Sergeant Stubby

by Ann Bausum

  PART THREE

  HOMECOMING

  The Agamemnon delivered Robert Conroy and Stubby safely back to the United States, arriving in Boston on April 7, 1919.

  May 1, 1919

  Patrons line up to take seats at Poll’s Bijoux Theatre, even for the weekday matinee. Voices buzz toward concentration as the lights dim. Newfangled entertainment shares the stage with vaudeville at its prime.

  Singing. Dancing. Barrels of laughs.

  Plus the frames speed past in Mary Pickford’s new silent photoplay, Capt. Kidd, Jr. Buried treasure. A protective grandfather. A winsome heroine. A hopeful suitor hanging on tenterhooks with the audience until the film draws near its end. Love requited at last.

  Stage lights illuminate Walker and Texas as they rope trick and dance their way across the boards. Ryan and Healey coax laughs from the crowd with humor and song. Visiting veterans from France, billed as Le Poilu, add their chansons to the program. More tunes. It’s Nora Norrine, “the singing comedienne …”

  More, more, the audience wants more. And so, added to the bill is a stump-tailed war hero, Stubby. The war dog who saw it all.

  Imagine the scene.

  Conroy, wearing his uniform, takes to the stage accompanied by his medal-bedecked companion. “An aggressive bull terrier,” warned the promotion. This dog is unrestrained. Is he safe? Is he trained?

  No doubt about it. Stubby goes through his moves. He can parade on command, turn left, look right, stop as directed. Conroy speaks for the dog. His words form a story that hangs heroically over the crowd. Smuggled to France. Off to the front. Survived four offensive campaigns. Wounded. Gassed. Captured a German, single-muzzledly. Decorated and feted. Here on parade.

  Does the dog exhibit his signature trick? Undoubtedly. Salute, signals Conroy. Down goes the rear end. Up rises the head, the chest, the right paw. Higher and higher it goes until it brushes the right eye with great solemnity.

  Applause. Surely there is applause.

  Applause and cheers. A few tears for the soldiers who did not make it home.

  A wave of patriotic pride.

  What a war. What an act. What a show.

  What a dog!

  CHAPTER NINE

  STATESIDE

  FINALLY, AFTER ALL THOSE MONTHS OF HESITANT PROGRESS, something happened quickly. The Agamemnon crossed the Atlantic more than three times as fast as the ship that Robert Conroy and Stubby had taken to Europe. One week the doughboys bid goodbye to the shores of France; the next they were sailing into Boston Harbor. The boat arrived on a dreary afternoon, Monday, April 7, 1919, emerging from fog to find an enthusiastic crowd of well-wishers. Family members and friends waved flags. Banners shouted slogans of greeting to loved ones. Arriving soldiers, eager to see the scene, lined three tiers of deck railings, stood in the ship’s suspended lifeboats, hung from rigging, and even climbed the ladders on its smokestacks.

  Governors of three states showed up to welcome back the region’s own. The dignitary who stirred the Yankee men most, though, was the one who had been pulled from their midst during the darkest days of the Meuse-Argonne campaign: Maj. Gen. Clarence R. Edwards. Lusty yells commingled with hearty cheers of “Daddy, Daddy!” as word spread among the soldiers that their trusted leader was on hand. “It is evident that General Edwards is the idol of the outfit,” observed Governor Marcus H. Holcomb of Connecticut.

  The burst of speed that had propelled the doughboys homeward dissipated upon arrival into the more typical hurry-up-and-wait style of their previous progress. It took hours to dock the ship. Furthermore, the men knew that any dockside reunions would be brief: The Army wasn’t done with them yet. Demobilization would take weeks to complete, and the division would be sent to cool its heels at another encampment while members waited for the machinery of war to finish winding down.

  First, though, the men could drink in the cheering hometown crowd. When it finally came time to go ashore, Stubby, according to Conroy, “marched off proudly in full regalia.” No more sneaking around for this veteran! Stubby’s arrival inaugurated a new phase in the dog’s notoriety: press coverage. A correspondent for the Hartford Courant had spent time on board the Agamemnon before the troops disembarked, and the reporter filed a special dispatch in the next day’s paper. “Mascots Include Dog and a Goat,” read the headline. “Stubby Made Round Trip—But Fanny Butts,” the subhead added.

