Sergeant Stubby

by Ann Bausum

  First comes the rain. One of those cold, penetrating showers that falls in early spring, unhurried and endless. Hour after hour the men of the 102nd hunker down in the rising mud of the Sibille trench, trying to sleep through another night of war. Sentries strain to hear hints of warning, having lost the use of their eyes to a shroud of fog.

  Then the shelling commences. At 3 a.m. the Germans begin to lob relentless rounds at the American troops near Seicheprey. The figure of Death extends a fistful of options. Obliterated by an artillery shell. Drained of life force after being cut to pieces by shrapnel. Subdued by clouds of poisonous gas.

  Or await the waves of German troops that approach at dawn in a foggy curtain of mist and smoke.

  The bombardment has already thinned the ranks of C and D companies by the time the enemy arrives. Waves of German shock troops wash over the trench battlement, eager to rout the American reinforcements who have come to help defend the rain-soaked soil of France. Dreadfully outnumbered, the Yankee boys of the 102nd still fight back.

  Hand-to-hand combat lasts for one hour, two hours, longer, until none remain standing to hold the line.

  One trench down.

  The Germans advance toward Seicheprey and the next line of defenses, still outnumbering those detailed for protection.

  More men. More men. The Allies need more men.

  So, as German gunners adjust their lines of shelling, every able-bodied soul heads forward from the rear. All hands called to arms.

  Infantrymen. Officers. Messengers. More.

  Forms head toward the action, clutching bayonet-tipped rifles.

  Fresh troops.

  Fresh troops. Groups of men. Individual men. One man.

  And a dog.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A DOG’S BEST FRIEND

  IN THE BEGINNING, SOMEONE CARED ENOUGH ABOUT THE dog to cut off his tail.

  The brindle-patterned pup probably owed at least some of his parentage to the evolving family of Boston terriers, a breed so new that even its name was in flux. Boston round heads. American bull terriers. Boston bull terriers. Regardless of name, a truncated tail became a trademark of the breed, and one way that early enthusiasts achieved that look was to dock, or cut off, the bulk of it soon after birth. Thus, the fact that the dog had passed through human hands at some point early in his life was evident by his lack of a tail. What came next was as much a mystery in 1917 as it is today. By the time the stump-tailed terrier of uncertain breeding had found his way to the athletic fields of Yale University, he was nameless, tailless, and homeless.

  His arrival at Yale coincided with America’s entry into World War I, a confluence of circumstances that propelled the dog onto the path of history. On April 6, 1917, the U.S. Congress declared war on Germany, entering a three-year-old conflict that would become known as the Great War and the War to End All Wars, before earning the designation of World War I. The next month, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation that required all able-bodied men aged 21 to 30 to register for possible military service. In the months that followed, Connecticut’s volunteers and draftees wound up in New Haven, where Yale University had opened its athletic fields for use as a training ground.

  Everything seemed to be in transition—the nation, the war, the expanding American Army, even the campuses of its colleges and universities—and it became easy to throw a stray dog into the mix. Some say the dog with a stub of a tail already lived around Yale’s athletic stadium before the troops began arriving in July 1917. If he didn’t, it wouldn’t have taken him long to figure out that he should. It took a lot of food to feed a camp full of active men, and that meant a lot of cooking went on, day after day. And that meant a stray dog could enjoy an endless supply of bones, and scraps, and scrounging.

  Although the dog the soldiers nicknamed “Stubby” was not the only stray who lived off the leavings of the men’s meals, he does seem to have been among the most likable, and probably he was exceptionally clever. He was a handsome enough dog—muscular, wiry, solid—standing not quite two feet tall on all fours, measuring a bit more than two feet long from snout to stubby tail. His coat was a sandy brown color, streaked with waves of darker fur. White patches highlighted his chest and face, emphasizing his dark nose and eyes. White fur capped his front feet, too, and it lightly frosted his back paws.

