next on american history tv we'll hear the story of sergeant stubby. a stray dog adoptd by an american soldier who became first canine given a rank in the u.s. armed forces. stubby served during world war i in france. over the course of 17 battles he comforted troops in the trenches and alerted soldiers to incoming german gas attacks.

he was later received by three american presidents. it is about an hour. >> tonight we'll hear the biography of a brave and invaluable soldier who played a significant part in world war i. he couldn't write, he couldn't speak and he couldn't hold a gun. however, his loyalty and abilities were never in question and his inspiration to his fellow infantrymen in the yankee division is legendary. stubby, the war dog, survived the horrors of the trenches and became a war hero. this evening, ann is going to share the story of this very special dog and his soldier. ann has a lively style breathless pacing and intriguing characters, whether they fly under history's radar, or rise to the top of historical recognition. after our visit to the national

world war i museum today, i can only imagine what historical art fat has set her imagination in motion now. please welcome ann bausum. >> hello and thank you. thank you for coming out. i appreciate the work that katie stover has done to make this visit possible and so i would like to start by thanking the kansas city public library and the national world war i museum for sponsoring my visit here. i am very excited to be in kansas city talking with you all about this historical figure and retracing some steps a little bit. i've been doing that over the years, following stubby all of the places he has been. one of the places he's been is kansas city. so i'll talk a little bit more about that as the evening goes on. but let's go to the pictures i

brought. i have lots of historical images to share with you. i'll tell you a little bit about my own background, the story of stubby himself some of the stories behind the creation of the two books that i've written about him, one for adults and one for young readers and we'll save some time at the end for questions as well. first i want to make sure we're all on the same page in terms of terminology. especially for younger members of the audience when we're talking about dough boys, we don't mean this guy. the american soldiers hon went over to the fight in europe during world war i in nicknamed doughboys. stubby had a lot of -- spent a lot of time with them in the trenches and as i said i have two books about him. his story is one of a number that i have written about over

the years and i've really come to see myself as a story teller, someone who takes the true stories from our nation's past and starts to thread them into a captivating, new introduction to readers as well. so some of the stories, as i said, that i will's start with include mine and my own ideas about becoming an author began when i was the age of some of the people here tonight. if you had asked me in fourth grade what do you want to be when you grow up -- and this was me -- i would have said, i'd like to be a children's book author. not really knowing that that might some day come true. it's not surprising that i chose to write about history because i grew up in a very historic town in virginia which has a lot of civil war history. i, in my child-like understanding of the world, decided that the way you could measure how historic you were was by the body count of famous

people and historical figures buried in your town. we had a lot of them. robert e. lee. outside the chapel was the grave for his horse travelers because in lexington we didn't draw the line with humans. all sorts of animals were stone. stonewall jackson, another confederate general is buried at lexington. when his horse who was also famous died, rather than burying him, some enterprising soul thought let's stuff him and put him in the museum. so when i was a kid after school, this was one of my favorite museum artifacted to go and visit with nothing better to do on my meanders home. so history just by now, was flowing through my blood. as i got older i started thinking about other ways to write but i definitely retained that interest in history.

it wasn't until i was quite a bit older. i majored in english. went to college in wisconsin and did all sorts of professional writing but it wasn't until i got older and had kids and started reading all the great children's literature that was in our local public library just like you may do yourselves, that i reconnected with that genre and thought i should really see if i can write for children. so i begn experiment lean experimenting. my kids are now grown up. they are in their 20s and beyond college. as i've watched them grow up, they've watched my career advance until i've had now 11 books published with national geographic, including most recently these two about stubby. so that helps you understand how i got to this stage. let me just jump in right now to give you a nutshell description

of stubby. if you haven't read either of these books maybe this will encourage you to do so. even if you are over the age of 14 you're allowed to look at the kid's book, too, because it has all the great pictures in it too. there's lot of great crossover potential here. here is stubby and his favorite doughboy, james robert conroy. the two of them originated in connecticut. on the east coast the town of new britain is where conroy was born. he and stubby connected up in new haven after woodrow wilson -- i know this community has been studying world war i with great enthusiasm and so you are probably well versed on the fact that even though the fighting broke out in 1914, it was not until 1917 that the united states made the commitment to send troops to europe to join the fight.

