Free Judy: The Unforgettable Story of the Dog Who Went to War and Became a True Hero by Damien Lewis Page B

pristine cloth, yellowing copies of The Times newspaper on side tables, and white-coated Chinese stewards poised to top up the pink gins when required.
    But in spite of such onboard comforts, Hankow promised the officers and men of the Gnat an exceptionally good time ashore. Hankow resembled a classic European city of the time in terms of its grand colonial-style architecture, its layout, and its atmosphere. The fashionable Hankow Club offered excellent dining and drinking, cabaret, bridge parties, and tennis, plus good hunting in the surrounding bush. Hankow even boasted a race club, one that resembled Royal Ascot as much as ever it could here in deepest darkest China.
    The Hankow Bund—the riverside harbor area where the Gnat was tied up—was designed to appear like a waterside promenade at any fashionable European port city. It was dominated by the Chinese customs house clock tower and the splendid white colonnades of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. The ground floor of the bank had been converted into a wet bar and clubroom, complete with billiard table and English-speaking Chinese bar boys.
    Once a fortnight the wet room would host a navy opera, to which the assorted Royal Navy crews would invite the public for a sing-along, one that was lubricated by copious quantities of a local beer called EWO Pilsner. Produced by the EWO brewery in Shanghai, the beer seemed to give off a peculiar smell of onions, and it was unusually potent.
    The wet room had been nicknamed the Strong Toppers Club after the powerful onion-scented beer quaffed in there. New members could gain access to the club only after an exacting initiation ritual. The newbie had to stand before a panel of three while undergoing the Yangtze River variation of the popular drinking game Cardinal Puff.
    Holding his beer in his left hand, he’d announce a toast “to the health of Cardinal Puff,” strike the table once with his right hand, stamp both feet, tap the glass on the table, then drain his beer. The sequence had to be repeated with a fresh beer, only now he had todrink to the health of “Cardinal Puff Puff” and repeat all the actions two times over. A third successful rendition—only now doing all actions three times over—and he was duly admitted to the club. But any mistake—reciting the lines wrong, getting the actions wrong, or drinking with the wrong hand—would be met with noisy jeers and jibes from the crowd. The unfortunate initiate would have failed, and he’d have to start all over again.
    During the long voyage upriver Judy had grown somewhat partial to her beer. As she was by now a fully fledged member of the ship’s crew—she had even had the de rigueur christening in the Yangtze—her presence was required at such convivial evenings. Hence Tankey Cooper put together his own version of the Strong Toppers Club initiation ritual especially for her. Before the assembled throng Judy had to bark once, twice, then three times in succession, each outburst of yelping punctuated by a noisy bout of lapping from someone’s glass.
    That completed, Judy of Sussex was declared in. She was now free to wander regally from face to familiar face, here and there taking a nibble from a handful of peanuts and a lap from a glass of onion-scented beer. Such riotous evenings ended in the traditional rendition of the Yangtze Anthem, to which Judy proved able to provide a remarkably soulful accompaniment as she threw back her head and howled along to the verses.
    Strong Toppers are we
    On the dirty Yangtze
    “Gunboats” or “Cruisers”
    We’re here for a spree.
    The Strong Toppers Club was largely a male environment, and Judy was one of the few ladies permitted access. And in her own peculiar way, she seemed to understand what this signified in terms of her acceptance into the bosom of the all-male family that was the crew of the Gnat . She’d come a long way from that lonely back alleyway behind Soo’s shop on the tough streets of Shanghai, and