  The dog was just old enough for his age to be unclear. Bigger than a puppy, too active for an old dog, he might have been a year or two years of age in 1917. Before long the mysterious stray had become a spunky pal for the service members, an animal who could be counted on to visit camp tents, add his steps to military training exercises, and memorize the locations of the mess kitchens.

  Soon Stubby had picked out his favorite soldier in the crowd: James Robert Conroy. The 25-year-old volunteer from New Britain, Connecticut, was a man of modest height with brown eyes, a thick head of dark hair, and a winning smile. A few sparse facts constitute his recorded background. His mother, Alice C. McAvay, had been born in Pennsylvania to Irish immigrants before her family moved to New Britain. His father, James P. Conroy, a native of that city, had tried his hand at the family grocery business and as the owner of a saloon before becoming a local bookkeeper in the 1890s.

  The pair married about 1887, and they settled into a modest home on Beaver Street. During the span of 11 years, they had six children. James Joseph, the third child and the first son, was born on February 27, 1892. (By the time he enlisted in the military the young man had, for unrecorded reasons, renamed himself James Robert, shortened to J. Robert and, among friends, Bob.) Another son, Hugh, followed four years later, and the youngest siblings, twin girls, were born in 1898 when the eldest boy was six. A year later, their father died. Nearby relatives, including several of Alice’s brothers and her widowed mother, appear to have helped her raise her family. After her own mother died, Alice moved her offspring into their grandmother’s larger house on High Street, and the family remained there while the children grew up.

  James Robert Conroy attended local public schools and graduated from high school in 1910. Three years later, when he was 21, his mother died. Conroy stayed on in the family home, helping his elder sisters support and raise the three youngest children. After high school, he found work with Russell & Erwin Manufacturing Company, a local firm known for its well-crafted builders’ hardware, especially door locks and hinges. Conroy quickly graduated from the factory floor to a series of appointments that sent him to Pittsburgh (as a sales representative), to New York City (where he worked in the company’s contracts department), and to Springfield, Massachusetts (for more sales work).

  The first known photo of Stubby with Robert Conroy: Already the dog is part of the family. Conroy (standing, center) is joined by two of his sisters in this group shot taken during the summer of 1917 at the regimental training ground on the athletic fields of Yale University.

  The war drew Conroy away from his established career post. On Monday, May 21, 1917, he enlisted in the Connecticut National Guard, just three days after President Wilson’s call for the start of registration. Plenty of young men waited for the June registration deadline and the lottery that would determine whether or not they would be called up for duty, but not Conroy. He had already served in the state’s guard once before, for about a year starting in April 1913, soon after the death of his mother. This time Conroy volunteered to serve the organization as a mounted scout. His National Guard outfit was soon renamed the 102nd Infantry Regiment, and its men trained together in New Haven prior to shipping out for Europe.

  Stubby continued to roam the grassy grid of Camp Yale “streets,” visiting other friends and feeding posts, but he took a special liking to Conroy, and Conroy clearly took a shine to him. In the following months, the pair bonded until they became almost inseparable. Looking after an agreeable dog suited Conroy’s nature. Hanging around a kind human suited Stubby’s. The fact that there was a war to prepare for certainly meant nothing to the dog, and even Conroy and his fellow train
ees could barely imagine what they were preparing to encounter.

  The nature of warfare had changed by the time of the Great War, resulting in odd juxtapositions of old and new ways of fighting. Clouds of poisonous chlorine gas commingled with the familiar smoke and smell of gunpowder. Silent submarines sneaked up on coal-fired steamships. Machine-gunners fired on meagerly protected adversaries, clad only in fabric uniforms. Soldiers maneuvered tanks onto battlefields shared by cavalry officers on horseback. Pilots flew airplanes over war zones that were crisscrossed by messenger pigeons. Train engines hauled enormous railway guns into positions while horses, mules, and other draft animals strained to deliver artillery pieces to gun batteries.