and so it was -- there were these regional training camps that were set up around the country, including in new haven. literally on the campus of yale university some of the training took place inside the athletic stadium, the yale bowl and on the playing fields around it. there were camps set up with tents and parade grountsds and so forth. this was a great place if you were a dog to hang out because there was lots of excitement, plenty to watch, and a lot of cooking. because you had all these hungry soldiers. so there were a number of stray dogs that were attracted to this encampment, including stubby. and it didn't take long before stubby and conroy had connected. here we have private conroy, his sisters and, look who's already in the family picture. stubby. in august of 1917. we haven't been able to identify whether this is a friend or perhaps his brother, conroy's

brother. but in any case, stubby was very much attached to conroy and conroy to stubby. even before it had come time to ship out for europe. and when it did come time to ship out for europe it just magically happened that stubby went along. he was more or less assisted by his friends in the camp when the tents were struck and the soldiers climbed aboard a troop train late at night to head to virginia, to newport news, where they were going to catch their transport ship over to europe. when they got to newport news it was a little trickier to figure out how to get a dog on board, but there was some time that passed before they had to ship out, and so stubby was smuggled aboard with some connections that conroy had made with one of

the crew members on the ship. he was snuck on board the ship ahead of time, hidden in a coal bin and not until the ship was well out to sea did stubby steelerize. at some point stubby was discovered. not just by the other fellows but the commanding officer which presented a little problem because the dog was not necessarily supposed to be there and in fact this will been orders given that no dogs were to make this troop. but stubby was quite an adept military figure by then and he had made quite a study of the military. he understood bugle calls. he certainly knew which one mess call was which was dinner time. he understand parade formations and the various military marching and so forth that the soldiers did. and he knew that when a commanding officer showed up military protocol required that if you were in stubby's position

with a dog body, you needed to sit down then rear up on your front paws and raise your raise paw up to your eye and look very soberly at this commanding officer until he returned your salute and then you had given the due respect. having done that the commanding officer said, fine, okay he's our mascot. you can keep him and off you go to the front. so they get to france and there's more training. but before long, they're loaded into box cars and traveling to the war front. they get to this territory in france which has been overrun by german forces and this is by this time february of 1918. so almost a year after wilson asked congress to declare war in the fight.

and in the phase of the warfare known as trench warfare when they're not fighting, they have these bunkers that they are able to take shelter in. we actually have a sketch that one of private conroy's friends had made showing probably conroy in one of their underground bunkers. if you look real closely, look who's in the covers. you kids see that? we got stubby. probably stubby, although he's not officially labeled. so there they are in the bunkers. when they're not in the bunkers, they're above ground. here is a photograph that shows these trenches. this is the german side. you can see one of the machine guns and the trench was this little bit of cover that you had a place for some safety and security that protected you as opposed to being out here in this open area of what became

known as no-man's land because it was no place for anyone to try to hang out and stay alive. here you'd have, for example the german trenches. over here, back in that next room you can imagine we've got the allied trenches and lots of crossfire going back and forth. machine guns. artillery guns. slels of all shells of all different size including very large shells these large guns, also called railway guns, because in order to get them into position to fire the trips literally had to lay tracks railroad tracks to draw the munitions forward. so this is going on pretty much constantly, these barrages back and forth. and the soldiers become adept at doing just about anything in the trenches, whether it's eating or sleeping or taking cover or

fighting or whatever else needs to be done. stubby figures out that this is his new home and he better adapt to it, and so he does. he learns how to hang out with the troops when it is appropriate, how to lay low when it is not. if there's major fighting going on, he was encouraged to go down underground to the bunkers. but he also played the role of official rat patroller so that it was one of his duties was to capture the rats that were running around in the trenches. he sat guard with the soldiers when someone was doing guard duty. it was not uncommon for stubby to cuddle up to a soldier and keep him company on a cold night. and perhaps his most useful skill at this point in the war was that he learned very early on how to detect when a gas attack was about to occur. anyone who has studied up a

little bit about world war i knows that this was -- there was a very serious use of chemical warfare during world war i where canisters filled with poisonous gas were being fired over at the opposing sides and these could cause serious discomfort, serious injury even death. and so soldiers had gas masks that they would put on to protect them. once stubby got to the front conroy helped to arrange for him to get a gas mask. a lot of the animals had gas masks, because otherwise they could be injured like the people. so stubby could detect probably with a combination of sound because dogs have such acute excellent hearing and smell, could tell that a gas canister was going to be fired and would bark an alarm up and down the trenches and he became quite valuable for his ability to do

