Sergeant Stubby

by Ann Bausum

  When Brig. Gen. Frank Bamford, the division’s new commander, was asked on November 11 if his men could serve as part of the occupation army in Germany, he indicated that, as one reporter put it, “the division was in no condition to go on.” Frank P. Sibley, that embedded correspondent from the Boston Globe, described the postwar soldiers thusly: “They were unshaven, red-eyed from days and days without sleep, hoarse so that some could not speak above a whisper. They were unbelievably caked in mud. They stank.” Six hundred at a time, the men took turns traveling to Verdun for 12-hour leaves. There they were “rested up, fed, bathed, given fresh clothing from top to toe,” and returned “clean and shaved,” and much restored.

  On November 14, the Sixth Division arrived to relieve the YD of its latest role on the front, peacekeeping. The men of the 26th bid the trenches farewell and headed away from the front lines toward reserve camps. There they and other soldiers would remain at the ready as a reminder of the forces at hand should treaty negotiations lag and the cease-fire not hold. If all went according to plan, though, doughboys would start queuing up to return home.

  The Yankee Division’s journey would be a slow one, and, for most of the men, it began literally one step at a time. Shouldering their 60-pound packs, the soldiers hiked more than 100 miles from the war zone toward their next home, the community of Montigny-le-Roi. Their route through the French countryside traced the upstream course of the Meuse River, a tributary of the Seine that had been an almost ever present landmark during their service. They walked south, past Verdun, past St. Mihiel, past lands that adjoined the Toul region and Seicheprey, where Stubby had been wounded months before.

  Tremendous relief, as well as considerable jubilation, followed the cease-fire of the Great War on November 11, 1918. Post-Armistice, this Belgian work dog made the rounds pulling a cart loaded with bottles of beer.

  For something like eight days they trekked onward, even traveling through Neufchâteau, site of their previous winter’s camp, before reaching their intended destination. This time the rolling kitchens kept up, and the weather gave the travelers a break—cold, but little rain. Every footfall put each man one step closer to home. More than likely, Robert Conroy and Stubby hiked right along with everyone else. Artillery units and other special forces proceeded at a different pace. Battery crews, for example, had to deliver their guns to railroad stations and turn in their weary draft animals.

  General Bamford’s leadership of the Yankee Division lasted not even a month. Maj. Gen. Harry C. Hale, a friend and West Point classmate of General Edwards, took over his old friend’s command on November 18. The troops had never warmed to Bamford; Hale they served more willingly, although he never eclipsed the standing in their minds of “Daddy” Edwards.

  As they settled into billets in the area around Montigny-le-Roi, the doughboys of the 26th Division began to encounter something they hadn’t seen in ages: bed sheets. In recent months the men had camped in tents, settled into ditches, made improvised bunks out of hay and evergreen branches, slept in mud puddles, and even occupied old German dugouts, encountering not only the familiar body lice but previously unseen red biting fleas. Their camping days over, Stubby and Conroy shared space with others from their regimental headquarters company, sleeping indoors for what could have been the first time in weeks.

  These new and improved postwar quarters began filling up with familiar faces, including wounded service members who had been reassigned after their recoveries to random outfits for the duration of the war. Now these men were allowed to return to their original units, the ones that had most felt like home. Prisoners of war materialized, too. Many of these soldiers had missed almost all of the division’s service, having been captured early on during the April raids at Seicheprey. These men had lived out the war in their own version of hell, particularly early on when the Germans felt certain of victory. After the war’s tide turned in July, their conditions began to improve; perhaps, as one soldier suggested, their captors “realized that they would have to account for all they did.” Even so, plenty of former prisoners required hospital care before they could rejoin their units.

  On Christmas Day, President Woodrow Wilson himself paid the division a visit. Not only did he meet many of the men during his daylong stay; he met the division’s number one mascot, too. Details of the encounter went unrecorded, but Stubby and Conroy would have crossed paths with the President at least once during the day’s series of events. First off, representatives from the 102nd Infantry Regiment were on hand to greet the chief executive when he and his wife arrived at the train station of the nearby city of Chaumont.

  Next, General Pershing and other dignitaries accompanied the presidential party by car to a field north of Langres so that he could review representatives of the troops, including members of the 102nd Infantry. Although the winter of 1919 was generally milder than the previous year’s had been, its Christmas Day proved to be notably cold and dreary for northern France. Nonetheless, thousands of locals and soldiers were on hand to greet Wilson at the improvised parade ground.

  The review of the troops took place on a sodden field in front of a modest, temporary viewing stand that sported patriotic bunting. General Pershing opened the event with words of greeting, and then the President, who was known for his oratorical skills, made a brief speech. He concluded his laudatory remarks by saying:

  I feel a comradeship with you today which is delightful. As I look down upon these undisturbed fields and think of the terrible scenes through which you have gone, and realize how the quiet of peace, the tranquility of settled hopes, has descended upon us, while it is hard to be far from home, I can bid you a Merry Christmas, and I can, I think, confidently promise you a Happy New Year, and I can from the bottom of my heart say, God bless you.

