In my Dad's WWII photos, there are lots of pictures of him with a dog.
I asked Ma about it and she told me: "The dog's name is Sally and she attached herself
to your father at Anzio". HUH? How can you have a dog in the middle of a war zone??
Then I noticed "Sally" was in photos with Dad taken in Rome. How'd she get from Anzio to Rome? Dad had told my mother that somehow Sally always managed to find him amidst thousands of other GIs and that his buddies always got a kick out of it. He also said
that while walking along a road, a Nazi plane strafed their column and he dove into
a ditch & Sally dove in on top of him. Dad got some kind of injury
to his leg, but it must've been minor & they were both OK.
When I got to Dad's pictures in France - there was Sally again. C'mon!!! What'd she
do? get on an LST as part of the invasion of Southern France???
Sure enough, I found several grainy photos of Sally & you can see she's on a boat ramp
with water on either side. In one of them (I can't locate the scanned photo at the moment),
she's looking at my father holding the camera with almost an asking expression. Like
she's saying: "Can I go too?" Well, clearly the answer must've been "yes".
How in the heck did he manage THAT???
I don't know what happened to Sally when dad came home in March '45.
It must've been another loss & heartache for him to leave her behind.
Here's Dad with Sally at Anzio & Rome and Sally getting on board for Aug 15th invasion.
Anyone else know of GIs with pets in theater?
Mary Ann