that. even was credited on one occasion with going through some of the bunkers underground and discovering a soldier who had fallen asleep and hadn't heard any of the alarms and woke the soldier up in time for him to put his gas mask on, too so he was credited with saving this man's life. when you're in the trenches, people are getting injured. stubby got injured at one point during a serious battle in april of 1918 called the battle of shesheprea. stubby climbed out of the trench to see what the situation was and another shell came over and exploded. pieces of that metal casing are the shell hit the dog in his chest and he seemed to be quite seriously wounded. conroy actually risked his own

life to climb out of the trench and rescue stubby and bring him back to the trench. he tried to address his wound. as soon as the soldiers were allowed to leave the trench, he carried stubby back to camp. field doctor took a look at stubby dressed his wounds further and said he needs to go to the hospital so that he can be stitched up and literally ordered the dog to be placed into the plans along with other injured soldiers and stubby was taken to a field hospital perhaps one like this one. these were pretty simple establishments. you can see here they even have grass floor or dirt floors. these aren't regulation hospitals like we would find in our communities. but nonetheless, stubby was sent to this hospital. was dutifully stitched up and spent about six weeks recovering but did recover and went back and rejoined the troops.

here he is reunited with condo i in june of 1918. by now the warfare is shifting and the germans are beginning to make one last attempt to press forward towards paris and the americans are joining the french in trying to push them back. they're now fighting in this open country with wheat fields and little french towns and so forth and fairly soon after stubby's military unit joins this particular battle front area, he's part of the yankee division the 102nd infantry of the yankee division. the german assault collapses and the germans begin to retreat and the allies keep pushing them back towards germany. so everyone is on the move and so is stubby, the war dog. one of the places that they pass

through is a small french community that, while they're there helping to defend the town -- because occasionally gerl en germans will turn and attack again, stubby realizes there's going to be gas so he sounds his usual bark alarm. not only was he able to protect the soldiers but also the citizens of the town. so now he's got these fans, too. already the soldiers are good friends with him, but now he's got all these fans in that town. the women decide well, he's such a soldier, this dog he needs a uniform. and so that's literally where stubby's little military coat comes from. the women make him this jacket and you may be able to see, there's embroidery on it that explains he's in the 102nd

infantry and he has a yankee division patch on an official one just like the fellows in the army do. and special military buttons and so forth. and so is he's truly a war dog now. he's got his own uniform. and he keeps learning. he keeps getting new skills. when the troops are pressing forward against the germans and there is fighting back and forth, even in the midst of this retreat and combat, stubby becomes a rescue dog. this was a job that other dogs had on the battlefield, too, to help the medic find the injured soldiers and dogs are better than people at telling whether someone who's lying on the ground is dead or alive. they have that sense that says this person is alive. so they were able to help pick out the people who needed to be taken care of first and they

stubby and the other dogs could find people who were hidden in the tall grass or the wheat, who were out of sight, and they would carry little supplies that if the soldiers weren't too badly wounded they might be able to even take out some weapons or bandages. stubby byby also started guarding german prisoners of war as the allies moved forward pursuing the german troops. stubby had as any soldier who has served in combat will tell you, these military dogs develop all kinds of instincts and experience based on what they have observed during the war. and so stubby was able to tell difference between an american and a german, probably mostly by

smell. because if you think about it each army is eating its own diet, and so forth. there's going to be a different body odor that's going to be associated with that. and so stubby very well -- even before he started guarding germans -- knew what a german looked like and smelled like. he gained particular fame in september of 1918 when he captured a german all by himself. the details of this are a little bit in dispute but what is clear is that on one evening stubby was out on one of his little prouls and prowls. he liked to do that he'd go awol the soldiers were joke -- absent without leave -- and he'd show up again. he was out on a patrol and he came across this german. some say he was a german spy

trying to figure out where the american and french troops were. others say he was just lost, there was so much confusion, troops were moving. around so much that the soldier had got be histen from his unit. the soldier didn't know where he was. stubby started barking and the soldier starts trying to charm him with german charming dog gee speech which doesn't have much of any impact on stubby except to maybe make him bark longer. so the soldier gives up on getting the dog to be quiet and decides he better run and than doesn't work very well either because we all know dogs are pretty quick runners. stubby is not a very big dog. he's maybe about this taug but he's a strong dog. so he takes off after this guy. the soldier doesn't get very far before stubby's lunged at him and managed to knock him to the ground and grabbed a big hunk of the guy's pants and probably a

