"A medal awarded to the only dog to be officially registered as a prisoner of war in World War II has gone on public display for the first time."
Pedigree pointer, Judy, was captured along with members of her Royal Navy ship's crew in 1942. She was the ship's mascot.
Taken to a Japanese PoW camp in Sumatra, Judy soon made her mark:
Frank Williams, a British airman at the camp, befriended the pedigree pointer — and later successfully persuaded Japanese officers to register her as a PoW.
She went on to survive gunshot wounds and alligator bites — as well as helping her fellow PoWs to distract camp guards — until the end of the war, when Williams smuggled her onto a ship back to England.
Alligator fighting? Distracting guards? That is one cool dog, Lassie had nothing on this puppy!
Unless of course the PoWs forced Judy to fight with alligators in order to distract the guards, that would just be cruel and not very 'heroic'. We're sure that's not what happened.
And what's this about Japanese officers registering dogs as prisoners of war? The big softies! this goes against everything we were taught about the Japanese WWII soldiers (of course when we say 'taught', we mean 'have seen in films').
