Author(s): Graham Spencer

NZ Non-Fiction | Secondhand | NZ & World War II

Secondhand.

Major was the mascot of the 19 Battalion and Armoured Regiment of the NZ Army from 1940 to 1944, serving in North Africa, and Italy, wounded in the former and dying of illness in Italy in 1944, to be buried alongside two officers from the regiment. Such was Major's military status that an exception to a rule, permitting him to return to NZ after the war ended, could not actioned. Major, a bull terrier was actually an Australian dog, but was brought to NZ by his officer owner who was under training at the Royal Military College there. When he sailed on a troop ship the Middle East in 1940, Major went along too, but he was not commissioned until 1941 and became Major Major after his wounds in 1942. This is an amazing, humerous and often sad story of one dog's army life, and death. However, woven into the story is that of another dog, Duda, an Italian pooch captured in the Desert and said to have been the "happiest POW in the Middle East." A vastly different war story.

VG. Inscription and ex-library plate on the front endpaper.