you’re serious about writing my life story, let’s get started. I’m ninety-five years old.” I quickly responded to the e-mail and our almost two-year journey began. We met regularly, sometimes at his home, and other times at the Oak Park restaurant in his neighborhood. Over lunch at Oak Park, Bill shared stories with me and our always-smiling waitress, Misty Cochren. Bill’s son-in-law David Tabar joined us to record the sessions for posterity.
Much like Bill and Smoky, I believe Bill and I were destined to cross paths and find one another. After our first meeting, we agreed that finding each other felt like a “God wink.” Bill had a story to tell. And as I learned about his remarkable life story, so many little-known facts and details regarding World War II emerged. Bill and Smoky lived through kamikaze attacks, horrific typhoons, and combat. Bill credits their survival to his deep faith in God and to the many people back home in Cleveland and Pennsylvania who kept him in their prayers.
Although estimates about World War II casualties vary from fifty million to eighty million deaths, the war was undoubtedly an epic conflict of life and death. Although it was a horrific war, the goodness of humanity shone through it all. So, settle in to hear a story about a man and a dog, and how they lifted the spirits of those around them—no matter what the circumstances—one smile after another.
Smoky, the Dog That Saved My Life
Smoky
© Smoky War Dog LLC
PROLOGUE
SOLDIER BILL WYNNE entered the darkened tent in the 5212th Photographic Wing during World War II. He squinted, adjusting his eyes to the low light. A little dog tied to a truck tire jumped up and down. She bounced off his leg. “Her head was the size of a baseball, her ears resembled miniature windmill blades, and her weight was almost nothing at all,” he later recalled. “I was looking into a grinning, fuzzy face. Almond eyes laughed at me above a jet-black button nose, and a friendly pink tongue licked my hand.”1
Bill asked a nearby soldier about the little dog. He was told that she was found trying to scratch her way out of a foxhole in the jungles of New Guinea. Bill loved dogs, all types of dogs, and he had never seen one like this. She was tiny, smaller than his army boot. That night, Bill slept fitfully thinking of the scruffy dog. What was she doing in a war zone? Was she a breed native to New Guinea or some type of Japanese dog? He pondered ways that he could make this dog his own. But what would I feed her? How could I fight a war with a little dog in tow? Should I bond with an animal only to watch it die?
1
SURVIVING THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Growing up in an orphanage was a great experience. I wasn’t a pure orphan. They had pure orphans there.
—Bill Wynne1
“IT’S JUST FOR a short time,” Beatrice Wynne said, choking back tears.2
Six-year-old Billy clung to his mother, wishing the family could all be together in their home in Cleveland, Ohio. But everything had changed. On March 7, 1924, Billy’s baby brother, Jimmy, was born with spina bifida, an incurable birth defect in which his spinal cord did not develop properly. Then came the strike of 1925 at “The Big Four” railroad. Billy’s dad, Martin Wynne, lost his job. Soon after, his dad was hospitalized for emotional stress, and upon his release, Martin left not only the hospital, but also his young family.
Billy’s mom, Beatrice, no stranger to hard times, had dropped out of school at age fourteen to care for her siblings when her father had died. Now at age thirty-three, she found herself alone and responsible for three young children. In August 1928, after years of struggling with money problems and unreliable babysitters, Beatrice sent her eight-year-old daughter, Mary, to live with her mom, Grandma Caffrey, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The boys went to the Parmadale orphanage.
Jimmy, Mary, and Billy pose in a field in Cleveland in 1926, soon after their dad left the family. From left to right, they are ages one, five, and four.
© William A. Wynne
Once the boys were dropped off at the orphanage in Parma, Ohio, they never got to see one another. Four-year-old Jimmy went to live in the baby cottage, and Billy resided in Cottage 13 with thirty-nine other boys, under the supervision of Sister Lucy, a Catholic nun. That night, Billy looked around the room of forty beds, twenty lined up on each side. Through tear-filled eyes, he wondered how he could feel so all alone in a room full of people.
Although four hundred boys lived at the orphanage in the care of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Augustine, Billy bonded with Rags, the wire-haired Airedale owned by Father Gallagher. Billy trusted the dog. He depended on Rags. After all, he had learned at a young age that people let you down; dogs didn’t. The boy and the dog formed an instant bond. They ran around the grounds together. “Rags started me out,” Bill said. “He gave me a lifelong love of dogs.”3
Beatrice Wynne sits with Billy and holds Jimmy on her lap at a family picnic in 1926.
© William A. Wynne
Billy lived with thirty-nine other boys in Cottage 13 of the Parmadale orphanage from 1928 to 1930.
Photo by Nancy Roe Pimm
On a typical day at the orphanage, the boys explored the woods behind the cabins. They collected animals of all sorts. Snakes were kept in a concrete tub intended for muddy boots, while the turtles and raccoons ran free in the basement. One day, a couple of boys spotted two owls sitting on a branch. One boy leapt at the unsuspecting owls, captured the pair in his sweater, and added them to the ever-growing menagerie. The owls hooted all through the night. The following day, Sister Lucy made it clear that the owls needed to go back to their home in the wild. Nobody argued with Sister Lucy.
One evening, mystical sounds filled the air. A constant drumbeat, along with the sounds of accordions and violins, lured Billy out of the cottage. Deep in the woods, a group of people clad in long-sleeved white shirts danced around a bonfire. While Billy stared at the mysterious sight, an older boy came to his side and whispered, “Those are gypsies. Watch out because they steal little boys.”4 Billy had never encountered these traveling families, now called Romani. That night, Billy slept fitfully, awakening to visions of strangers whisking him away in the dark of night.
Somehow, Billy survived the loneliness of the cold, dark winter. In 1929, in the warmer days of spring, the boys handpicked two baseball teams from their cottage. One of the teams consisted of not only best friends, but also the best athletes. When Billy didn’t make this team, he lumbered away, dejected—a castaway once more. But when his team of misfits practiced together, they bonded over their rejection. The boys felt they had something to prove. By summer’s end, through hard work and camaraderie, the team most expected to lose, won it all. They were crowned Parmadale baseball champions!
The older boys of the Parmadale orphanage competed for bragging