big hunk of the guy, too. at which point he says whatever the german equivalent of "i surrender" is. the soldiers come running, they know stubby is up to something and when they get there they discovered he's actually captured his own soldier. so if he wasn't already held in high esteem, he certainly is now. one of the traditions of the battle was that if you captured someone, you got to keep war booty. if they had won medals those became yours. here's an american with one of the german spike helmets. perhaps he's come across it that way or found it on the battlefield. but in this case, this particular soldier that stubby had captured had won a german iron cross, which is one of the distinguished medals that would have been awarded to german

soldiers so naturally that's by rights, owed to stubby and he does have a uniform after all. and so this picture is taken some time later but i'll just point out where they decided to hang the iron cross. you can just see it hanging in this not very polite position on back of the dog's uniform there. stubby has one more distinction that's been added to him. of course the topic of stubby is cheerful in the context of a war but there is a war going on and there is all kinds of destruction, and of course there are deaths and much sadness and trauma associated with the war as well. but it does come to an end and there's great jubilation on armistice day, most 11th, 1918,

when the guns stop firing. there is a cease-fire that marks the end of the fighting and the beginning of the process that will lead to a negotiation for a peace treaty. so the war has ended. stub dehas survived. conroy has survived and over time the process begins of getting the soldiers home. this time stubby is considered a hero and he is also to be on the ship and he is considered a war hero along with everyone else. you see him in a parade, this is in new orleans some year after the war. the dog was so clever. he was actually put in charge of leading different units of the parade. he knee how to follow a color

guard. he knew the various commands to stop and start. he knew when you went past the reviewing stand and you were given the order to turn your eyes right as a form of salute to the dignitaries at the reviewing stand, stubby would turn his head to the right. when the command came to look straight again, stubby flew to do that. he was very much a military veteran. he was honored in all kinds of parades. this was a parade specifically for animals. eventually he was given this very special harness with all these different tags listing all the battles that he'd been in which is also served to allow him to carry a flag as well in a color guard when he would march in the parades. general pershing the head of all the american military soldiers in europe was even

asked and gladly bestowed a medal on stubby that had been created to honor the dog by the humane society. and so this apparently is the only time general pershing pinned a medal on a dog but i think he is doing it with great dignity and stubby is putting up with it as well. there were other dogs that wanted to be as famous as stubby. this is sergeant major jigs. he was sergeant in the marine corps. but sergeant major jigs was not old enough to be in world war ii and he didn't have any particular skills. he did have a cool lat and he was drop-dead ugly. other than that although he and stubby, they knew one another, they would occasionally show up at the same events together,

stubby cast a much larger shadow that sergeant major jigs. and those dogs of the president's too. they would compete for headlines from time to time, harding's dog, laddie boy, and coolidge who had all kinds of pets at the white house and was a big fan of boston terriers and stubby was somewhat related to the boston terrier breed. but stubby eclipsed all of these dogs, too. he was so well regarded that he actually met both of these presidents, as well as woodrow wilson. he met woodrow wilson while the soldiers were still in europe and wilson had come over to negotiate the peace and reviewed a unit of the yankee division. later on stubby visited the white house when harding was president. he was allowed to visit the white house when calvin coolidge was president.

all of these would make headlines. stubby was constantly in the news. he was front page news in the "new york times," "the washington post." and when he traveled people recognized him. he was -- if we think of how the population knows the president's dogs or socks the cat, from the clinton era, or whatever, it is the same sort of idea with stubby. well stubby wasn't content to just retire from the military so he pick up a new career when he came home and he became a football mascot and both for catholic university and for georgetown university. he has his own little uniform with a big "g" on it and he would come out during halftime at the games and someone would start a football going. then stubby would chug after it thn push then push it around with his head. he thought that was great sport. then he would just zigzag around the geeld chasefield chasing this

football until someone told him to stop. and he did this for several years. one thing i came across of in doing this research, this interripgs at halftime with the dog coming out, being the origination of the halftime show. since stubby seems to have done so much else, i think we can jut give him credit for inventing the halftime show, too. it seems completely plausible. again to emphasize how famous the dog was, here he is even having his portrait painted. just people couldn't get enough of him. let's take a little break and i'll give you some background about where this story came from, how it became a book -- or two books and they be i've got some additional photos that will take you back in time to stubby's lifetime ond to his visit to kansas city. so, like most people i had never heard of stubby. and i found out about him by

