The incredible story of Gunner the war dog
It all began on the day the Japanese first bombed Darwin: 19 February 1942. Just after ten o’clock that morning, a black and white kelpie was having a scratch in the sun when he heard the low, throbbing sound of approaching aircraft. He didn’t take much notice at first, for he was used to planes around Darwin airport.
But suddenly, these ones did something different. They swooped over the water, dropping bombs. The dog heard explosions down at the harbour. Loud and shattering. Columns of black smoke rose into the air, and he caught the oily stink of burning ships.
Modern warfare had come to Australian soil.
Sirens wailed. Anti-aircraft guns fired. The few defending Kittyhawk fighters were soon shot down. For forty minutes, Darwin and its port were under attack. The earth aflame. And the young kelpie fled to the sanctuary of bushland not far from the aerodrome and the nearby Royal Australian Air Force base.
He waited until the enemy planes had gone. Until it seemed safe to come out and sniff around the air force buildings for scraps.
But all at once the dog heard the distinctive sounds of the bombers again. His enemies were returning. The kelpie crawled under the long wooden building of the officers’ mess and stretched out flat on
the ground, head between his paws.
This was worse than before. This time the enemy wasn’t down at the harbour but directly overhead, bombing the airfields.
The kelpie cowered in terror, his sensitive eardrums bursting, his nose burning with acrid smoke. An impact blast shook his whole body. The mess had been hit. There was fire and crashing timber, and the dog howled in pain as a beam fell across his leg.
He’d been lying in a shallow hole, and was able to free his paw. But the kelpie could only crawl to the end of the building and lie there, whimpering, until the bombers disappeared.
Still he hid among the debris, afraid to move until he heard voices and footsteps. The dog whined, and a man stopped. He looked under the building. And as the airman lifted the dog out he said, “Hey, young feller, what have they done to you?”
The kelpie winced as he was held up, one white paw dangling helplessly. But his rescuer’s voice sounded kind as he added, “Look after him, Percy. He’s got a broken leg. Better take him to the doc.”
The dog yelped again as he was passed over to Leading Aircraftman Percy Westcott. Percy had arrived from Melbourne to join No 2 Squadron only a few days before. He’d been unloading bombs at the ammunition dump when the raid started. As soon as it was over, he raced to the RAAF base to assist – and his job now was to get help for the injured kelpie.
Percy soothed the animal as he walked across the airfield. Planes were blazing on the runway. Almost every building and hangar had been damaged. Six men were dead, and many others wounded. Dr Lloyd-Jones was busy attending to them, and it was some time before he had a moment to look at the kelpie.
“What’s the dog’s name?” he asked.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“His serial number?”
“I don’t think he has one, sir.”
“I can’t treat him without a name or number. We have to keep the military paperwork in order.”
“I see, sir. Well...” LAC Percy Westcott thought quickly. “His regimental number is 0000. And his name is... Gunner.”
“Thank you. That will keep the clerks happy. Now, Gunner, let’s see what we can do for you.”
Dr Lloyd-Jones expertly set the broken leg in plaster, and then Gunner was taken to the tent Percy shared with his mates. The dog was still badly shaken after the bombing; but he was only about six months old, and quickly responded to the men’s attention.
Like most dogs, though, Gunner found the plaster a hindrance and kept trying to chew it off. This time the remedy lay not with the doctor but with the squadron cook, who sprinkled the plaster with mustard and cayenne pepper. Gunner soon left it alone, and spent next day with his tongue hanging out, drinking quantities of water.
A week or so afterwards, Gunner first demonstrated his remarkable hearing abilities.
His broken leg was mending well, and he was out with Percy and the men working on the airfield. Suddenly he stopped. His ears pricked up. Faintly – distantly – but quite unmistakably and getting ever louder, he heard the same droning engine pitch of the aeroplanes that caused him such terror on the day the bombs fell.
His enemies were coming back. Couldn’t these men hear them? Were they deaf? For a dog, each sound is utterly distinctive. Yet these humans seemed oblivious to it.
Gunner started to whine, and to jump up and down. Still the men took no notice. The dog jumped again, trying to warn them another attack was on its way. It was nearly upon them.
“Look at Gunner, Perce,” said his mate, Lindsay Giles.
“He’s just being a nuisance. Get down, Gunner.”
But a few minutes later a wave of Japanese raiders appeared in the skies above Darwin, bombing and strafing the town – though fortunately, for these men caught in the open, sparing the airfield.
Two days afterwards Gunner did it again: jumping and whimpering as soon as he heard enemy planes in the distance.
