Frank visited Judy in quarantine after they came back to Britain
THE Japanese guards suspected. The game was up - the prisoners knew it. The guards began searching the barracks, and any minute now would lift the blanket to discover the sack of rice, filched from the Japanese officers. The half-starved British prisoners trembled with fear. Discovery would mean a savage beating for every Prisoner of War in the camp - or worse.
They had hoped the rice might keep them alive for a little longer; now it seemed it would be the death of them.
The prisoners scarcely dared breathe. And then something extraordinary happened. A streak of brown and white tore into the room, charging around the guards, carrying a human skull in its mouth.
The Japanese had a superstitious horror of death symbols such as bones and skulls, and were alarmed by the creature hurtling around, eyes glowing. Just as one guard raised his rifle to shoot at the dog, it hared out of the barracks and disappeared into the Sumatran jungle surrounding the camp.
Inspection forgotten, the inmates were left alone. Not for the first time, Judy the pointer - who was to become the only official canine Prisoner of War (PoW) of the Second World War - had saved the lives of the men who had adopted her.
Recalling this incident years after the war, former prisoner Les Searle said: “I think animals have a built-in radar system which picks up all radiations of different sensations such as fear, happiness, panic and sorrow. Judy certainly sensed the danger in that room and she knew what to do about it.”
It was 1942, and conditions in Sumatra’s prisoner camps were beyond endurance for many of the thousands of inmates: rations were disgusting and in short supply, reducing to skin and bones the sleep-starved men who were forced into gruelling manual labour. Malaria, dysentery, skin ulcers, worm infestations and beriberi were widespread; medical care was non-existent. PoWs were reluctant to admit being ill, because it meant even smaller food portions.
The Japanese and Korean guards, dehumanised, left the inmates living in fear: vicious beatings were routine. One had his eardrum pierced when a pencil was forced into his ear. Prisoners were punched and hit with shovels for the "crime" of dropping their tools. Lives hung constantly by a thread.
These were "secret" wartime prisoners, held in camps of which the Allies had no knowledge until three months after the fighting in Europe had ended, because of the island’s isolation. At least six Allied spy operations to Sumatra failed.
Desert island life-saver
Among the 1,200 PoWs at one of the worst camps - Gloegoer - was Frank Williams, a shy young man from Portsmouth, brought up by his widowed mother. Too tall to become an RAF pilot, Frank trained as a radarman, and was posted to Singapore. He had been captured after the Japanese invaded in early 1942 and was put to work in the searing heat of the jungle, where the men building an elaborate Japanese temple were besieged by biting insects.
Judy, born in Shanghai dog kennels in 1937, had been brought to the camp by the men from the gunboat on which she had served as a mascot. She was already a proven life-saver, having located a fresh water spring on the desert island where the survivors of the bombed gunboat had been washed up.
Given the mayhem of war and the fact that dogs were considered a culinary delicacy by the Japanese, that she had already made it this far was astonishing.
The extraordinary story of how Leading Aircraftman (LAC) Frank Williams and pointer Judy met at Gloegoer and helped keep each other alive has been pieced together by author Robert Weintraub for a book published in time for the 70th anniversary of victory over the Japanese.
"When a guard threatened to retaliate, Frank would click his fingers and Judy would hurtle off into the jungle, only to reappear at his special whistle... there was a complete understanding between them"
Most prisoners were, naturally, preoccupied with their own survival, but Frank noticed that no single person cared for Judy. Periodically kicked and stoned by the Japanese, she was left to forage for food at night. Frank started taking an interest in her plight. After the war, he recalled: “I remember thinking what on earth is a beautiful English pointer like this doing here with no one to care for her.”
Despite - or perhaps because of - the desperate conditions, “something wobbled in his soul”, as Weintraub puts it. “It was all he could do just to survive himself. But the sight of this dog wasting away… was intolerable to him.” That day, after queuing for his meagre portion of watery, maggoty rice, Frank poured some into his palm and offered it to her. Judy, with her “watery brown eyes”, remained frozen but whined. Despite his own hunger, Frank put down his whole bowl for her, the grateful dog hungrily ate - and a lifelong bond was forged.
Another radarman, Tom Scott, said: “I was always fascinated at the complete understanding between Frank and Judy - they were truly an amazing team... Thin, half-starved... her eyes only softened when Frank touched her or spoke to her...Whenever she found herself too close to a guard, her lip curled back in a snarl and her eyes seemed to glow with almost a red glare.”
When a guard threatened to retaliate, Frank would click his fingers and Judy would hurtle off into the jungle, only to reappear when he gave a special low whistle.
"Judy was a beacon of hope of survival for the desperate men," Weintraub says. “Her ability to stay alive in such desperate times and her devotion to the men were extraordinary.”
Hurled into the sea
George Duffy, a surviving Sumatran camp veteran, now 92 and living in New Hampshire, recalled: “I can’t imagine any animal living more than a day in that jungle. I only survived because I was tough and young. No dog could have done the same.” That Judy did only underlines how incredible her instincts were.
Even so, she lived constantly under the threat of being killed by the Japanese - as other dogs and cats had been. Frank needed to act. And when a litter of puppies appeared, he spotted an opportunity.