  The reporter employed a pattern that would repeat itself in countless news stories for the rest of the dog’s life. Introduce a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor: “He would have expressed himself in the terms he usually used—simple enough but expressive—he might have wagged his tail, but there wasn’t any to wag …” Dazzle with a few remarkable details: “… and where his tail ought to have been hung an iron cross.” Slaughter the dog’s personal narrative by blending fact with fancy: “He was in every battle [of the Yankee Division, mostly true], but the French gas mask first made for him wouldn’t fit, and another was never procured [definitely false, and even illogical, which even the reporter immediately admits]. How he avoided being gassed is a miracle.” Indulge in a bit of anthropomorphizing, perhaps aided by Conroy himself: “According to his owner, Stubby is in favor of some kind of a league of nations for he doesn’t want the dogs of war loose on the world again.”

  Stubby and his fellow doughboys spent the next few weeks at Camp Devens, about 40 miles west of Boston. Here, finally, they parted with the last of the lice that had hitchhiked their way through the war. They gained brief leave passes so they could visit family—Conroy made a trip with Stubby to New Britain—and they participated in a mix of paperwork, parading, and commendation. No doubt the men anticipated their discharge dates with a mixture of impatience and regret. Few bonds would ever be as strong again as the ones they had formed by literally going through a war together. With one another, there was an instant understanding, an unspoken common knowledge, and a shared wonder—my God, did we really do all that? They would return to civilian life ever altered, always an invisible step or two out of sync with colleagues and loved ones who respected their service but, really, had no clue what it had meant to come through the Great War.

  Robert Conroy and Stubby returned to the comforts of passenger trains after departing France. The pair traveled together extensively following the war.

  The veterans shared one last blaze of glory, though, before they scattered to the forests, fields, hilltops, coastlines, and cities of New England and beyond. They had a parade. In fact they probably had several because home states and hometowns organized celebrations, too, after the Yankee Division splintered and subsets of local boys came home. But the biggest, grandest parade of all took place while they were still members of the U.S. military, and it took place through the heart of New England: Boston.

  Stubby, no stranger to parades, earned a place of honor at the afternoon event, accompanying the color guard for his own 102nd Infantry Regiment. He knew the drill. Follow the flag bearers. Don’t stray left or right. When ordered to turn “eyes right” at the reviewing stand, cock head to that side. At the next command, face forward again. Fanny followed farther behind, as part of K Company. In contrast to Stubby, the Kaiser’s goat walked tethered to a soldier, presumably Corporal Simpson. She had already polished off the choicest parts of several hundred packed lunches while the parade formed up, and no one wanted her to stray to the sidelines for further snacking.

  A million or more spectators lined the streets of downtown Boston for the event on April 25. Some 20,000 men passed in review, traversing most of the perimeter of the Boston Commons, rounding a corner of the public garden, traveling both directions on Commonwealth Avenue as far as Massachusetts Avenue, and then embarking on an even longer loop back to Massachusetts Avenue and then east again on Columbus Avenue toward the Commons and the dismissal point of Park Square. The route compared in length to one of the five-mile marches the doughboys competed in during the closing games of their stay in France.

  Temperatures dipp
ed toward freezing, but the crowd hugged the route for hours, cheering incessantly. General Edwards himself led the parade, astride a horse, holding his right arm in a salute for much of the distance, although he reportedly broke his formal stance when he reached his home address on Commonwealth Avenue; there he waved to his wife, who waved back from the front of their residence. Edwards was followed by staff members, a captured 220-mm German Howitzer, automobiles filled with wounded soldiers, the various military regiments, their color guards, their bands, and, of course, those marching mascots.

  Demobilization followed within days. Conroy and Stubby left the Army on April 29. Conroy, as with other doughboys, received a discharge bonus of $60 (equivalent to about $800 today). Each departing soldier received a red discharge chevron, too. This fabric emblem, shaped like a fat, upside-down V, was to be sewn onto the upper left sleeve of a soldier’s uniform to show that his military service had ended. Presumably Stubby drew no bonus, but he did acquire his own official discharge chevron, which was dutifully added to his uniform’s left “sleeve.”