“That’s good enough for me!” exclaimed Lindsay. “I’m off.”
“What do you mean?” asked Percy Westcott.
“That’s what Gunner did just before the last raid.”
Sure enough, not long afterwards came yet another attack.
It set a pattern for the months that followed. As soon as the dog started jumping, men knew what was coming and they’d head for cover in the slit trenches. Gunner began to run back and forth to the trenches himself, as a further warning. He couldn’t get there fast enough. Percy even got a spare steel helmet – which he held over the dog’s head during a bomb attack, just in case.
It was amazing. Gunner never performed when he heard the Allied planes taking off or landing: only when he heard enemy aircraft. And he was the only dog on the air base to do so.
Certainly, Wing Commander McFarlane made much fuss of his four-legged early air-raid warning. Gunner sat at his feet during meal times. And the CO allowed Percy to sound a portable siren whenever Gunner’s jumping alerted him to a raid. Eventually, the dog was giving twenty minutes’ warning: even before enemy planes showed up on the radar. It was enough time for anti-aircraft crews to man their guns and the fighter pilots to take off.
At first the Japanese flew low, to escape radar detection. But as the warning systems improved, of which Gunner was undoubtedly a part, their planes were forced higher and became more vulnerable.
It made no difference to the dog. He always knew when they were coming. Memories of his broken leg and the cook’s mustard were fixed in his mind.
Between February 1942 and November 1943, there were more than sixty bombing raids over Darwin. No one can estimate how many lives Gunner helped save. Percy Westcott says that Gunner missed giving only very few advance warnings – and then, only because second attacks had followed hard on the first.
Who-are-you
Gunner usually slept beside Percy’s stretcher, under the mosquito net. Indeed, there was always much tangling of nets and abuse from other men whenever Gunner needed to go outside and lift a leg. But one poignant night, Gunner wasn’t there.
A number of dogs from a nearby Aboriginal camp used to roam about the air base, until the CO gave orders to keep them away. Yet Gunner was a particular friend to one of them – a lithe, lean animal – a cross between a greyhound and a whippet, tall enough for Gunner to walk under his belly.
They went everywhere together, and most afternoons the two dogs disappeared to go hunting in the nearby scrub. Nobody knew the name of Gunner’s friend. Men called him Spot and Jack, but the dog never responded. Until one day, during a card game, a new player looked at him and asked, “Who are you?”
Immediately the dog’s ears pricked up. He cocked his head expectantly. From then on he was known as ‘Who-are-you’. He’d come bounding from a hundred yards away at the mention of his name.
Sadly, though, Who-are-you was bomb crazy.
Whenever the air raids were on, Gunner would huddle trembling in a trench, with Percy holding the helmet over his head. But Who-are-you would run in wild circles: howling, almost colliding with walls, and savaging anyone who tried to restrain him.
Of course the inevitable happened. Who-are-you was hit by a bomb, and had to be destroyed. It was the dry season. The ground was so hard men couldn’t drive a pick into it to dig a grave. So they carried Who-are-you into the bush near the guard house and built a cairn of stones around his body to protect it from scavengers.
That night, they couldn’t find Gunner anywhere. But at two o’clock in the morning Percy was woken by a sentry guard.
“Perce, you’d better come and get your dog.”
“Where is he?”
“I’ll show you.”
They went out, and saw that the rocks around Who-are-you had been torn down. Gunner had uncovered the body of his friend and was dragging it down the bush track to be with him and to keep him safe. In the end they had to tie Gunner up until Who-are-you could be buried elsewhere.
Gunner was a lovely dog, Percy Westcott recalls. A faithful dog. A clean dog. Every day he’d join the men in the shower block and wouldn’t leave until someone put a dab of soap on his coat. Then he’d shake himself dry all over their clothes.
Gunner went up with the pilots practising landing techniques – ‘circles and bumps’ – around the airport. And he’d sit with the men at the outdoor pictures, barking at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lion.
He and Percy were best mates for a year and a half, until the man was posted south. Gunner stayed in Darwin. It was thought his health might suffer if he moved to a Melbourne winter. So Gunner lived with his second best mate – the RAAF butcher.
Percy Westcott didn’t see him again. He often meant to go back, but didn’t. Yet he never forgot his dog and the wartime service rendered the people of Darwin whenever Gunner heard the distant sounds of approaching enemy aircraft buzzing in his amazing ears.
This is an extract from Animal Heroes by Anthony Hill, published by Penguin Random House.
Image credit: Australian War Memorial.