  The field Wilson surveyed may have been undisturbed by war, but it had taken its share of punishment from the weather. As various military bands played appropriate marching music, the assembled troops slogged through well-churned mud to parade past the reviewing stand. A small press corps documented the event on still and moving film.

  Another crowd of citizens and soldiers greeted the President in Montigny-le-Roi, along with the band of the 102nd Regiment. The musicians played the American national anthem as the President and Mrs. Wilson prepared to join a group of officers for their midday Christmas meal. (Earlier plans to include rank-and-file doughboys had given way to a party for the higher-ups instead.) Guests feasted on traditional fare, including roasted chicken, roasted turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes and other vegetables, bread and butter, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pies with coffee.

  Army staffers had created an elaborate souvenir program booklet, bound by a red, blue, and white–spangled ribbon, to commemorate the occasion. Its color-illustrated pages not only displayed the day’s menu, they also outlined the history of the division’s military service. The art on the back cover conveyed the New Year’s hope of all the troops: It pictured an ocean liner steaming across the Atlantic toward the western setting sun. After the meal, as his entourage made its way back to the train station, Wilson stopped to inspect several billets of members of the 102nd Regiment. Somewhere in the course of all these events and travels, the President not only met Stubby but, according to several reports, shook his paw.

  While the Americans waited for their New Year’s homecoming wish to come true, their dress uniforms began to hang heavy with medals. Some soldiers had distinguished themselves in battle and received commendations from the French military, even the signature Croix de Guerre decoration. But all combat veterans who had helped to liberate specific cities qualified for the various municipal medals awarded by grateful residents. Verdun. Château-Thierry. St. Mihiel. Conroy and fellow YD doughboys qualified for them all. Conroy and others also earned commemorative medals from the nation of France and from Marshal Foch, commander of French forces.

  Medals hung from white ribbons and from red ribbons trimmed with blue and white pinstripes. They accompani
ed gold and red–patterned ribbons and ribbons decorated with red and white peppermint-style stripes. Eventually all American combat soldiers received a victory medal from the United States government, too. This one hung from a rainbow-colored ribbon. Metal clasps adorned the ribbon to denote key battles from the individual’s service. Conroy had participated in five noted battles, so his ribbon bore five battle clasps: Defensive Sector, Champagne-Marne, Aisne-Marne, St. Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne.

  All these awards prompted Conroy to confront this question: What should he do with them? Circumstantial evidence supports only one answer: He gave them to Stubby. Sometime during the war, consciously or unconsciously, Conroy had begun cultivating the persona of a war hero for his four-legged friend. He may have figured there was no better way to recognize his distinctive companion than to let him share in the war’s rewards. Today Stubby’s jacket is arrayed with a full complement of military medals and other souvenirs. No comparable booty was passed down to Conroy’s descendants; there is only the one surviving cache of medals between the two wartime friends. Such an act of generosity would be in keeping with Conroy’s self-effacing character, and it reinforces the assertion that Stubby really did help Conroy survive the war.

  Robert Conroy and Stubby posed for a formal military portrait in France after the war ended. Eventually Stubby’s uniform would hang heavy with their shared medals.

  This theory about the absence of a duplicate set of medals calls into question one of the central threads of Stubby lore: that he personally had earned all that recognition. In truth, with a few exceptions—such as the German Iron Cross and the Joanne d’Arc medallion presented while the pair was stationed near Neufchâteau—Stubby probably had not. Early on, the people around them likely understood this distinction. As the dog’s fame began to grow, this technicality faded in importance. When his medal-heavy jacket drew more and more comment, Conroy would have had no reason to parse the details with news reporters and other admirers. To him, Stubby really had helped earn those medals, so there was no duplicity in letting his friend quite literally bear the rewards. Thus, over time, implications—such as Stubby having been personally decorated by the French government—grew into “facts.”

  Stubby’s U.S. military insignia are a different matter, though. From the beginning, the mascot’s jacket sported YD patches on its “shoulders.” After the war his coat gained a wound stripe and three gold service chevrons, too. (Each of the fabric chevrons represented six months of overseas service.) These badges were sewn onto the “sleeve” area of the jacket, in keeping with Army protocol—the right sleeve for the wound stripe and the left sleeve for the service chevrons. Conroy’s uniform would have displayed all these required trimmings, too, so he would have had to acquire a special set for his friend to keep the dog’s jacket up to date and official.

  It’s easy to imagine that Conroy, especially as a member of the regimental headquarters company, would have had no difficulty obtaining such emblems. Undoubtedly he would have known the staffers who issued these honors, and these coworkers would have known the division’s mascot. Fans of Stubby—and clearly these were legion—would have felt no compunction about dispensing the official decorative accoutrements for the likable dog.

  That Stubby was becoming famous seems hard to dispute. Newspaper articles from the postwar era claim he had become a recognizable figure wherever he traveled in France, stopped on the streets by citizens and Allied soldiers alike. He was intimately acquainted with members of the 102nd Infantry Regiment and, because of Conroy’s workplace mobility, had traveled widely throughout the 26th Division. Many accounts refer to him as the division’s mascot; some even characterize him as the mascot for the entire American Expeditionary Forces. When Conroy started his scrapbook for his friend, he matter-of-factly had the album’s leather-bound cover embossed with gold letters: “STUBBY A.E.F. MASCOT.”

