BUDDIES

Far from home and faced with the horrors of combat, hundreds of men and boys fighting in World War Two found comfort and companionship with the animals they adopted at training centres and in war zones around the world. The book is sub-titled 'Heart Warming Photos of GIs and Their Dogs In World War Two', and author and historian L. Douglas Keeney sifted through many of the more than 2.5 million photographs at the National Archive to discover some of the greatest mascot and pet photography taken between 1941 and 1945, compiled from the collections of all branches of the US Military. A B-17 crew in England rigged an oxygen mask for their dog. A stray dog ran through a hail of bullets up the gangplank of a coastguard landing ship in the Pacific. A GI was caught stuffing a dog into his duffel bag. They were photographed and these photographs sent home and published in newspapers and magazines and became part of the theme the home front needed - that the boys were doing alright. Sinbad is a fighting dog from a fighting ship who slept through it all in his bunk when the cutter ran into a U-boat pack, depth charged six submarines, and sank the last by ramming it. Meet Soogie the mascot of a coastguard manned LCI operating in French waters, three years since he came aboard in Galveston, Texas. There are puppies, one abandoned on a sinking ship and rescued by Commander Dixon and Doc Sunshine on cheering-up duty shaking paws bunk to bunk as soldiers recover. The images are by turns funny, moving and inspiring showing the men at work and rest, soldiers, sailors and pilots, and although dogs were the most popular mascots, a few chickens, crows, rats, goats, monkeys and parakeets endeared themselves to US soldiers. Chapters include Dog Tags, Dogs and Dog Faces, Dog Fights, Salty Dogs, Semper Fido and Mascots of the US Marine Corps and Humour in the Face of War. Max the Boxer was a fully-fledged paratrooper in the Army who earned his wings after five jumps. Skippy is a Pitbull/pointer who played a big part in his bomber crew so much so that some of its members painted him on their B-17 Flying Fortresses and fitted him with a custom oxygen mask. Hobo was the Navy dog who followed his pals onto the landing craft when they took a beach. Big archive photos on every page, 175 page large softback.