Judy: The Unforgettable Story of the Dog Who Went to War and Became a True Hero by Damien Lewis

the attacks, and promised that there would be no further such incidents.
    Just twenty-four hours after the sinking of the USS Panay , Nanking itself fell, and what became known as the Rape of Nanking ensued. As many as 300,000 Chinese were killed in the most horrific ways. This was still an undeclared war: Japan had yet to formally declare hostilities with China. But with news of the Nanking Massacre reaching foreign ears, strong diplomatic protests werelodged—first and foremost by the governments that still had gunboats on the Yangtze and that were receiving eyewitness accounts of the terrible happenings.
    In light of the nightmare unfolding ashore, the British and American gunboats continued with their river patrols as best they could, but always in the face of mounting Japanese aggression, particularly against the locals. By March 1938 the Gnat found herself in Kiukiang [now Jiujiang], 400 kilometers upriver from Shanghai. She was there to find out which British residents were willing to evacuate in light of the relentless march of Japanese forces inland.
    Typically, a somewhat exasperated Captain Waldegrave reported in his March letter to Rear Admiral Holt that the British residents in Kiukiang were intending to remain where they were “throughout all hostilities.” Mr. and Mrs. Porteous, Miss Rugg, and Miss Luton, all Christian missionaries of the China Inland Mission, were intent on maintaining a very British stiff upper lip in the face of the Japanese invaders.
    Of course, the captain of the Gnat was unable to force any British citizens to evacuate. All he could do was have a word with the local British Safety Committee—a Home Guard–like setup formed by the handful of British citizens resident in the area—in an effort to put some procedures in place should the Japanese turn against British nationals when they overran Kiukiang, as they surely would in the next few days.
    The sympathies of the British gunboat crews in this unfolding conflict—plus their animal mascots—lay fully with the Chinese. They had Chinese crewmen serving on their ships, they had befriended many locals along the river during the long years spent on duty there, and there were any number of British sailors who had fallen in love with a local girl and stayed behind to raise a family with her.
    In fact, the crew of the Gnat —Judy included—had officiated over one such marriage recently, during a stopover in Shanghai. Chief Petty Officer Charles Goodyear served on the Bee , but he was a close friend of both Vic Oliver, the man who had rescued Judyfrom the Yangtze, and of the dog herself. It was only right that both were invited to his wedding—proof of how love could flourish in the midst of war.
    CPO Goodyear’s chosen bride was a Russian barmaid—and widow—then serving in the Pig and Whistle bar in Shanghai. After the wedding the crew of both the Bee and the Gnat had retired to the Pig and Whistle to celebrate the nuptials. An aged Chinese soothsayer with the ability to read a person’s future was persuaded to examine the palms of a number of the sailors. Of course, the groom had to be among them. But when the soothsayer had scrutinized Goodyear’s palm, he’d blanched visibly and refused to say a word.
    Most of those present had teased Goodyear remorselessly, but not Vic Oliver. He’d felt a strange conviction that the soothsayer was able to tell the future and that Goodyear and his bride would have little time together in a world about to be torn apart by war. Certainly, if their Yangtze campaign was anything to go by, the forces of Japanese aggression were going to prove nearly unstoppable.
    The gunboat men were powerless to act as the Japanese drove the Chinese resistance relentlessly backward. Japanese soldiers took Kiukiang, from which the British residents had doggedly refused to evacuate. With barely a pause they pushed onward toward Hankow—the Yangtze gunboats’ “home city,” the headquarters of the Strong