  On April 30, Conroy and Stubby paraded in Hartford with fellow Nutmeggers, as Connecticut residents have sometimes been called, marching under sunny, warm skies before yet another appreciative hometown crowd. Once again Stubby walked behind his regimental color guard, and once again Fanny the goat followed several units back on a lead. Then the companies disbanded. Most soldiers headed for their hometowns. After the parade, Edward Simpson probably just walked with Fanny to his family home in Hartford. Conroy and Stubby, though, had a grander destination: the public stage.

  While Conroy had been stationed at Camp Devens, Conroy’s commanding officer had received a letter from a Mrs. S. Z. Poli of Poll’s Theatrical Enterprises, based in New Haven. “You have in your company Corporal J. Robert Conroy,” she wrote. “We are very desirous of securing the services of Corp. Conroy starting next Sunday, April 27th in connection with our local Victory Loan Drive.” Mrs. Poli went on to ask if the corporal could be furloughed for a few days so that he could take part in the effort. She makes no mention anywhere in her letter of Stubby, but everyone seems to know, between the lines, that Conroy’s dog was a crucial part of Mrs. Poll’s vision. “We have prepared a very effective and, we believe, beneficial plan in which the services of Corp. Conroy are much needed,” she explained.

  Mrs. Poll’s request advanced through two levels of review, according to the fading pencil notations that appear on the surviving document. “Can you give the Corp. up?” queries the second officer to consider the invitation. Apparently not, must have been the answer from the colonel he had contacted up the chain of command, or at least not in time for an April appearance. Mrs. Poli, unfazed, booked the soon-to-be-discharged corporal and his remarkable friend for a three-day engagement on her New Haven stage, starting on Thursday, May 1.

  An unrecorded series of other bookings followed. Perhaps the pair appeared at other venues of Poll’s Theatrical Enterprises—in Hartford, Springfield, and Worcester or Scranton, Bridgeport, and Norwich. If so, they had found a good gig. Stubby and Conroy each earned $62.50 for their first day’s commitment in New Haven. Presumably they received the same for the three daily appearances they made on May 2 and May 3. Considering that soldiers had received $60 as their discharge-bonus following their lengthy military service, earning more than twice that (between them) for one day’s work would have seemed almost unfathomable.

  “Vaudeville demands Stubby’s appearance,” wrote Conroy when he captioned souvenirs from their stage tour in Stubby’s scrapbook, including this flyer promoting an appearance in New Haven, Connecticut.

  Sgt. John J. Curtin had even forecast such a future for Stubby in some of the concluding lines of his tribute poem: “When we take him back to the U.S.A., / Stubby will hold the stage, night and day.” Conroy, though, eschewed the life of an entertainer. “The stage is a dog’s life,” he told a reporter in 1920. “Maybe Stubby could stand it, but I couldn’t.” After completing an initial tour of vaudeville stages, he and Stubby retired from the limelight to Conroy’s hometown.

  Conroy and Stubby moved into the new extended family house on Church Street, across town from his childhood neighborhood. As was the case with many veterans, Conroy tried to pick up with the life he had left behind before the war. For work, he turned to his former employer, Russell & Erwin Manufacturing Co., and they hired him as a traveling salesman. During the war the company had retooled to make weaponry, including gun parts and grenades. Now they resumed the manufacturing of door locks, latches, and other hardware for the builder’s trade. Conroy began to travel and sell the company’s wares.

  For the first time in their nearly two-year-long friendship, Conroy and Stubby began to spend long stretches of time apart. While Conroy traveled, Stubby stayed behind in New Britain, settling into what may have been his first opportunity to enjoy a home setting. Conroy’s eldest sister, Margaret, welcomed the dog’s company while she cared for her two children. At first, she told a news reporter, “I was very much against his bringing Stubby home [from the warfront] because I was afraid that he would frighten my little three-year-old girl. But nobody could mind Stubby—he’s a good beast—and the baby loves him a great deal—they are regular chums.” Other family members reportedly enjoyed the dog’s company, too.