  This mismatch of equipment and strategy led to the invention of a new way of fighting. Soldiers dug trenches and bunkers so they could hide belowground away from the artillery and machine-gun ire. They created miles and miles of trenches, in fact. Trenches that spanned lengthy stretches of the disputed European borders. Trenches that became, by default, borders of their own. The “No Man’s Land” between the opposing sides offered the likelihood of death to many who entered it.

  Battlefront survivors struggled to cope with the facial disfiguring, physical disabilities, and emotional trauma that resulted from that era’s modern-style warfare. It would take another half century to coin the phrase post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but the veterans of World War I suffered from that condition, too. They called it, simply, shell shock, and they did not begin to understand how insidious it was, or how long-lasting it could be.

  Before the Americans arrived, France, Britain, and other Allied countries had already dedicated hundreds of thousands of their ablest young men in futile contests along the trench-lined battle zone. By 1917, their best hope for turning the tide of war became the promise of fresh troops from the United States.

  For reasons about as obscure as Stubby’s origins, Conroy and the other U.S. infantrymen of World War I became known as doughboys. Maybe it’s because the American foot soldiers ate a lot of doughnuts, or perhaps they made more “dough” than their European allies. Some suggest the name arose during a 1916 U.S. military campaign into Mexico. It is said that American cavalry troops stirred up so much dust while they pursued the invading Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa that the accompanying foot soldiers became coated in the local adobe-colored soil; the cavalry nicknamed their dirty compatriots adobe-boys, or simply “doughboys.” One way or the other, by 1917 the name had stuck to American infantrymen as persistently as a coat of swirling dust.

  Fighter planes debuted for military service during World War I, but soldiers continued to employ an older technology, too—aerial observation balloons. These craft were generally tethered while they hovered over battlefields. Observers radioed such details as the location of trench lines and gun batteries to ground forces.

  During the summer of 1917, Stubby charmed Conroy and the other doughboys stationed in New Haven, Connecticut. He was by all accounts a wonderful dog, cheerful, faithful, friendly, lovable. He formed an intense loyalty to men in uniform, at least men wearing a U.S. military uniform.

  While the soldiers trained, Stubby studied the scene. He learned the meanings of the various bugle calls that set the pace of the day, from reveille to taps, with mess call becoming a personal favorite. The dog became used to the rhythms of the regimental marching band during its daily practices, and he learned how to follow along with soldiers as they paraded in formation on the athletic fields of Yale University. In short, Stubby learned how to be a perfectly good soldier, albeit, one with four legs.

  Most notable of all his training, perhaps, was Stubby’s signature trick: He could salute. Conroy probably gets credit for teaching the dog this mandatory military gesture of greeting and respect. Stubby could perform the maneuver on command or in response to another soldier’s delivery of the trademark hand wave. To salute, Stubby would sit down, rear up on his back legs, raise his right paw to the right side of his face, and gaze seriously at his counterpart until his gesture of respect had been answered. Hearts melted, and members of Conroy’s unit soon regarded the talented dog as their mascot.

  In some ways, Stubby’s training was more complete than that of his doughboy companions. The U.S. Army struggled as it sought to swell its ranks from thousands of men to more than four million. In particular the soldiers lacked training in the use of military weapons, because, in many cases, no weapons were available for them to train with. As factories (including Conroy’s former employer) retooled and rushed to catch up with demand, foot soldiers made do, using out-of-date rifles left over from the Spanish-American War of 1898, or even wooden props. Meanwhile, artillery and machine-gunners imagined themselves loading and firing their weapons by practicing with sawhorses and sticks.

  The men balanced the lack of military fire power by practicing the rudiments of warfare. They dug trenches, built barriers out of barbed wire, and lunged with bayonets at dummies. Plus, as with any war, there was endless physical conditioning. The doughboys counted out jumping jacks, pushups, and other calisthenics. Day in and day out, they marched in parade drills or strapped on heavy backpacks and trudged to nowhere and back.

