Six Impossible Episodes: The Dickin Medal

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
I'm Tracy V.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Wilson, and I'm Holly Frye.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
While I was working on our episode on Buck versus
Bell that came out recently and I was feeling kind
of just progressively angrier with every sentence of that, I
caught up with Rosemary Moscow, who asked me if I
had ever heard about a pigeon named Winky. If you
don't know who Rosemary is, she's a science writer and

(00:37):
a naturalist, and she wrote a Pocket Guide to Pigeon
Watching and the Birding Dictionary, and a number of other books.
Several of our bird centric episodes ultimately trace back to
Rosemary in one way or another. Anyway, Winky was awarded
the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals dick In Metal for

(00:59):
Hell to save the crew of a ditched aircraft during
World War Two, and so her question about Winki led
to a whole conversation about the Dicken Metal and its founder,
Maria Dicken, and I thought, Man, this sounds like what
I really should be working on after this infuriating upsetness
that is Buck versus Bell. It's also been a while

(01:22):
since we have had an installment of Six Impossible Episodes,
so something that would lend itself to that felt kind
of like perfect timing. There is some controversy around the
Dicken Metal and other honors that are awarded to military
working animals. Maria Dicken wanted to raise the status of
animals in society and to bring more awareness of the

(01:43):
work that they were doing during World War Two, but
there are also discussions of whether awards like these anthropomorphized
animals or glorify war, and whether it's ethical to have
military working animals at all. That is really not what
this episode is about, but I did want to just

(02:03):
acknowledge it. All of these animals were in some kind
of peril, but I tried to keep the animal harm
to a minimum in this episode. None of these animals
were killed while they were earning these metals. There will
be some mentions of animal deaths in this episode, though,

(02:23):
but I tried to keep it pretty basic, not a
ton of detail on deaths or injuries.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Six Impossible Episodes is where Tracy rounds up six topics that,
for one reason or another, aren't workable as individual episodes.
And the first one we're going to do today is
actually Maria Dick and herself, because while her life sounds
fascinating and she did a lot, we just don't have
the kind of detail about her that would make a
full length episode. She did publish a memoir called The

(02:52):
Cry of the Animal in nineteen fifty, but according to
WorldCat there are only three copies of it in libraries
in the world today, and it was only about ninety
pages long, so not comprehensive, impossible to get a hold of.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah. I did not even try to put in an
inner library alone request because number one, something that rare
might not be circulating at all, and number two, at
only ninety pages long, I did not think it was
going to yield information that would make that time delay
worth it. There is also the other thing that sometimes

(03:28):
happens in libraries with older, rare but not noteworthy books,
where if you and I don't want to slag any
libraries because all libraries or many libraries have this problem,
you put in the ill.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
And they go, uh, oh, we don't know where that
book is. Oh sure, it happens all the time.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, I was kind of surprised not to find a
scan of it anywhere, but I did not, so I
just moved on. Maria Elizabeth Dicken, known as Mia, was
born on September twenty second, eighteen seventy, in South Hackney, London.
Her father was William George Dicken and her mother was
Ellen Maria Excel Dickon. This family really did not have

(04:12):
a lot of money. MIA's father was a minister and
Mia was the oldest of eight children. As she entered
her adult life, Mia contributed to the family's income by
starting her own voice production studio and teaching singing. On
September first, eighteen ninety nine, when she was twenty eight,
Mia married her first cousin, Arnold Francis Dickon. Marriages between

(04:36):
cousins were not unheard of in England in the late
nineteenth century, but they were definitely becoming less common than
they had been, and this marriage would have made mea
financially more comfortable, since Arnold was a successful chartered accountant
and it was just the two of them with no
children to support, unless there were two chartered accountants named

(04:56):
Arnold Francis Dickon in London. According to a death notice in.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
The Daily Telegraph, he died in nineteen twenty eight, and
we really don't know much at all about their relationship.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah, there's a page for him on I think find
agrave dot com that says that he died in uh
if I'm remembering correctly, nineteen seventy eight, at the age
of more than one hundred, and I'm like, I think
somebody might be misreading that too. As a seven on