The head of Gloegoer camp, Colonel Banno - a man marginally less vindictive than most of the guards - spent much of his time drinking or romancing a local woman, who, as it happened, adored Judy and cooed over her. Picking the cutest puppy, one night Frank, PoW No 81, nervously approached Banno’s quarters - in itself an executable offence - and, taking his life in his hands, he placed the tiny creature on the colonel’s desk, offering it as a gift for Banno’s lady friend. The colonel, happily drunk, was amused by the puppy and accepted the gift. Frank took a deep breath.
Explaining to the colonel how important the puppy’s mother was to maintaining camp morale, he asked for her to be made an official prisoner of war, which would protect her under Geneva protocols.
To Frank's immense relief, Banno, in indulgent mood, agreed - and Judy became Prisoner of War 81A Gloegoer - a designation that would later save her from being shot.
In June 1944, on a whim, the Japanese high command ordered the PoWs back to Singapore. The transport was a rusting cargo ship, where dogs weren’t allowed. But, unknown to the Japanese, Frank had trained Judy to jump into a sack, unseen, and managed to smuggle her on board. There being no outward indication that the vessel was carrying PoWs, it was a prime target for Allied torpedoes; the resulting explosions sparked fires and scattered wreckage and burning oil across swathes of the sea.
To save her from drowning inside the broken hulk, and with his heart in his mouth, Frank hurled his precious Judy through a porthole into the water, shouting: “Swim!” - hoping her survival instinct would save her. He escaped through a hatch and, after finally being swept into the waves himself, spent the next two hours swimming around, frantically searching for his beloved friend.
HMS Grasshopper, where Judy served as an invaluable early-warning system even before the war began
Unbeknown to him, Judy was busy saving other lives. She allowed one prisoner, too exhausted to swim, to wrap an arm around her to use as a float. Searle, witnessing it, feared she would be dragged down; instead, she guided the drowning man to a large piece of floating debris, before returning to repeat her action for others.
She saved at least four men, “like an aquatic version of a Saint Bernard” according to Weintraub. Remarkably, she even refused proffered hands from boats that would have rescued her. She finally accepted when there were no more men to save.
“She was more dead than alive,” recalled one witness. “She had totally given herself to the drowning men.”
The move to Singapore abandoned, it was back to Sumatra, and with each successive new camp the prisoners were moved to, conditions deteriorated.
When the Japanese ordered the construction of a new railroad from one side of the island to the other, running through mosquito-infested swamps and thick forests, over mountains and rivers, it was a death sentence for hundreds of men. The prisoners worked from 7am until after dark, with no rest. When progress faltered, the men were beaten with wire. They "dropped like flies", starved or worked to death.
Judy survived only by hunting snakes and rats for herself and for the men to supplement their rations - yet she did so surreptitiously, somehow keenly conscious that she had to keep out of sight of the guards.
Around this time, Frank noticed how she slowly changed - from an obedient mascot to a “wilder” animal, more cunning and instinctive.
The men were physically crippled and mentally in tatters after three long years of brutal incarceration. What kept Frank from despair was, as Weintraub says, “a bag of bones with brown eyes and a cold nose”.
A fellow captive noted that Frank and Judy “lived for each other” and he felt sure that if one fell ill, the other would die. And then the worst thing that could happen to Frank did.
"Frank wondered which would be the best way to kill Judy himself"
In the summer of 1945, when the prisoners were still unaware the war in Europe was over, malaria took hold of Frank and he reached his lowest point physically and mentally. No prisoner wanted to admit to being unwell as it meant even lower food rations. But Frank, trembling with fever, had no choice. His life was in the balance.
Seeing this,one of the Japanese officers ordered that Judy be killed and cooked, and Frank force-fed the first helping. But yet again, Judy’s acute sensitivity to impending danger drove her into the jungle for a lengthy spell before returning to Frank’s side in the sick bay camp, where she kept a careful watch on him. By now, Frank had started to lose the will to live.
Despair even drove him to contemplate killing Judy himself to spare her more suffering from the Japanese. As he stared at the slumbering dog, wondering which would be the most humane method of killing her, Judy woke and looked at him with her mournful eyes. In that moment, Frank determined that he was going to pull through - and so was Judy.
When liberation finally came on August 15 1945, the Sumatra PoWs were in a state comparable to that of the Burma-Siam railway survivors - they were “the living dead”, skeletal, hollow-eyed and disease-ridden. Every one of the nearly 5,000 men at Pakan Baroe - one terminus of the railway - had chronic malaria; half had beriberi. Their discovery shocked the world.
Weintraub believes Judy's ability to survive the horrors stemmed from living on the streets of Shanghai as a puppy after escaping from her kennels, when she was kicked violently by marauding Japanese sailors. "I believe that trauma honed her survival instincts and alertness to danger to a razor's edge," he says. "Other dogs could have risen to the occasion in the prison camps, but few would have been so adaptable."
After the war, LAC Williams and Judy, both nursed back to health, received bravery awards. The inscription on Judy’s Dickin Medal reads: “For magnificent courage and endurance in Japanese prison camps, which helped maintain morale among her fellow prisoners and also for saving many lives through her intelligence and watchfulness.”
The writer obviously studied under Irene Zisblatt.
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