  Week after week, Stubby hiked alongside the troops by day, visited the soldiers in their tents at night, and rose to the next dawn’s call of reveille, punctuating the routine with regular trips to the camp kitchens. And so things might have continued forever, as far as Stubby was concerned, except for one huge problem, totally unknowable within the live-in-the-moment world of a dog: There was a war to fight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  OVER THERE

  ON JUNE 28, 1914, A YOUNG SERBIAN RADICAL UNCORKED simmering nationalistic tensions in Europe by assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This act set off a chain reaction of brinksmanship and bluster that escalated into combat, thus triggering the tangled web of international alliances that drew other countries into the conflict that became the Great War.

  Fighting began in early August as Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia and as Germany overran most of Belgium and parts of France. In short order, the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, joined later on by the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria, had squared off against the Allied Powers of France, Great Britain, Russia, and, later, Italy, among others.

  Americans spent the next three years avoiding the war that was raging in Europe. In 1914, as soon as the fighting had erupted, President Woodrow Wilson had proclaimed United States–neutrality in the conflict. The war had its roots in Europe, he reasoned, along with many Americans, and so it was up to the European nations to resolve it. By 1916, Wilson had even earned a second term of office under the campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war!”

  The President had another reason to avoid the war, too: the nation’s diversity. In 1910, a third of the United States’ residents were immigrants or the children of immigrants. Most of these people, and many of the country’s established citizens, could trace their origins to the nations of Europe. The country that could claim the most offspring in America was none other than Germany itself. “We definitely have to be neutral,” Wilson had concluded after the war broke out. “Otherwise our mixed populations would wage war on each other.” He returned to this theme in his Second Inaugural Address. “We are of the blood of all the nations that are at war,” he said on March 4, 1917, with the idea still serving as a compelling reason to remain detached from the conflict.

  Germany tested Wilson’s resolve repeatedly during his first administration, most notably with the sinking of a series of American and Allied ships. Submarines debuted as a lethal addition to sea power during the First World War, and Germany had one of the world’s largest fleets of underwater craft. The rules of engagement for submarine power had yet to be created, so Germans tested the limits by attacking war ships (clearly fair game), supply ships (a plausible target), and the passenger ships of Allied nations (a controversial notion).

  In 1915, Robert Con
roy’s employer transferred him from Pittsburgh to New York City. On May 7 of that same year, the sinking of a British ocean liner named the Lusitania drew widespread condemnation, in part because of the shocking destruction achieved by a single German torpedo. Unlike its sister ship the Titanic, which had languished above the waves for more than two hours after colliding with an iceberg in 1912, the Lusitania sank in only 18 terror-filled minutes. Nearly two-thirds of its occupants perished, including all of the infants on board and most of the children. The dead included 128 Americans.

  Horror seized the public’s imagination in a manner akin to the reaction that followed the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The sinking of the Lusitania, too, was seen as an act of terror, and many voices called for revenge, including that of former President Theodore Roosevelt. Others, such as Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, himself a three-time presidential candidate, counseled restraint. Wilson split the difference and called on the Germans to stop all aggression against non-military vessels. The “or else” implied in that directive prompted Bryan, a pacifist, to resign from office. He feared that Germany would never cede its naval rights to an outside power and that the United States would have to back up Wilson’s words with force.

  At first, though, Wilson’s ultimatum worked. The almost universal condemnation of the Lusitania’s sinking, including harsh criticism of Kaiser Wilhelm II himself, prompted the German ruler to order greater restraint in the use of submarine power. No commercial vessels were to be targeted, he insisted. This ban lasted, with rare exception, for nearly two years.

  By early 1917, though, as Conroy settled into his duties in Massachusetts, the fighting in Europe had reached a stalemate. The battle lines were literally entrenched, and the Allies owed their survival in part to the armaments and supplies that they purchased from the United States (creating an awkward commercial bounty for a nation that still claimed neutrality in the European conflict).