accident when i was doing research for this book "unraveling freedom," which is about world war i and what life was like at home in the united states while the fellows were overseas fighting in the war. there was an illustration in the book that i needed to write a caption for. this is a piece of art that was created before we had joined the war. you can see how the various combatants -- england germany france russia -- are are being personified by dogs. here's america i'm neutral but i'm not afraid of any of them. and there is this american bull terrier. i'm not much of a dog person. i had never heard of an american bull terrier and i want to do a good job of writing the caption. i decide to do a google search of american bull terrier. instead of finding anything helpful about american bull terriers i start finding all these weird websites that are about unusual dogs, including

this dog named sergeant stubby who has this pedigree that's ungleev ableun unbelievable. i'm thinking this is a joke somebody's made all this up. then i click on the smithsonian and there's this object record about stubby. and it turns out that at the end of stubby's life he was preserved. and if you go to washington, d.c., you can actually see the stuffed remains, the taxidermied remains of this famous dog. i was on a deadline. i needed to finish my caption but i knew i'd found a really interesting story but i didn't want to forget about it so i made a note about it and over the years i kept nurturing the idea. after all, i had been in love with a stuffed horse so what's not to take seriously about a stuffed dog. over time that became the idea for stubby. the research for this book was

problematic because there wasn't a lot of information out there about stubby. a good deal of it seemed to not be accurate but i did float that because the dog was at the smithsonian, that was a good place to start. and i also knew that there had been a scrapbook kept about stubby by his owner or his companion, robert conroy, and that the scrapbook was at the smithsonian. so on two different occasions i went and visited the smithsonian and made acareful record of the scrapbook. these are giant black old-fashioned archival paged scrapbook. and souvenirs from their travels while they were on furlough in europe. you could see -- this is all monte carlo. you can see little train tickets that conroy had to buy to allow

him to take a dog on to the various means of conveyance that they would use as they traveled around. stubby was on vaudeville after he came back to the united states. leer is a flyer about that and the invitation for him to come and be on stage. so this was kind of like opening tutankamun's tomb to find your way into the world of stubby. the scrapbook is filled with newspaper clippings. very few of them are helpfully labeled. most of them look like this so that you have no idea where it was pub accomplished what date it was pub accomplished. but that's okay because then there are these little treasures treasures, like the ymca membership card for stubby making him a special life member good for three bones a day. stubby, the mascot of the 102nd infantry. for good measure it is also good for a good place to sleep.

so when news broke about this i.d. card, this membership card that had been created for the dog created a little bit of ill will. one of the pages of the scrapbook had a couple of notices in it that were letters to the editor from veterans complaining about -- honestly, we've got homeless veterans and we're taking better care of our dogs than -- you know the sorts of things you might expect, and legitimate concerns. and so conroy very diligently cuts them out, slaps them in the scrapbook, then writes underneath in his -- he was a totally optimistic man and had this pr sense before we even really invented public relations. he writes underneath, "criticism of stubby which proves he is famous." and so he was very good at spinning just about anything. then of course while i'm in washington i have to go visit stubby every day and just kind

xlun commune with him as part of the research. stubby's jacket is at the smithsonian. it is not on display with the dog because the fabric it's made from is this very thin chamois leather and these medals are quite heavy. if that jacket were to hang forever on that dog, eventually the leather would tear. so this is actually stored very carefully in an archival container. but i was very fortunate to be able to work with curators at the smithsonian who let me see the jacket. the adult book actually has a very detailed listing of all of the items that are in the -- shown on jacket. if you look right here this big blob of gold is the medal that pershing pinned on the dog. so that's the smithsonian.

i visited a lot of other museums on the east coast because a lot of stubby material was there. even in west haven, this very modest museum this is a place filled with people who have not forgotten about stubby. lots of stubby lore there. this is actually where that portrait is that i showed you. the yale university archives can quite a bit of material about the yale phase of training. nothing about stubby but i found great material there and wonderful photographs that were useful in illustrating the book. and it was very special to get to go to the yale fields go to yale bowl. and even though this should be stubby, this is the yale bulldog, the college mascot, but just to see the places where conroy and stubby would have met and trained together. and i went to the town where conroy had been born and visited the various louses where he had lived, went to graves, all those things that you do when you're trying to -- this is his mother's grave -- that you're trying to do to understand

