Sergeant Stubby

by Ann Bausum

  Some reporters invented fanciful backstories for the famed mascot: “In his youth Stubby was a prize-winning dog at all the shows in New England, but he forgot all those days of triumph when Uncle Sam called his young men to arms.” This same reporter went on to credit the war dog with unimaginable feats of survival. “That all was not plain beer and skittles, however, is shown by the fact that Stubby was wounded twice in battle. He accompanied his doughboy friends wherever they went, even if it meant attacking the enemy. That is how he happened to stop two bullets.”

  Another article published at about the same time commingled identical language with an even greater misrepresentation of the facts plus the misstatement of the dog’s name: “Stuffy was wounded five times in action,” the reporter claimed. “He accompanied his doughboy friends wherever they went, even if it meant attacking the enemy. This is how he happened to stop five bullets. But he was a ‘toughy’ as well as ‘Stuffy,’ and he recovered each time.” Such “facts” spread to other accounts, and the misinformation, myths, and threads of truth continued to commingle, evolve, and reproduce in perpetuity.

  Newspaper reporters laced their Stubby stories with humor and playful puns, describing “his hangdog look” at the thought of being left behind when the troops headed for France, or predicting the “howling success” of a dog show where he was slated to appear. Journalists made fun of his missing tail and offered anthropomorphic projections onto his thoughts. For example, a 1926 tribute in the New York Times noted, “Early in life Stubby longed for a career. Realizing the value of education, the brindle and white ‘bull terrier’ abandoned his nomadic life for that of a student. Selecting Yale University as his alma mater, he was soon recognized as a prodigy.” But war broke out and the unusual scholar faced a tough choice, according to the writer. “Stubby came to the conclusion that he ought to do his bit for his country … [I]n such a time, when men were parted from mothers and wives to defend the honor of Uncle Sam, was he, a mere wanderer without dependents, to think of self?”

  Reporters frequently resorted to hyperbole as a way to sum up the mascot’s significance. The Washington Post suggested, for example, that Stubby “is probably better known and loved by more people than any other dog of his time,” adding, “he is undoubtedly the most decorated dog in the world.” A local Connecticut paper may have summed it up best: “Stubby is the most ‘writ’ up dog in America.”

  Stubby’s popularity coincided with a growing increase in the adoption of dogs as pets. For centuries dogs had worked for their owners—as shepherds, as hunters, as sentries—and, with the exception of nobility, their owners had, as often as not, left them to sleep outside of their masters’ house doors. That tradition began to change during the 19th century with an increased focus on the breeding and judging of dogs. Over time, show breeds gained popularity as house pets, and the owning and training of dogs became a middle-class hobby and not just an upper-class luxury.

  Dogs such as Stubby, Rin Tin Tin (another World War I veteran, albeit as a puppy, rescued by an American soldier in France), and, later on, the fictional Lassie captured the public’s fancy. Audiences marveled at the dogs’ ability to perform what seemed like unusual feats, whether saluting or acting or rescuing someone—or even just sitting on command. Everyday folks wanted to own a dog for a pet, too.

  German shepherds, collies, and Boston terriers became popular breeds, along with Airedales, beagles, bulldogs, and cocker spaniels. In fact, the Boston terrier, the breed with which Stubby holds an obvious kinship, reigned as either first or second in popularity according to the American Kennel Club for a 30-year span, beginning in 1905. The pet food industry was born, and the general public displayed a perennial appetite for dog stories, dog movies, dog shows, and all other things dog.

  Stubby’s media splashes became outsize exceptions to the everyday quiet that surrounded Conroy and his friend at their New Britain home base. The pair’s bond remained strong in spite of Conroy’s travel schedule, and the well-loved dog surely appreciated the predictable comforts of friendship, food, and shelter that filled his days. “He’s just like a spoilt baby,” Conroy told one local reporter who stopped by to interview him in 1920 for a story about three war dogs that had settled in Connecticut. The reporter, Bab Vickrey, documented one of the few surviving accounts of Stubby’s downtime behavior. She observed how “he will cuddle down against a person, and when his back is rubbed he will growl gently—as nearly as he can make to a ‘coo.’ ”

  Vickrey led with Stubby in her Bridgeport Herald feature, adding companion stories on the other dogs. Tuck, a captured German shepherd, reportedly understood commands in three languages: German, French, and English. His final wartime owner, an American medical corps doctor, had trained him to deliver medical supplies and messages. Toute de Suite, an adopted French Pomeranian, suffered from exposure to poison gas and spent the rest of the war riding shotgun with his ambulance-driving owner.

