Smoky was found in a foxhole in New Guinea in Feb 1944. The American thought she must have been a Japanese soldier’s dog, but when he took her to a POW camp, they found out she didn’t understand commands in Japanese or English. The soldier sold Smoky to Cpl. William Wynne of Cleveland OH for 2 dollars Australian.
Over the next two years, Wynne carried Smoky in his backpack, fought in the jungles of Rock Island and New Guinea, flew 12 air/sea rescue, She survived 150 air raids on New Guinea and made it through a typhoon at Okinawa, made a combat jump in Lingayen Gulf, Luzon, in a parachute made for her. She would warn G.I’s of incoming artillery and was dubbed the “angel from a foxhole.”
Early in retaking the Philippines combat engineers were setting up a telegraph line to an airfield. The joints collapsed filling them in with sand. Cpl. Wynne knew that Smoky could climb through the pipe with a new line and that is what she did. Smoky’s work saved approximately 250 ground crewmen from having to move around and keep operational 40 fighters and reconnaissance planes, while a construction detail dug up the taxiway, placing the men and the planes in danger from enemy bombings. What would have been a dangerous three-day digging task to place the wire was instead completed in minutes.
