“Judy” was born in Shanghai in 1937 and started her military life as a Royal Navy mascot serving on HMS Gnat and HMS Grasshopper in the Far East. In 1942, the Grasshopper was torpedoed and caught fire, and the crew, passengers (Japanese PoWs, Royal Marines, Army officers and civilians) and Judy jumped into the cold, oily waters and swam for their lives.

The nearest land was an uninhabited island with little food and no water until Judy emerged from the sea two days later, bedraggled and covered in oil. It was her digging at the shoreline that saved everyone’s lives when she’d unearthed a fresh water spring.

When the men commandeered a Chinese junk, sailed to Sumatra and embarked on a grueling 200-mile cross-country trek, Judy went, too. Sadly, they walked unwittingly into a Japanese-held village where three years of captivity followed – for Judy too. She’d stowed away on the truck journey, but it lead her to Leading Aircraftsman Frank Williams, and it was love at first sight. He shared his daily rations with her and they were inseparable. Many prisoners owed their lives to Judy who barked, snarled and launching herself at the guards inflicting beating on the soldiers. Tough days still were ahead. They were transferred to another ship which was torpedoed. They escaped, but Frank, who’d be sent to a new camp, had no idea if Judy survived. Stories started filtering through about a dog seen helping flailing men reach pieces of wreckage.

For Frank, Judy and thousands of Pows, the worst was still to come — a year in Sumatra, cutting through jungle and laying railway track for the Japanese in searing heat, dysentery, malaria, cholera, and beriberi. The men were worked into the ground and starved. The daily food ration was a handful of tapioca with maggots which Frank continued to share with Judy. “Every day I thanked God for Judy,” said Frank. “She saved my life in so many ways.”

By now, you may have formed a picture of Judy, military dog. Perhaps you picture a Doberman Pinscher, or maybe a German Shepherd? In fact, Judy was a Pointer.

By Unknown author – This is photograph HU 43990 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15870250

Read more about Judy here, the only animal imprisoned in Indonesia as a POW.

Images: HMS Grasshopper (1938) (photographer not identified) from the collections of the Imperial War Museum comes from Wikipedia and is shared under the public domain. Photo of “Judy,” with her owner, Frank Williams