  Interestingly, Vickrey includes a comment in her feature about Conroy, pre-Stubby, that seems at odds with the historical record: “Bob never did like dogs,” she reports, “wouldn’t have one about the place. But Stubby won his heart entirely. And so they became confirmed chums.” Could this be true? Is it possible that Conroy was not a dog person until he found himself charmed by Stubby? Readers are left to wonder if this statement, never repeated elsewhere in the historical record, has a ring of truth. No other interviews of Conroy survive, and Vickrey’s account is otherwise accurate. If Conroy wasn’t a fan of dogs before Stubby arrived, he’d certainly fallen for one in 1917.

  When the Eastern Dog Club announced in early 1920 that it would, for the first time, recognize dog heroism as well as breeding, Conroy nominated Stubby for its inaugural award. “Eligible to this class are any dogs which have saved human life or which by their faithfulness have averted danger to human life,” explained the club. “The dog that saves children or others from drowning or that scares away the burglar will have consideration.” One such entrant, Prince, a mixed-breed burglary foiler, did receive commendation alongside Stubby. But Stubby’s entry must have overwhelmed the judges with its overlapping themes of bravery, patriotism, and devotion. What a dog! What a hero! “He’s probably a mutt,” one judge reportedly said, “but he’s done more than all the rest [of the show dogs] put together, and he shall have a medal.”

  Later that spring, probably as an additional gift from the dog club in conjunction with the promised medal, Stubby gained a special harness that highlighted his distinctions. The ornate dark leather device buckled under Stubby’s chest, and it gleamed with small brass plates. Each oval disc bore a detail from the mascot’s history, starting with the basics: “Stubby / Mascot / Yankee Division / New Haven, Conn. to France / 1917-19.” Other plates ticked off the places Stubby had served (Chemin des Dames, Seicheprey, Toul, Château-Thierry, St. Mihiel, Verdun, Meuse-Argonne) and where he had traveled (Paris, Monaco, Nice, Monte Carlo). One prominent panel proclaimed Stubby’s latest triumph: “Decorated by Eastern Dog Club, Boston, April 1920.” Other brass tags conveyed his military pedigree, including a military service number (identical to Conroy’s), a rendering of the Yankee Division “YD” logo, and three-dimensional representations of the wound stripe and trio of service bars that Stubby had received.

  Veterans of the Yankee Division crowded around Stubby (with Robert Conroy squatting beside him) and General “Daddy” Edwards (behind the mascot) during one of their postwar reunions. In 1922 the general sent Stubby a cordial letter at the Carry On Club thanking him for sharing “your fine photograph.”

  The elaborate harness was fashioned so that Conroy could mount a tiny, toy-size flag into position over the dog’s back. So outfitted, Stubby, too, became a flag bearer when he walked in the company of a military color guard. On such occasions, he sometimes appeared bearing a United States flag; other times he paraded with a slightly larger banner that reproduced the flags of the war’s Allied countries. Sometimes Conroy displayed a large silver medalli
on in place of the flag mount; most likely this ornament was the hero medal promised to Stubby by the Eastern Dog Show judges, and it makes sense that they gave him the harness to display it, hence the brass tag notating his additional decoration by the club.

  Stubby, looking more the hero than ever, began making the rounds with Conroy to various veterans reunions. They attended the national conventions of the American Legion, starting with the debut gathering in Minneapolis during November 1919, and they attended local and regional reunions of their Yankee Division brethren. There was Seicheprey Day to commemorate every April, parades timed to coincide with patriotic holidays, reunions at regional vacation spots, social gatherings at local veterans halls.