better about the family. there is a place called the army war college in pennsylvania which has exhibits but also a fantastic archives. i found a lot of great photographic material there, too. it's thanks to all of these archives that you are seeing the kinds of images that are here and that are credited in the books as illustrations for this history. so what are some of those pictures. let's look at some of the other dogs that were in the war. this is not stubby but this gives you an idea, a dog with a gas mask. and a soldier, too, with a gas moofk mask, for that matter. the french, german and english had a canine corps. the united states did not develop a canine corps until well into world war ii. this is a very important dog after the war who is delivering

bottles of beer. it was not uncommon for dogs to pull carts during the war as well or for teams of them to work together pulling supplies, pulling ammunitions, et cetera. these are some red cross workers. here's an example of another rescue dog. lots of mascots. you can see this one here with some first division troops. here's -- these are french troops. they have a mascot not nearly as welby hafdl behaved as stubby because he is on a leash. this is a wild boar that had seemed like an appropriate mascot for reasons that are unclear to the rest rf us for this motorcycle unit, american troops during combat. this is fanny the goat, who was one of the mascots.

also for the yankees division in the 101st infantry. and surely stubby and fanny the goat, maybe would not have liked one another but known one another. so some pictures here helped to illustrate what it was like after stubby and conroy came back. they really were inseparable. it didn't take long for conroy to muster out of his uniform, but it was not uncommon for stubby to put his back on for reunions for special photographs. he and conroy moved to washington, d.c. soon after the war. conroy started is law school. he studied at catholic u. and georgetown which was why stubby was mascoting at those universities. the pair shared a house early on in the 1920s with a group of guys, all veterans, all who had known stubby during the war.

must have been a lot of fun for all of them to be together. there were constantly reunions after the war. groups of soldiers, these are from connecticut. you can see stubby here. here's conroy. this is general edwards who was the leader for most of the war of the yankees division. and this is why stubby comes to kansas city and not surprisingly, he comes in 1921, which if you're up on your local history, you know that's the year that the ground is dedicated for the liberty memorial and the american legion holds its convention in kansas city in conjunction with that to take part in the celebration and participants are given badges and here's stubby's kansas city badge on his uniform so you all are represented on that official

article of clothing. there are pages in the scrapbook about this visit. several with articles. this one has some artifacts on it including the guest pass that was written out for robert conroy and stubby, our famous war dog. while he was at the american legion convention in kansas city. over here we have one of the menus from the train trip when conroy and stubby were traveling by train and aside from the shock of the prices, i'm also interested in all of the hunks of meat that stubby could have chosen from from calf's liver to all kinds of steak. these are just an example of his travels. crowds turned out for the parades and stubby was right there leading parts of the

connecticut soldiers who had come to participate in this great ceremony. this was one of the highlights post-war for the entire endeavor. okay. so i'm doing all this research and i'm finding this great stuff and then i'm running out of material and i'm having a big problem because this great pr guy, robert conroy was so good at promoting stubby that there was virtually nothing about him anywhere in this historical record. the last thing we know about him is that in 1954 he is -- he appears in a story in a washington newspaper because he's been at -- his apartment building that he's living in has caught fire and it has to be evacuated. you can see this girl has very wisely brought her parakeets

this mother of course remembers to bring her baby. conroy when he flees brings stubby. obviously in 1954 stubby is not alive. if you start to look at stubby, he looks a little odd. that's because he's stuffed but this is one of conroy's most prized friends and possessions still and soon after stubby is given to the smithsonian. but the smithsonian has no idea what's happened to convoy when you ask them. just vicariously through some random clippings i was sent by a librarian, i was able to find some information that led me to a grandson. this was conroy late in life and his grandson. i became friends with curt. curt, after i had gained quite a bit of trust -- because he's gotten other queries about stubby before. he tells me the story of the blue samsonite suitcase.

he said, you know, my grandfather during the end of his life gave plea me a suitcase with all this stuff about stubby. i haven't seen it in a while. i think it's at my sister's house in washington. we should go to find it. we make plans to go to washington, d.c. to find the blue samsonite suitcase. turns out not to be as easy the suitcase has long since been empty, the stuff was put in a box, the sister can't find the box. finally at about 11:30 at night we find the box in her garage and i do the strangest archival work i've ever done on the hood of her suv and we start pulling out all of these treasures from this -- these are the most cherished things that conroy had saved that he didn't give to the

smithsonian, pictures that helped to keep him connected to this friend that he credited with getting him through the war. and then things that finally helped us to understand conroy's story, too. his enlistment records. this is where we find that photograph that i showed you early on. it was never pub accomplished before until it was pub plibd in my book and that original pr photo of stubby and his uniform. so the last story i want to tell you is the story of ann and her dogs. truth be told, not since i was a little kid had i been very close to dogs because all of the dogs that i had ever known in my family had all died tragic deaths. starting with pooh, the family dog who was hit by a car until i had pretty much become a cat person. that's why i actually thought that that would be helpful because i would be very impartial when i was writing about this famous dog.

