This garment is stored in a flat box with a protective sunken center. I’d seen it on Stubby’s back in countless photos. Now it looked oddly unrelated, all flattened and sterile. And yet, even after all these years, the jacket gives off faint smells—some sort of custom blending of leather, and dog, and Army, and history.

  Follow your noses, readers, and turn the pages of this book. Meet this dog. He was just a stray dog, a brave stray adopted by an American soldier. A dog who went on to become the most famous dog of the Great War, the War to End All Wars, World War I. A brave dog. A loyal dog. A lovable dog.

  Here is his story.

  PART ONE

  TWO RECRUITS

  During World War I, J. Robert Conroy served in the Headquarters Company for the 102nd Infantry Regiment of the Yankee Division, shown here, stateside, in 1917. His canine friend Stubby became the regiment’s mascot and served alongside the troops in France.

  April 20, 1918