  The old mascot fell right back into step, literally, whenever he met up with his fellow doughboys, and he could be counted on to lead any parade. His veteran friends enjoyed the chance to connect with their wartime pal, and strangers quickly made his acquaintance by shaking his paw. No doubt Stubby dutifully returned salutes as demanded, too. Such engagements weren’t just rote reactions to circumstances; the dog liked the familiarity and attention of it all. As one reporter observed, when covering a veterans’ gathering in the New Haven area, “Stubby seemed to be glad to meet former comrades as they affectionately patted him and called him by name.”

  The fun of reunions aside, by the fall of 1920 Robert Conroy had discovered what many veterans discovered after the war: Coming home could be complicated. Even the soldiers who had survived with limbs and lungs intact could find it no easier to slip back into an old way of life than it would have been for a snake to sheath itself in a shed skin. The person inside had been places, seen things—that old skin wasn’t a natural fit anymore.

  Conroy was making decent money as a traveling salesman for Russell & Erwin ($1,800 a year, plus expenses, or about $24,000 today), but higher ambitions or intellectual curiosity or general restlessness—or all three—made him want more. He’d seen the world, and he wasn’t scared of it. So Conroy thought big, and, at age 28, he set his sights on law school. Then he packed up his things, beckoned to Stubby, and together they caught a train bound for Washington, D.C.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TOUCHDOWN!

  THEY CALLED THEMSELVES THE CARRY ON CLUB, AND, BY default, Stubby became their unofficial mascot. By late summer 1920, he and Conroy had settled into a communal living space with a group of other veterans at 1600 Rhode Island Avenue, in northwest Washington, D.C. The men borrowed an old military command when they named themselves, perhaps representing their intention to carry on with their lives now that the war was over. The extent to which they may have carried on in today’s playful meaning of the phrase is unrecorded. Conroy didn’t smoke or drink (this was the era of alcohol prohibition, after all), and it’s quite possible that even at their silliest the residents’ carrying on remained pretty innocent. Stubby would have fit right in.

  Conroy directed his forward momentum toward obtaining a law degree, and he gained admission, starting in the fall of 1920, to the law school of Catholic University in northeast Washington, D.C. It’s unclear how he financed his education—perhaps with the vaudeville windfall; or through savings from his military service or postwar employment; or by qualifying for vocational training through a new federal program for wounded veterans. He pursued his goal off and on for the next six years, following a nonlinear path that included pauses to earn money and enrollment at five different institutions.

  While Conroy studied the law, Stubby pursued a new avocation, too: football. He made his debut on the gridiron that first fall, serving as the mascot for Conroy’s own Catholic University. “Stubby’s delight is chasing a football,” reported the Washington Post during its preview of an upcoming contest with a school then known as Maryland State (part of today’s University of Maryland). “There is no such word as down when he is chasing the pigskin,” the paper proclaimed. Coach Harry Robb’s Catholic Cardinals, with the media-anointed “wonder dog of the A.E.F.” as its mascot, finished the 1920 season with a 5 and 2 record.

  Stubby’s fame grew around Washington, D.C., the way it had grown during the war—one bit of notoriety led to another until everyone seemed to know Stubby. For example, in March 1921, Conroy entered his friend in a showcase of Boston terriers. “Many service members shook paws with ‘Stuffy’ [sic], who seemed delighted with attentions shown him,” noted one reporter. Stubby couldn’t hold his own against the show’s purebred dogs, but judges made sure the popular entrant received proper commendation anyway. Conroy barely had time to add a Kelly green–colored “Special Prize” ribbon to Stubby’s scrapbook before more opportunities for fame materialized.

  On March 4, 1921, Warren G. Harding had assumed the Presidency from Woodrow Wilson, a leader who, postwar, had lost both his health and his bid for the United States to sign the Treaty of Versailles and join the League of Nations. (In 1921, the United States signed separate treaties with Germany and other wartime combatants, officially ending the Great War.) Harding’s arrival brought not just a change of party to the White House; it introduced a First Pet to the scene, too, Laddie Boy the Airedale.

  During the Humane Education Society parade in May 1921, Stubby served as “guard of honor” for the young girl who accompanied him, Miss Louise Johnson. This daughter of an Army colonel appeared somber—or perhaps awestruck—seated beside the canine war hero during their travels down Pennsylvania Avenue.

  The Humane Education Society promptly tapped the new dogs in town—Laddie Boy and Stubby—to headline an upcoming animal parade.