(05:27):
a weathered tosta entirely possible. Uh Mia liked music and literature.
In nineteen oh five, she published Suggestive Thoughts from the
Temple being striking passages from the teaching of R. J.
Campbell something else I couldn't find a scan of. Reginald
John Campbell was the Congregational minister of the City Temple,

(05:50):
and he had a reputation for kind of eccentric nonconformity.
He was simultaneously very popular and very controversial, and it's
not fully clear what Dicken's relationship with him and the
church was. This book, though, was basically a collection of
quotes from him. According to her entry in the Oxford

(06:11):
Dictionary of National Biography, Dickon also became part of the
spiritualist movement, and it also says she was connected to
James Moore Hixon, founder of the Society of Emmanuel, later
called the Divine Healing Mission. This was a healing ministry
focused on intercessory prayer and the laying on of hands.

(06:31):
Dickon gave up her voice studio after she got married,
and she started volunteering in some of the poorest neighborhoods
of London. At first, her focus was on people, but
over time she noticed how many pets and working animals
needed care in these neighborhoods, and nobody was providing that care.

(06:52):
Then one night, her own dog became very ill and
ultimately had to be euthanized, and as she was trying
to comfort her her dog in her last hours, Dickon
realized that she was witnessing the same kind of pain
and weariness that she would be seeing if she were
sitting up with a dying human.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
So she decided she would try to help. A clergyman
loaned dick in some basement space in Whitechapel and she
opened the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals on November seventeenth,
nineteen seventeen. She was forty seven at this point. The
sign out front read quote bring your sick animals, do
not let them suffer. All animals treated, all treatment free.

(07:35):
The People's Dispensary for Sick Animals grew very quickly and
it became both popular and beloved in the neighborhoods that
it served, but it also faced some controversy. Veterinary medicine
was relatively new as a discipline. The first veterinary schools
in the UK had been established at the end of

(07:56):
the eighteenth century. The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons was
established in eighteen forty four, and the eighteen eighty one
Veterinary Surgeons Act had been passed to regulate the field. Overall,
veterinary surgeons, which include what we in the US would
just call veterinarians, were focused on large animals, especially horses.

(08:20):
There was not much focus on small companion animals, and
a lot of vets in the UK had pretty disparaging
attitudes about their colleagues who did treat dogs and other
small animals. We talked about some of that in our
episode about the history of veterinary medicine. We sure did
the PDSA treated all animals, not just pets, but they

(08:42):
treated a lot of pets, and while the PDSA had
some connections to veterinary surgeons. The people providing this care
overwhelmingly were not veterinary surgeons themselves. They were volunteers, and
a lot of them were women. There was a stereotype
of philanthropically minded middle and upper class women focusing on

(09:02):
the plight of dogs. British law didn't ban anyone from
providing care for animals, just from calling themselves veterinary surgeons
or RCVS members if they were not, and the PDSA
was not doing any of that, so they weren't doing
anything illegal, but they did face criticism from the RCVS
and other organizations for staffing their clinics with lay people

(09:25):
without the supervision of a veterinary surgeon. Simultaneously, the RCVS
bylaws banned quote quack covering or veterinary surgeons providing legitimacy
to phony practitioners, so there weren't many veterinary surgeons who
even wanted to work with. The PDSA were not saying
that these volunteers were quacks, but the word quacks was

(09:48):
interpreted broadly enough to include anyone who was not a
trained veterinary surgeon but was providing animal care. Basically, no
one wanted to risk their reputation endorsing people that didn't
have training. These two sides did not start to move
toward working together until the late nineteen thirties.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
The PDSA incorporated in nineteen twenty three, and it received
a bequest of fifty thousand pounds from the estate of
Sarah Martha Grove Hardy in nineteen twenty six. This allowed
Dicken to open a large treatment and training facility. So
while these volunteers who worked with the PDSA were not
veterinary surgeons, many of them were going through an in depth,

