Beyond the Call of Duty: Heart-warming stories of canine devotion and bravery. Isabel George
Читать онлайн книгу.
old. His mother had to take a full-time job which was relatively well paid for a woman but childcare was impossible to secure when she needed it. Reluctantly, she had to reach a temporary compromise that would enable her to continue to support her family and that was to send Bill and his younger brother, Jim, to the nearby Parmadale Orphanage while their sister Mary went to live with her grandmother in Scranton. Bill would be at the orphanage for two years.
At Parmadale, Bill met the first dog in his life, Rags, a friendly Airedale who loved all the children and they loved him. Rags loved to run and play with them and never seemed to be exhausted by their games. But one day, one of the older and more difficult children took their frustration out on the dog by pouring acid over his body. Horrified, the other children could only look on as the dog ran from his tormentor. Rags’ cries have echoed in Bill’s head ever since.
The Parmadale days were not unhappy ones but going home was the best of times and one thing that made it all the happier was Skippy. Bill was five when he said goodbye to the orphanage and settled back home and one of his first memories of coming home was seeing Skippy tied to the kitchen door handle. The large white Collie dog had proven early on that he loved to run but didn’t always come back. If he escaped it took the entire street to chase him, corner him and take him home. His barking often annoyed the neighbours too but one night, just as the next door neighbours were about to get up and complain to Mrs Wynne, they realized their house was on fire. Skippy was not being a nuisance – he was saving their lives. This dog was the first to show Bill that when it comes to dogs, what you see is not always the sum total of what you get. Skippy was not a nuisance dog at all, he was a local hero.
Although Bill never owned the Great Dane called Big Boy, he was as close as you can get to your best friend’s dog. George Harsa was a friendly boy and his dog matched his character perfectly. Wherever Big Boy went, George was bound to follow, and Bill too. They were friends from their first meeting. Walking and playing in West 119th Street with the huge mutt bounding along beside them, the boys were happy as the day was long. At eight years old, no one should have a care in the world and this was so true of George and Bill. In the evenings, George would entertain the neighbourhood children with his banjo playing and Big Boy would sit alongside him, his most faithful fan. It was a relationship that Bill longed for for himself. The days at Parmadale were mostly happy but the discipline was harsh, even for children of only three years old. The sting of the half-inch wooden stick that often slapped down on his hand was something he would not forget. When Queenie wandered into his life, their relationship seemed meant to be. Bill was out playing and Queenie, whose breed was somewhat mixed to say the least, came to see what he was all about. She was quiet and friendly and interested in everything he had to tell her. She was so engrossed that she followed Bill home and his mother let her stay. Like all the dogs that found refuge in the Wynne household, Queenie was absorbed into the family’s life. She was a friend to all but it was Bill she would follow to the end of the earth. Queenie settled so well into the neighbour-hood that she was able to present her family with a litter of pups. All adorable and all possessing Queenie’s calm and loving temperament, the pups were popular and had plenty of visitors. The whole neighbourhood grieved when Queenie was killed in a road traffic accident. She had made quite an impact, especially on the children.
It was lucky for Bill’s mother that one of the litter, Pal, was still around to comfort her young son. Pal was more of a breed mix than his mother but every inch of his stocky, brindle body said that he was Bill’s protector. There was certainly a little Chow Chow and some Bull Terrier in the mix and a good deal more besides to make up his muscular body. Pal loved everyone and everyone loved Pal. He didn’t like other dogs very much but every child in town felt he was their pet and Bill was happy to share him. Bill was always teaching Pal new tricks such as riding downhill on a sled and then pulling the pile of sleds back to the top of the hill. He could jump in the air and take a hat off someone’s head and hand the hat back to them. Bill loved showing off Pal’s tricks.
Bill and Pal were a real partnership and looked after each other. Every time they came close to the busy road that ran behind Wynne’s house, Bill would stop and say, ‘Up!’ and Pal would jump into his arms and be carried safely over the road. The same would happen if Bill saw a rival dog coming towards them. But Pal’s best trick of all was working out how to get to Bill’s school. No one had shown him the route, he just seemed to find it one day and there he was waiting outside the school gate at home time. After that, he did the same thing everyday at 3.30 p.m. and walked Bill home. Then one day, after about a year, he wasn’t there. Bill searched high and low for any trace of his dog. The neighbourhood turned out to help but he was no where to be found. Pal never came home again. He was gone and it broke Bill’s heart.
So, when Toby came into Bill’s life some years later, the relationship had a bittersweet beginning. Having Toby brought back all the memories of Pal, the dog that gave him so much joy in his childhood, a joy that was as real and tangible as the hardships he had experienced during the Depression of the 1930s. The Depression had a catastrophic effect on Bill’s family and its fortunes. Of course they weren’t alone in that. The Wall Street Crash put an end to Bill’s mother’s well-paid job and meant she had to move her family around in order to chase work and an affordable rent. It was why they moved house so often, finally settling when Bill was seventeen.
At that point, life changed for the better in so many ways. Turning from a boy who showed little interest in schoolbooks, Bill became a dedicated and successful student. He met his sweetheart, Margie, and then Toby, the dog came pattering along. Toby was going to receive all the attention that Bill missed giving to his beloved Pal; the dog he vowed would be his last. There was a new challenge too: his desire to marry and set up home with Margie which meant making money became the focus of each day. Working in the local foundry was hard and heavy work but Bill was able to work two shifts a day to support the war effort and his own personal effort to save money. And Toby? He accompanied Bill to work and enjoyed long naps on the warm brick floor. Pressure was building on the foundry to step up production. The demand for steel to feed the manufacture of fighter planes, ships and munitions was heightening to the point where the foundry’s furnaces were ablaze twenty-four hours a day. Bill could have worked around the clock but the arrival of his draft papers cut that plan short. His country needed him and Bill answered that call.
Bill was assigned to the 5th Fighter Command of the 5th Air Force at Port Moresby in New Guinea. His interest and qualification in photography had made him a perfect recruit for air reconnaissance duties and, after completing a laboratory technician course, he qualified as an aerial photographer. In any other time and under any other circumstances the balmy breeze that rippled around them would have been a luxury to enjoy and relax in but not this location. There was always the threat of a red alert – the warning to take cover as enemy bombers attacked the airfield. The ‘ack-ack’ of the anti-aircraft guns continued throughout the night. For a while, Bill and Ed Downey helped out with general duties on the camp but Ed was frustrated and convinced the commanding officers had forgotten they had two aerial photographers and felt their skills were not being utilized. Ed was not afraid to make a fuss and his film-star looks and presence made him a force to be reckoned with. An immediate transfer to 5212th Photographic Wing meant a posting to Nadzab to take up a position as an aerial photographer.
Bill and Ed were there as General David W. Hutchinson’s personal photographers but Photo Hutch, as he was nicknamed, had crashed his B17 while on a mission on Boxing Day of 1943, just before the two photographers arrived. After an awkward start, they were assigned to the photographic laboratory. Their boss, Captain Powell had developed an aerial camera mount for low-level bombing photography and this development was made at a crucial time for the Allies. As a member of the 26th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, Bill was part of an elite force whose activities were vital to the success of the war in the Pacific. There was a saying that the side with the best aerial reconnaissance team was the one that would win the war. Bill and Smoky were a part of the best.
While Bill was working twelve-hour shifts in the photo lab, Smoky would accompany him and entertain the other technicians just by being with them. Sitting on one of the trays used for passing wet images outside for washing in the daylight, Smoky would be passed between the men. And she was acquiring a wide range of tricks to show off. When he wasn’t at work, Bill would spend his time teaching Smoky something