Smoky’s story is a fascinating and gripping one, as much because the tiny little hero of a dog

was such an enigma right until after the war had ended. As Churchill famously once said
(albeit of the Soviet Union and the role it might play after the end of the war), she was a
riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma!

Smoky was such a mystery because she was discovered by Allied troops on the remote
Island of New Guinea, abandoned in a foxhole in the midst of the steaming jungle. Those
who founded her were at a loss to comprehend how such a tiny little dog could have ended
up – and survived – in such a war-torn and hostile part of the world. They could only
conclude she must have been some kind of a Japanese military mascot, as the territory had
only recently been seized of the Japanese. But when they tried to see if Smoky would
respond to commands issues in Japanese, their interpreter could get no response.

Even more enigmatically, no one could identify what her breed might be. She was of a type
of dog never seen by any of them before. Of course, Smoky was a Yorkshire Terrier, a breed
then little-known outside of the UK. It took many months for the soldiers - who adopted her
as their squadron mascot - to discover this, but that did little to solve the wider mystery.
How had a dog originally bred in England to hunt vermin – a ratter – end up lost in the deep
New Guinea jungle in WWII?

In part it was the unravelling of that mystery – coupled with the tiny dog’s immense heroism
– that compelled me to write her story. That, plus the peerless work carried out by the 26 th
Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, the unit that adopted her. The photo recce pilots – who
flew unarmed and unescorted deep behind enemy lines – remain in many ways the unsung
heroes of WWII. It has been a privilege to tell their story, as well as that of their hero dog.