(10:31):
hands on training program, and it was a program that
was way more focused on companion animals than what people
would typically get at a college of veterinary surgery. Within
a decade of its nineteen seventeen establishment, the PDSA had
almost sixty clinics around the UK, as well as three
horse drawn caravans that worked.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
As mobile clinics. It had also started establishing clinics internationally.
Dicken had also started a magazine for or the dispensary
called The Animal's Advocate, as well as the Busy Bees
Club to teach children how to care for their pets.
In nineteen twenty nine, Dicken was awarded the Order of
the British Empire. When World War II started and the

(11:14):
UK was hit with bombing raids, the PDSA established an
animal rescue squad to look for and care for affected animals,
and in nineteen forty eight Maria Dicken was named Commander
of the Order of the British Empire. Maria Dicken died
of broncho pneumonia caused by influenza at her home on
March first, nineteen fifty one, at the age of eighty.

(11:37):
A blue historical plaque was placed at her birthplace in
twenty fifteen.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
The PDSA still exists today as a charity for pets
in need. There are forty eight pet hospitals run by
them across the UK and they treat thousands of animals
every year. Thousands of people also volunteer for the organization today,
though it is fully interconnected with the greater world of
veterinary medicine in the UK. That's a process that, like

(12:06):
we said, started in the late nineteen thirties before World
War Two started.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
There was kind of a.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Break in moving together during World War Two, and then
after the war was over, they started kind of building
some bridges there.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Maria Dicken established the Dicken Medal for animal gallantry or
devotion to duty in war or conflict during World War II,
and after we take a break, we're going to talk
about some of the animals who earned that award.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
The first dick and Medal we're going to talk about
is really three medals. They were the first three Dicken
Medals ever to be awarded, and they were all awarded
to pigeons on the same day, which was December second,
nineteen forty three. The pigeons were named Winkie, White and Tyke.
Tyke was also called George. These were not at all.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
The only pigeons to be awarded the Dicken Medal, and
the first stretch of this award's existence, which was from
nineteen forty three to nineteen forty nine, it was awarded
to more pigeons than any other animal. The pigeons who
were awarded the Dick And Medal were a tiny, tiny
fraction of all of the pigeons that the British used

(13:26):
in the war. The National Pigeon Service was formed in
February of nineteen thirty nine, and membership was open to
anyone who had at least twenty trained homing pigeons. Thousands
of pigeon fanciers participated in this service, and more than
two hundred thousand pigeons were used across all branches of
the British military, as well as some parts of the

(13:47):
civil service. Many of these pigeons rode aboard aircraft in
watertight baskets, so that if the pilot had to ditch
the plane or was forced to land and didn't have
radio contact, they could still send a message about where
they were.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Winky was the board of Beaufort bomber from the number
forty two Squadron on February twenty third, nineteen forty two.
This bomber was damaged by anti aircraft fire while flying
over Norway, and while they were trying to get back
to Scotland, they had to ditch into the North Sea.
The four man crew did not have time to radio

(14:22):
their position before ditching, and once they were in the water,
they did not have a way to write a message
about where they were, so they opened Winkie's basket and
Winki flew home one hundred and twenty miles away through
some very terrible winter weather. When she got there, her owner,
George Ross, contacted the Royal Air Force. The RAF calculated

(14:45):
where the plane must have gone down based on how
fast a pigeon could fly, adjusted for the windspeed and direction,
and the fact that Winky was covered in oil from
the crash. About fifteen minutes after her arrival at home,
the RAF dis patched a search team and they successfully
found and rescued all four of the plane's crew. Winky's

(15:07):
Dick and Metal citation read quote for delivering a message
under exceptionally difficult conditions and so contributing to the rescue
of an aircrew while serving with the RAF in February
nineteen forty two. The two other pigeons who were awarded
the Dick and Medal on the same day had the
same basic citation, but with different dates. One was White Vision,

(15:29):
who was one of two pigeons aboard a Catalina flying
boat with a human crew of eleven. They had to
ditch into the ocean near the Hebrides in Scotland in
October of nineteen forty two. The amphibious aircraft was able
to remain afloat for a while, so the crew was
able to take refuge on it and attached notes before
releasing the birds. One of the pigeons didn't arrive back home,