  Stubby wasn’t the only mascot to have made it through the war. Fanny the goat was alive and kicking, or at least butting, over in Company K. Philly, the stray pup adopted by the 315th Infantry Regiment, had survived, reportedly giving birth to four puppies along the way. Rags was even more raggedy by war’s end, having lost part of an ear and the sight in one eye from a Meuse-Argonne gas attack that, unfortunately, led to the death of his adoptive soldier from the First Division. Cher Ami, although technically not a mascot, had become famous after delivering that last-hope message from the Lost Battalion. The pigeon survived the war but was minus most of one leg due to wounds received during its noteworthy flight.

  Such fame helped these animals survive the peace, too. Other combat creatures were not so fortunate, even those that made it to Armistice Day. Most of the draft animals were sold, butchered, or destroyed, worn out by constant warfare. The vast majority of carrier pigeons were sold as well, although one postwar account claims that 500 of the most distinguished American birds were brought back to the United States and liberated in the riverfront parks of Washington, D.C. The Allied corps of service dogs was presumed too traumatized by combat for repatriation; thousands were euthanized.

  In early 1919, the Yankee Division moved another step closer to home when the troops transferred from Montigny-le-Roi to an area near Le Mans, southwest of Paris. This time they didn’t have to walk there, but the trip in 40 & 8 boxcars was so lengthy (more than three straight days of rail riding) and the accommodations so unpleasant (crowded together in unheated cars with no hot food and monotonous cold rations) that the soldiers might have reminisced about fall hikes through blackberry-rich countryside. Upon arriving, the troops moved into billets around the small town of Ecommoy, site of the division headquarters.

  The soldiers settled into a military routine that was designed to keep them from becoming too restless while they awaited their chance to ship out for home. Military drills took a playful twist as the various units trained for intradivision competitions in war-themed athletic contests, everything from gas mask races to tent-pitching contests, from bayonet drills to five-mile marches. They even hiked footballs down chains of hands, competed against one another in inspection drills, and faced off in soup wagon races. They engaged in traditional athletic events as well, from tug-of-war to American football, from soccer to boxing. Such activities helped the weeks of waiting pass by.

  But, even better, were the furloughs.

  The troops took turns, 600 men at a time, dispersing on these two-week leaves. Conroy and Stubby missed the finale of the three-day military tournament. Instead, on March 13, they set off on their last furlough tour of France. They didn’t get very far. Soon after reaching Paris, Conroy became ill with the flu. He scrambled to figure out how to take care of Stubby even as he sought care for himself at a Red Cross hospital.

  Conroy, who wrote up a dog-witness account of Stubby’s life, notes that “Stubby had to plead his case” with the hospital staffers. Even when unwell, Conroy must have done a good job articulating the dog’s sentiments. He reports in his narrative: “On learning Stubby’s history the doctors went into a huddle and decided that Stubby could bunk alongside the soldier’s cot in a tent on the hospital grounds. Stubby had no difficulty winning the friendship of everyone at the hospital. In fact, they wanted Stubby and the soldier to remain indefinitely.”

  That was all very well, but Conroy wanted to see the Mediterranean. As his companion “tells” it, “When Stubby let them know he had already used 8 days of a 14-day furlough and that he just had to see Monte Carlo, they agreed to release him provided he took good care of the convalescing soldier he was with.” Even if Conroy’s timing is off in the story (it would have been hard to travel in that era from Paris to the south of France and back in six days), it is clear that, yet again, his furry pal had won over another batch of fans.

  Free (and healthy) at last, the pair headed south. The souvenirs that Conroy later pasted into Stubby’s scrapbook give hints of their travels. They luxuriated in the dining cars of passenger trains. No 40 & 8s on this trip! They toured the seaside town
of Villefranche-sur-Mer and saw the sites of Monte Carlo. If they entered any casinos, Stubby must not have placed any bets, for there are no souvenir receipts from any transactions. An uncaptioned photo in Stubby’s scrapbook shows him swimming with Conroy in a large body of water. Could the image be from the south of France? Perhaps the pair sampled the warm waters of the Mediterranean, too, as part of their vacation? Any such fun came to an end in time for them to return to their quarters south of Le Mans on March 27.

  Multiple ships carried members of the Yankee Division home, just as they had done when the troops headed for France. These members of the 102nd Field Artillery board the Mongolia in Brest, bound for America.

  After the two had reunited with their YD friends, Conroy would have had to rush to repack their belongings. By March 31, they were on board the Agamemnon, bound for Boston. This time Conroy did not have to smuggle Stubby onto the ship, at least not exactly. As Conroy later wrote in his Stubby-narrated tale, “Although a number of Generals agreed that Stubby should be permitted to return to the U.S.A. they could not issue an order to that effect. They did suggest that Stubby might board the ship early with baggage. That was all Stubby needed.”

  Stubby and Conroy set sail from Brest with their entire 102nd Infantry Regiment. Somehow even Fanny the goat had made it on board. Together, men and mascots steamed west toward that setting sun and home.