Sgt. Stubby: Connecticut's Hero Dog of WWI His was the bark heard round the world.
In 1917, a century ago this spring, a stray dog with brown and white fur and a thick snout wandered onto the New Haven fields near today’s Yale Bowl, where the 102nd Infantry of the U.S. Army’s 26th Yankee Division camped and trained. Pvt. J. Robert Conroy, a 25-year-old New Britain man, adopted the dog and named him Stubby. The dog went on to serve in the trenches of France during World War I, where he would bark, salute, charm and earn his way into history for a number of heroics that seem ripped from a movie.
During his “service,” Stubby learned how to give members of the Yankee Division advance notice of gas attacks. He searched for wounded soldiers between the trenches in “no man’s land,” where he was able to discern enemy from allied fallen, caught a German soldier who had snuck over to the Allied side, and was even wounded in the conflict but survived to bark another day, meeting three U.S. presidents after the war.
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Ann Bausum, author of two books about Stubby, Sergeant Stubby (for adults) and Stubby The War Dog (for children), first came across the legendary Connecticut canine by accident. Bausum, who lives in southern Wisconsin, and is “not a dog person,” says she was doing photo research for another project when she saw an image of Stubby online.