(15:52):
but White Vision did, flying for nine hours against heavy
headwinds and arriving safely.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
Based on the note she carried.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
A rescue operation was mounted and the aircraft's entire crew
was rescued just before that aircraft sank. Tyke's home was
in Libya, and he was raised to be part of
the Middle East Pigeon Service, which had been established in
nineteen forty two to serve the British military in Northern Africa.
Tyke had been assigned to a US aircrew which had

(16:22):
to ditch into the Mediterranean in June of nineteen forty three.
He made a similar long distance flight of about one
hundred miles through poor visibility, leading to a successful rescue
of all four of the crew. A lot of the
other pigeon dick and medals are very similar to those three,
and as we said earlier, pigeons received more Dicken medals

(16:45):
than any other animal in the nineteen forties. The next
most honored animals were dogs, and one of them was Rip,
the twenty seventh animal to be awarded the Dicken metal.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Rip was not bred to be a military dog. He
was mixed breed terrier who had presumably been someone's pet
or possibly even astray. A lot of British write ups
describe Rip as a mongrel, and in pictures he is
both adorable and a little bit scruffy looking if he
was someone's pet, though we do not know who that
person was. In nineteen forty, an air raid warden named

(17:20):
Mister E. King found him among the rubble after a
strike on the Poplar district of London. King started feeding
the dog, who was obviously hungry, and while King wasn't
really intending to keep him, Rip just stayed around. Soon
Rip had become something of a mascot to the Suvile
Street Air Raid Patrol, which was King's civil defense squad.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
Rip had no formal training in search and rescue, but
he turned out to really have a knack for finding
survivors after German air raids on London. King described this
dog as quote never in the way, but always eager
to do his bit. Rip is credited with finding and
helping to rescue more than one hundred people during the Blitz,

(18:06):
which lasted from September of nineteen forty to May of
nineteen forty one. He was awarded the Dick And Medal
in nineteen forty five quote for locating many air raid
victims during the Blitz of nineteen forty.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Rip continued to accompany King until the end of the war,
and his success at finding people has been credited with
encouraging British authorities to formally train search and rescue dogs
later on in the war. He lived until after the
war was over, and after his death, which seems to
have been natural and age related, he was buried at
the PDSA Animal Cemetery in Ilford.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Rip was a very good boy, and our next dick
And Medal recipient was a very good girl named Judy,
a purebred liver and white pointer born in Shanghai in
February of nineteen thirty six. If you're like me and
you're not really up on dog color terms, a liver
is a shade of deep brown. I had imagined it
as kind of reddish.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
It's not. I guess it could maybe have a red tent,
but it's more of a deep shade of brown. Her
name was originally Shooty, but it was anglicized while she
was still a puppy. And I don't really know what
the story is around that, if there is one. She
was born in a kennel to a dog that belonged
to a British couple, and that kennel was primarily used

(19:26):
by Europeans who were living in Shanghai. At the end
of nineteen thirty six, the HMS NAT was looking for
a ship's dog and they purchased Judy. They tried to
train her as a gun dog so to retrieve game
during hunting parties on land. This is a pretty natural
thing you would train a pointer of all dogs to do,

(19:46):
but she kept jumping overboard, so she kind of became
more of a mascot. She did, however, learn to alert
the crew when she heard incoming ships and aircraft, and
at one point that included giving them an advance warning
of pirates near by. Judy was transferred to the HMS
Grasshopper along with some of the NATS human crew in

(20:07):
nineteen thirty nine after Japan bombed the US naval base
at Pearl Harbor in December of nineteen forty one. The
HMS Grasshopper served in the War in the Pacific. The
Grasshopper helped support the Allied retreat from Malaysia in nineteen
forty two and then was hit by a Japanese bomber
on its way to Indonesia. The crew, including Judy, were

(20:30):
forced to abandon ship and wound up on the apparently
uninhabited island of sink Kep along with survivors of another ship,
the HMS Dragonfly. They had no food or water, and
most of the survivors were covered with oil. Judy led
them to a freshwater spring while they awaited rescue. They