but the more i wrote about him the more i thought man, dogs are cool. dogs, it might be nice to have a dog. one day i came down from working on stubby and i looked out into my backyard and there was this dog. and stray dog. he's like lady, you know, you've been asking for a dog. here i am. this was really tough because i travel a lot here i am it doesn't seem like a very fleissnice thing to do to have a dog. i took this dog to the shelter and a volunteer was probably a much better person to take care of a dog. i have my stuffed stubby that keeps me company and you have the books. so i would be delighted to evens questions. you need to come and use these microphones so that everyone can hear you and your questions are carefully recorded. so go ahead. [ applause ]

>> thank you. >> in the photo where pershing is pinning on the award to the dog, there was -- sitting where we were, there was a young man just beaming on -- >> yes. that was conroy. meant to point that out. exactly. >> do you flow who the person was in back who was looking kind of like right at the camera? >> there was an attache there who was a member of per sling's staff who's in uniform and there is a woman who looks pretty pleased, too with a fancy hat and so forth. she is a representative of the humane society that had helped to sponsor the award. >> was there any color? >> was there any color in the photos? what a good question. this is an appropriate question for someone your size.

and that's because, although there were a few people who had figured out how to take photographs and hand color them that was a very time consuming process and the technology hadn't been been invented yet that would make color paragraphs like we have today. something like digital photography or cell phones that take pictures, no one had imagined something like that was possible. everybody was pretty pleased to have a black and white picture. that's why you're stuck putting up with them. yes? >> i bet somebody can come and lower this mic so our young people are easier to hear. oh perfect. thank you. thanks very much. >> do you have anymore of those? >> i have a group of writing friends that we get together once a month and share our work with one another.

when one of us has a book come out we celebrate. they celebrated by making me my own stubby. they even put the german iron cross in the right place. so yeah, this should be the prototype. you're absolutely right. >> how long did it make you to make each book? >> i lived in the land of stubby a good two years. first i wrote the children's book. i didn't know i was going to be asked to write an adult book until i had finished the children's book. i had done a good chunk of research already and went back and did even more and was able to write a fresh text for adult book. yes? >> what kind of dog is it? >> what kind of dog is stubby? there's a lot of debate about that. some day scholars will argue

about this. i would say stubby is mostly a mutt. he was alive during a time when a lot of effort was being put into breeding what's calmed a boston terrier today. back in the beginning the terriers were bigger didn't necessarily all look black and white the way we tend to think of them looking now. he's close to a boston terrier. he might have bulldog mixed in and maybe other flavors just for fun. thanks. >> you know precisely why stubby's name was stubby? >> okay. this is an excellent question. you're helping remind me of things i should have said earlier. so -- do you want to help me guess? if you take a good look at stubby, what do you think it i

might be? he had a short tail. at some point his tail had been longer, and breeders will sometimes shorten tails to make dogs look a certain way. stubby's tail was short. he became stubby. news reporters didn't always get the facts right back then, just like now, sometimes things get mixed up. i would come across newspaper articles from the era he was alive and they would call him stuffy hubby sometimes articles referred to him as a she even though he was a boy. stubby because of the short tail. >> after he got hurt did he make it? >> did he make it after he got hurt? he was pretty shaken up. i don't know if he was unconscious. no one wrote that down. if he was, that fact has been lost. when he was taken away in the ambulance, the soldiers, his

friends didn't know if he was going to make it. eventually he did recover and that helped to make it possible for him to come home again and march in all those parades. >> someone is waiting over here. >> i'm sorry. let's pay attention to both sides. >> did stubby have any people -- i mean children? >> was stubby a dad? if he was, he we wantkept that secret too. there's been no mention whatsoever of stubby related puppies. i think he's the one and only. good question. yes? >> when did stubby die? >> good question also. stubby died in 1926. we don't know when he was born because he was a stray dog. we figure he was maybe 10 or 11 years old. so he lived for you know seven years after the war ended.

had a pretty good life really. >> how did he get hurt? >> he got hurt when this artillery shell or maybe a grenade -- people argue a little about that -- exploded. if you think of a cannonball the shells are like that but more pointed like a rocket. the metal around them, when it lands, it blows up. the chunks of metal are called shrapnel. if it hits your body, it penetrates like a bullet. it's like a weapon. those pieces of metal cut stubby open where they hit him. it's pretty serious. some die from shrapnel wounds. >> how serious injured was he?