  Even though Conroy saw less of his friend, he didn’t stop bragging about Stubby or run out of ways to have him honored. He was a salesman after all, and he knew how to combine those skills with his affable personality into a homespun pitch suitable for newspaper reporters and public figures alike. His first success could easily have been an accident. One can imagine what transpired when Conroy visited the YMCA in Hartford soon after his discharge. Perhaps his original intent was to obtain a postwar membership for himself in an organization that had provided warfront support to Army soldiers.

  Stubby in tow, Conroy would undoubtedly have recounted the dog’s catchy history, just as part of a friendly conversation. He and staffers may have joked that the dog, too, deserved one of the postwar memberships that were being offered to returning soldiers and, for the fun of it, they actually issued him one. Actually they did one better: They gave Stubby a life membership card. (The offer for human veterans was for three months of privileges.) Stubby earned a few extra perks, too. His “War Service Membership” was “Good for Three Bones,” daily. And it included “A place to sleep,” when the dog needed a home away from home.

  The veteran and YMCA staffers may well have viewed the issuing of the card as a publicity stunt that would benefit the group’s campaign for new members. Conroy would presumably have been happy to support the organization, and he clearly liked attaching honors to his beloved friend. Surviving records support this line of logic, starting with a story that ran during May 1919 in the Hartford Courant. The clipping shows a photo of Conroy, squatting beside Stubby, with the dog’s new YMCA card pinned temporarily to his military uniform. A few days later Conroy received a letter from the Hartford Y’s local administrator enclosing a copy of the photo and a report that the paper had “printed a cut of this about six inches square on their editorial page.” Before signing off, he added: “Give Stubby my best regards and tell him his three bones are waiting for him.”

  Stubby’s YMCA card became part of the mascot’s signature story. Indeed, it helped to mint that story. One honor led to the next. Each publicity gesture triggered a new invitation of support. Victory Loan drives. American Red Cross membership campaigns. Support for the venerable Veterans of Foreign Wars. Participation in the newly formed American Legion for veterans of the Great War. Stubby became iconic, a symbol of the pluck, and fortitude, and modest pride of the boys who had crossed an ocean against steep odds and returned victorious. In short, the news media ate him up.

  Stubby’s membership in the YMCA “gives him the coveted privilege of sleeping in the lobby and getting three square bones a day from the Y.M. kitchen below,” reported the Hartford Courant when it announced the mascot’s aw
ard.

  Stories began to appear locally at first, and later on in the national press, multiplying as prodigiously as trench lice. “Most Decorated Dog in A.E.F.,” Jacksonville Courier in Jacksonville, Illinois (May 1921). “Stubby, Dog Hero is Honored Again,” Washington Post (July 1921). “Stubby, 102d Mascot, to be Guest at Christmas Dinner,” Hartford Courant (December 1922). “Hero Dog Hotel Guest,” New York Times (December 1922). “Greatest of War Dogs to Attend Big Game,” Washington Post (November 1924). “Stubby, the Canine Hero of the A.E.F.,” Washington Post (November 1925).

  Conroy pasted story after story into Stubby’s scrapbook, adding items from the Denver Post, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Chicago Daily Tribune, the Kansas City Star, and the Evening Bee of Omaha, among many others. Occasionally he would correct a fact by adding an inked annotation to the clipping, but even then he only updated details about his personal military history (such as an erroneous attribution to his having served in the 102nd Field Artillery instead of its Infantry). Otherwise he seems to have celebrated the arrival of each story—whether accurate, embellished, or downright erroneous (even an article that credited Stubby with being female)—with equal enthusiasm and a dose of glue.

  News reporters recycled details about Stubby’s life until his printed bio was a tumbled mix of fact and fancy. No less venerable a paper than the New York Times explained to its readers in 1927 that the dog had earned his nickname because, “in the World War part of a leg was shot off, which accounts for his name,” despite obvious proof to the contrary. Other stories presented him as a Marine instead of an Army veteran. Still others misidentified him by such names as Stubbie, Stuffy, and Hubby. Basic facts became distorted, as in a report of how he “was smuggled aboard the big transport at Hoboken by a squad of husky doughboys,” listing not only an incorrect account of Stubby’s departure but placing him at the wrong port, too.