(20:50):
were able to flag down a passing Chinese ship and
get onto it and leave the island, but the survivors
did not make it all the way to safety in
Sumatra and made an overland trek to what they thought
would be an Allied outpost, but the Allies had already
evacuated from there, so the crew, including Judy, were taken

(21:12):
prisoner by the Japanese. When they arrived at the glogor
Pow camp in Sumatra, the sailors smuggled her in and
then tried to keep her hidden from the guards. Eventually,
leading aircraftsman Frank Williams of the Royal Air Force started
sharing his food rations with Judy, and he convinced the
guards to register her as a prisoner. Of war. According

(21:35):
to some accounts, at this point, Judy was pregnant, and
this agreement came about after the camp commandant was offered
one of her puppies. She was assigned prisoner number eighty one,
a gloger Medon, and was the only dog to be
officially registered as a pow during World War II. Judy
spent more than two years at this camp, bolstering the

(21:57):
morale of the POWs, helping managed the population of rodents,
and warning the prisoners of nearby scorpions and snakes. She
also developed a reputation for trying to intervene When the
guards were punishing the prisoners, she would bark and snap
at them. During this time, Williams and other prisoners also
trained her to do things like hide and follow signals

(22:20):
like low whistles, so that they could keep her hidden
and move her discreetly when they needed to. When the
camp's internees were moved to Singapore in nineteen forty four,
Williams smuggled Judy onto the ship the Hairo Giku Maru
in a rice sack. At the start of the voyage,
Williams kept her hidden, but while they were en route,
the Hari Giku Maru was struck by torpedoes that were

(22:43):
fired by the HMS Truculent and started to sink. Williams
pushed Duty out through a porthole, and once in the water,
she started trying to pull the men who couldn't swim
very well to safety, and she pulled pieces of floating
debris for survivors to hold on to. She and Frank
Williams both survived this, but at first william did not

(23:04):
know that Judy had made it. They were reunited sometime
later at another Pow camp. Judy stayed with Williams and
the rest of the POWs as they were forced to
clear land through the Sumatran jungle to build a new railway.
During this hard labor, William's credited Judy with giving him
and the other men the will to live. After the

(23:25):
war ended in nineteen forty five, William's, Judy, and the
other POWs were liberated from the camp and Judy once
again had to be smuggled on board a ship, this
one bound for the UK. Once in the UK, she
was kept in quarantine for six months that was part
of the effort to keep the United Kingdom free of rabies,
and then she was reunited with Frank Williams. She was

(23:47):
enrolled as a member of the Return to British Prisoners
of War Association, and in April of nineteen forty six
she was awarded the Dick And Medal quote for magnificent
courage and endurance in Japanese prison camps, which helped to
maintain morale among her fellow prisoners, and also for saving
many lives through her intelligence and watchfulness. The PDSA also

(24:09):
awarded Williams the White Cross of Saint Giles, its highest
human Owner, for the care that he gave Judy during
the war.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Judy died on February seventeenth, nineteen fifty at the age
of fourteen. She and Williams were living in Tanzania at
the time, and she was buried there along with an
RAF jacket.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
We're going to take a little sponsor break and then
we will talk about some other types of animals to
be awarded the Dick and Medal. Three horses were awarded
the Dick and Medal in the nineteen forties. Those were Olga,

(24:49):
Upstart and Regal. They were all police horses and they
all received the award on April eleventh, nineteen forty seven.
Olga and Upstart were both on duty when flying bombs
struck the neighborhoods where they were working, and they helped
control traffic and assist rescuers in the aftermath. One of
them did kind of run off for a minute, but

(25:09):
came back. Regal remained calm when his stable was struck
by an incendiary bomb on two different occasions. Their stories
are all pretty straightforward, so we are really going to
focus on a horse who was awarded the dick And
Medal for her actions during the Korean War. Her name
was Sergeant Reckless and she was also an episode request

(25:32):
from listener Chantel many many years ago. Chantell, if you
still listen to this, So we finally got to this finally.
Unlike the other animals that we've talked about so far,
Sergeant Reckless was working with the United States military, specifically
the US Marine Corps. She was a small mayor born