>> pretty seriously injured. they weren't sure he was going to make it. we're lucky he did. yes? >> um, did they have to take the um shrapnel out or just leave it in? >> that's a good question. was it taken out? yes, it was and stitched up. then the wounds were stitched up again. >> how did the war find the dog? >> ask that again. >> how did the war find the dog? >> what do you mean by that? you mean like how did the dog and the war end up mixed up together? you know sometimes things just work out that you don't everyone plan or imagine. the dog just happened to be born at a time when a war was going on. he happened to fall in love with and be fallen in love with troops that were so devoted to

him they couldn't imagine going off to war without him. so fortunately enough of them came back to celebrate it that we now know of stubby's story. does that help? okay. good. >> how and when did conroy die? >> conroy lived to be 95. excellent question. died in the 1980s. one of the things i learned as a got to know his grandson is he had been in fbi. he had quite a varied career. he had done public relations can which isn't too surprising. been very, very active with the military and veteran's organizations and so forth. eventually retired in florida and died are there. he was married twice.

he had a daughter and the daughter had four children. he never had another dog. stubby was the only dog he had. that was his dog. do you want to ask a question? go ahead. >> um my question is that like -- you know that black and -- that a kind of gray picture you said you put in your book that no one had seen before? >> yes. >> it's not in the book. >> it's in the adult book. >> oh. >> you are very observe ant. that got sent off to press because it had the pictures in it. it had gone to press before i saw the blue suitcase.

we didn't know about that picture when that book went to press. the adult book was still being worked on. we were able to fit that in. i said we've got to put this in the book so we did. >> thank you for coming and making a great story greater. >> you're welcome. >> my question is what are you going to do about the movie? >> i'm going to buy popcorn as soon as it opens. you just connect me up with your producer any time. >> was stubby a sergeant? >> this is a copy editor, proofreader in the works. when i first started reading about stubby on the internet he was referred to as sergeant stubby. the story you'll read on the internet is that stubby was initially given military rank because of his service and a lot

of people connected to that capturing of german spy. that a seemed reasonable. i read every newspaper article i could find about stubby. i went through the historical record and read proclamations and so forth made during the war. i could find no evidence of this whatsoever. no newspaper accounts of stubby written in the dog's lifetime ever, ever, ever call him sergeant. he's just stubby. i believe some well intentioned individuals or whatever began referring to him as sergeant stubby as the internet became our go-to source for instant answers to questions. this rank was bestowed on him by fans at some point down the road. someone is welcome to argue and prove me wrong. i do not think the military has

done that. they certainly could. i see no reason they shouldn't. so far it has not happened. yes? >> why did you name the book that? how long did it take to write it? >> stubby the war dog -- sometimes authors name the books, and sometimes editors do. my editor came up with the name for that book. it all runs together. i was working on one and the other and both the same time. i probably spent about nine months researching the book and about nine months writing each of the books and another six or so months helping to finish with the production of then. so you add it all up and it's two years or so working on books. we could be here until that a ball game starts.

i think there's a ball game some folks want to get home for. i am going to take -- i see familiar faces. anyone here that hasn't asked a question in line. let's let you have the last question. the young lady. >> what countries did stubby go to? >> oh my. so stubby would i think only have been in france. some of the troops went over through england before they went to france, but stubby did not. his unit landed in ed ined in france and departed from france. some soldiers were sent to germany to help establish the occupation and peace while treaties were negotiated. the 26th division did not. france and united states would be it.

i am very glad to be able to have been here. there are books in the lobby. i'd be be happy to talk further, answer questions sign books. find out more about stubby through my author website. follow me on facebook. thank you very much. [ applause ]

the 114th congress gavels in tuesday at noon eastern. watch live coverage on cspan and

senate on cspan 2. cspan radio, networks and cspan.org . juanita abernathy speaks next. she spoke and took questions from the audience at the southern historical association annual meeting in atlanta. this is just under two hours. we are fortunate indeed for mrs. abernathy returned yesterday from an extended stay in germany with the family of her eldest daughter wandaline. some of you may know it was