  The President’s dog, naturally, led the May event, riding on a float pulled by six prizewinning horses. Eleven more floats followed, including one bearing the medal-bedecked Stubby, dressed in full regalia, with a U.S. flag rising from his harness. Marching bands enlivened the accompanying menagerie of parrots, bulldogs, police dogs, goats, horses, and other assorted creatures. Additional parade stars included Peggy, a sheepdog who had become a celebrity during war bond fund drives; a popular Airedale known as Peter the Pirate, Jr.; General Pershing’s famed horse Kedron; and Buddy the Bull, mascot of the Navy Yard.

  Laddie Boy may have headed the parade, but Stubby earned top billing in their hometown Washington Post coverage. Papers from Illinois to Boston covered the event, too. “A World War hero passes in review before the President of the United States,” explained a captioned photo in the New York Times. Before long, the Washington press corps was playfully portraying Laddie Boy and Stubby as rivals.

  Whether or not the two dogs ever met is unclear, but Stubby did visit the White House a few weeks later when the First Lady hosted a lawn party to honor wounded veterans. Stubby met President Harding at the June 8 event, too, marking his second such introduction to a commander in chief. News reporters dutifully noted that during Stubby’s encounter with Florence Harding she “held his leash for five minutes.” (Conroy clocked the interval at ten minutes when he recorded news of it in the mascot’s scrapbook.)

  Conroy’s classes at Catholic University ended the same month as the Hardings’ lawn party, and he signed up for summer law study at George Washington University. Schooling may have usually come first, but he didn’t let his academic duties prevent him from traveling to Boston for an Independence Day reunion of Yankee Division troops. The three-day program culminated, naturally, in a parade. Once again General Edwards led the procession, albeit with only 7,000 participants in his wake. Stubby, of course, was among the marchers, walking in his usual place of honor with the color guard for the 102nd Infantry Regiment. A tiny American flag fluttered over his back. “The dog marched in perfect alignment and with his head erect as though he realized his responsibility,” reported one news account. “Many spectators uncovered for the tiny flag with as much respect as when the bigger banners passed.”

  No sooner had Conroy returned from New England than he prepared for an event of even greater magnitude. He and Stubby were to meet General Pershing himself, wartime commander of the A.E.F. and archit
ect of the strategy that had helped to win the war, although with tremendous casualties. Conroy dressed in a three-piece suit and tie for the occasion; Stubby wore his military finest. Their orders were to meet the general in his private offices at the capital landmark known today as the Executive Office Building, then home to the Departments of War, Navy, and State.

  The event, which Conroy characterized as “Stubby’s greatest honor,” received more space in his brief narrative memoir about his friend than did the dog’s wartime service. Conroy recalled how Stubby’s admission to the federal building was blocked initially when “he was told by guards that dogs are not allowed to enter.” Writing from the mascot’s point of view, Conroy adds, “Stubby quietly told them he was expected at the offices of the General of the Armies, John J. Pershing. After a telephone inquiry, the bar was removed and Stubby was escorted to Gen. Pershing’s offices on the second floor.”

  News reporters and motion picture crews documented what followed: the pinning of a medal by Pershing onto Stubby’s uniform. The Humane Education Society had created the award to commemorate his participation in its May parade and to recognize the mascot’s bravery and service during wartime. Solid gold, the medal bore a likeness of Stubby, his name, the date of the parade, and other decorative motifs. Pershing, as a supporter of the organization, had been prevailed upon to present the award.

  One press account states that the general ceremoniously “spoke a few words on the theme of ‘man’s best friend in peace or war,’ and Stubby acknowledged the honor with a grateful bark.” Another claims that, in reply, “Stubby merely licked his chops and wagged his diminutive tail.” Photos show a uniform-clad Pershing doing his best to look dignified while a dog sits in his office on a cloth-covered table. Stubby, ever patient with pomp and the press, simply pants. The general received a gold-trimmed leather wallet from the grateful organization in recognition of his much admired horse Kedron. The Hardings’ Laddie Boy earned an honor, too, although his was not bestowed so formally. Stubby’s award, reportedly, marked the first and last time Pershing ever pinned a medal on a dog.