(25:56):
in South Korea in nineteen forty eight. Most horses describe
her as a Mongolian, but according to the US Marine
Corps Museum, she was a Halla horse, which is a
Korean cross between a Thoroughbred and a Juju, which is
a South Korean breed.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
She was bred to be a race horse, but on
June twenty fifth, nineteen fifty, the North Korean People's Army
invaded South Korea, which marked the beginning of the Korean War.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
A couple of.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Years later, Lieutenant Eric Peterson of the fifth Marine Regiment
purchased her for use as a pack animal, using two
hundred and fifty dollars of his own money. He bought
her from a stable boy at the racetrack who reportedly
was trying to raise money to buy an artificial limb
for his sister. She had lost a leg after stepping

(26:45):
on a landmine. At first, the Marines just called this
horse reckless, possibly because she was trained to carry Recoilis rifles,
which sounds kind of similar to the word reckless. She
would carry these rifles, along with ammunition and other supplies,
from a supply point to the front lines. Over time,

(27:06):
she started doing at least part of this trip alone,
and eventually she would do the entire round trip by herself.
The Marines thought of her as one of their own,
and they started to refer to her as private Reckless.
They were also pretty entertained by her antics, because apparently
she liked to make herself at home in their tents,
and she was fond of eating things like pickles, eggs,

(27:27):
and poker chips, and drinking coca cola and beer. Obviously
not a good diet for a horse. Yeah, please don't
feed these two horses. In fact, don't feed them things.
If they're not your horse. You don't know what they
may or to me not want to eat.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
And really, no one should eat a poker chip.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yeah, yeah, apparently it was a significant number of poker chips.
And I don't know if she had any ill effects afterward.
Reckless's most dramatic moments were in March of nineteen fifty
three during the Battle for Outpost Vegas. This took place
during the peace talks that ultimately led to an armistice

(28:07):
in the war, and Chinese forces were trying to secure
more territory for North Korea by attacking multiple outposts in
this area. During this battle, Reckless made fifty one round
trips to the front lines over a single day, carrying
ammunition supplies there and returning with wounded men and the

(28:28):
bodies of men who had been killed. She received two
different shrapnel wounds, but she carried on. She delivered an
estimated nine thousand pounds of ammunition supplies. Her other duties
during the Korean War included helping to string telephone wire,
and she also became the first horse known to participate

(28:49):
in an amphibious landing with the Marine Corps.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
An armistice ended the fighting in the Korean War in
July of nineteen fifty three, and Reckless was retired from
the marineae Corps in nineteen sixty. By that point, she
had been promoted to staff sergeant. She gave birth to
three surviving foals after arriving in the US after the war,
named Fearless, Dauntless, and Chesty. After her retirement, she continued

(29:15):
to live with the Marine Corps until her death after
a fall in May of nineteen sixty eight. According to
the US Marine Corps, during her lifetime, Reckless was awarded
two Purple Hearts, a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, a
Presidential Unit Citation with Bronze Star, the National Defense Service Medal,
a Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Korea Medal, a

(29:38):
Navy Unit Commendation, and a Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation.
There are multiple statues of her, including at Marine Corps
Base Camp Pendleton in California and the National Museum of
the Marine Corps in Virginia. The PDSAS stopped awarding the
dick And Medal in nineteen forty nine, but revived it

(29:59):
in two th Sergeant Reckless was posthumously awarded the dick
And Medal on July twenty seventh, twenty sixteen, quote for
attention to duty, devotion, and loyalty to the United States
Marine Corps. She was the sixty eighth animal to be
awarded the Dicken Medal, and in twenty nineteen, she also
became the first animal to be awarded the Animals in

(30:20):
War and Peace Medal of Bravery, which was established as
an American equivalent of the Dicken Medal, and our.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Last Impossible Episode and dick And Medal recipient is the
only cat ever to be awarded this medal, and I
have to admit when Rosemary and I were talking about
this and we read Simon the cat's award citation, it
felt to me a little bit like a participation trophy.
Simon quote served on the HMS Amethyst during the Yang

