Medal for British PoW dog goes on display

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2006

LONDON (AFP) — A medal awarded to the only dog to be officially registered as a prisoner of war in World War II went on public display for the first time.

Judy, a mascot on board a torpedoed Royal Navy vessel in southeast Asia, helped dozens of men survive a Japanese PoW camp in Sumatra after she was captured alongside marooned members of the ship's crew in 1942.

Frank Williams, a British airman at the camp, befriended the pedigree pointer -- and later successfully persuaded Japanese officers to register her as a PoW.

She went on to survive gunshot wounds and alligator bites -- as well as helping her fellow PoWs to distract camp guards -- until the end of the war, when Williams smuggled her onto a ship back to England.

In 1946 Judy was presented with...