(30:49):
Sea incident, disposing of many rats, though wounded by a
shell blast throughout the incident, his behavior was of the
highest order, although the blast was capable of making a
whole over foot in diameter and steel plate. So with
just that pair of sentences to go on, this sounded
to me just kind of like a cat doing cat
stuff on a damaged ship. Of course, there is more

(31:12):
to it than that, and I rescind my original judgment.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
The Yangtze Incident, also called the Amethyst Incident, took place
during the Chinese Civil War. This was between the Nationalists
or Kuomintang under Shang Kai Shek and the Communists or
People's Liberation Army under Mauzudong. The conflict stretched back into
the nineteen twenties, and the two sides had united to
try to fight Japan during the Second Sino Japanese War,

(31:39):
which is marked as the beginning of World War II
in Asia. But as World War Two ended, this alliance
broke down and the resulting war became interconnected with the
Cold War between the United States and the USSR. The
US supported the Nationalists and the USSR supported the Communists.
The US also made repeat attempts to negotiate between the

(32:02):
two sides.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
While the UK was not directly involved in this civil war,
it did have a very long history of involvement in China,
including the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century and a
series of unequal treaties that favored British and other Western
interests over those of China. At this point, British presence

(32:25):
in China included an embassy at Nanjing, and in April
of nineteen forty nine, the HMS Amethyst was ordered up
the Yangxe River to relieve the ship that was guarding
that embassy.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
On April twentieth, about sixty miles or ninety six kilometers
from its destination, the Amethyst came under fire from the
People's Liberation Army, the crew having apparently misinterpreted warning shots
as the sounds of combat. The Amethyst was badly damaged,
including having an enormous hole blown into one side, and

(32:59):
it ran aground while trying to evade the attack. At
least nineteen men were killed, including the captain Lieutenant Commander
Bernard M. Skinner. More than twenty others were wounded, some
of whom later died.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
The Amethysts officers tried to evacuate as many people as
possible to the Nationalist side of the river, but that
left about sixty people still on board, and some of
them were too badly injured.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
To be moved.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Attempts to refloat the ship were unsuccessful, and while they
were able to move it a little bit, the Amethyst
wound up trapped in the crossfire. The People's Liberation Army
also fired on the ship anytime sailors were visible on deck,
and there were additional injuries and deaths among the crew.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Several other ships tried to come to Amethyst's aid, but
had to turn back after also coming under fire, with
injuries and deaths on some of those other ships as well,
so the Amethyst was essential trapped. It sat there in
the river for about three months, with the crew facing
hot weather, continual danger, and dwindling supplies. That brings us

(34:11):
to Simon, who was a tuxedo cat who had been
smuggled aboard the ship in nineteen forty eight by a
seventeen year old sailor ordinary seamen, George Hickinbottom, who had
found this cat hungry on the docks. While some of
the crew did not really like Simon's habits of leaving
them dead rodents or sleeping in their hats, he did

(34:32):
become a favorite of many of the men on board.
He was injured in the initial shelling of the ship, and,
like a lot of cats would do, when he got hurt,
he hid. Once he was found, one of the ship's
medics treated his injuries, and afterward, while he was still recovering,
he went back to something he was already known for doing,

(34:53):
which was hunting rats. Rat control was one of the
reasons that ships often had cats on board, and it
was particularly important while the Amethyst was stuck on the
Yankee River. While the Amethyst had occasional contact with other
British ships, their opportunities for resupply were almost non existent.

(35:14):
The weather was very hot, the generators had been damaged,
and the boilers often had to be shut down to
conserve fuel, which meant that the ship often had to
go without ventilation or refrigeration. Perishable food spoiled quickly, and
anything that was eaten or destroyed by rodents just compounded
this problem.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
There was also a morale boost aspect to Simon's rat hunting,
especially when he killed an enormous rat that the crew
had come to really despise. They had named that huge
rat after Maozitdong. Afterward, after he killed this rat, they
promoted Simon to able seamen or in some accounts, able seacat.

(35:56):
Simon also started accompanying the ship's maintenance off on daily rounds,
and was credited with lifting the crew's spirits when they
saw him. The ship's dog, who was a terrier named Peggy,
helped with this too. With its rations nearly exhausted, the
Amethyst managed to make an escape on July thirtieth, nineteen

(36:17):
forty nine, slipping its anchor chain and heading downstream towards
Shanghai under cover of night. They successfully made it to
the open sea one hundred and one days after becoming
stranded on the river.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
In addition to being awarded the Dickin Medal in nineteen
forty nine, in August of that year, Simon was awarded
an Amethyst Campaign Ribbon for distinguished and meritorious service. The
citation noted Simon's killing of the rat known as Mauzadong
on April twenty sixth, and that between April twenty second
and August fourth, he quote did rid the HMS Amethyst

(36:54):
of pestilence and vermin with unrelenting faithfulness. While Simon survived
his initial injuries and the time the Amethyst was trapped
on the river. He sadly died of an infection on
November twenty eighth, nineteen forty nine, while in quarantine to
enter the United Kingdom. About one thousand people, including the
crew of the Amethyst, attended his funeral. Like Rip the Dog,

(37:18):
he was buried at the pdsa's Animal Cemetery. In addition
to Rip and Simon, there are ten other Dick and
Medal winners buried there, and that has a number of
brave and resourceful animals. Do you listener mail? Brave and resourceful?
I do have listener mail. This listener mail is from
Shay and it is about ballpoint pens. Shay wrote, Howdy

(37:42):
Tracy and Holly. I've enjoyed listening to your podcast over
the years and have always wanted to add my two
cents to one of your episodes, and now I can
because of ballpoint pens. I've been in the military for
over twenty one years and will be retiring next year.
In the Navy, the most known ballpoint pen is the
standard Skillcraft ballpoint pen. Personally, I'm not a fan of

(38:05):
how they feel when writing, so I always wondered why
skill Craft so away i went. Skillcraft is a brand
under the National Industries for the Blind through a program
administered by the US Ability One Commission. The program came
about due to the nineteen thirty eight Wagner Oday Act,
requiring the federal government to buy products made by blind workers,

(38:26):
and later amended in nineteen seventy one to expand to
nonprofits employing persons with other disabilities. This bill was championed
by Senator Jacob Javitz, who was diagnosed with Lugarrig's disease,
also known as ALS. While the Armed Forces has used
a number of companies for ballpoint pens in the past,

(38:47):
just as the Australian pilots you spoke of did to
include the Ballerina Pen Company. During Vietnam, Skillcraft became a
staple in the Navy. I can't speak for the other
branches with certainty due to pen requirements and Navy policy.
The GSA policy requiring federal specifications was written and released
in nineteen sixty five after they GSA received a shipment

(39:08):
of thirteen million ballpoint pens that were defective. The standard
included being able to write over five thousand feet at
a pressure of one hundred and twenty five grams, must
be able to write in temperatures between minus forty degrees
and one hundred and sixty degrees dry within five seconds,
can smear, and ink must still remain even after two

(39:29):
chemical bleaching applications, to name a few. Additionally, the OPNAV
Instruction thirty one hundred and seven C states that we
must quote make all manual entries in ship's deck log
with a black ballpoint pen or type written printed on
letter quality printer processed by electronic means, which is why

(39:50):
they're commonly seen with someone standing what we call a
deck watch. I hope that was interesting or new information
for someone. It was new and interesting information for me.
I've attached an old photo of a dog I used
to own. Sadly, he had to be rehomed because I
was advised she wasn't allowed in the country of one
of my duty stations, and I later learned my son

(40:11):
has an allergy to dogs, although he always wanted another
dog regardless of the allergic reaction. Her name was Asia,
born in two thousand and five. She was a very loving, playful,
sweet American pitbull terrier, and I know her new family
loved and took care of her very well and our
family missed her very much. Thanks for listening, Shay. What
a cute dog. Oh I love a goofy pity They're

(40:33):
so sweet.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah yeah, I did not know any of this pen
information about the Navy, and I did find it interesting.
There are honestly multiple various tidbits in there that I
all found interesting. So thank you so much Shae for
this email. That was a good companion to an episode
that was about both animals and the military. If you

(40:57):
would like to send us a note, where at History
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to
the show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere else you'd
like to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History
Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

(41:20):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.

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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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