The orders came on an overcast Tuesday morning in late September 1917: the 102nd Infantry Regiment was to report to Hoboken, New Jersey, and board the troopship SS Minnesota, bound for the port of Saint-Nazaire, France. Dogs were not permitted aboard military troopships. This was not an ambiguous regulation or a matter for interpretation. It was a clear, direct prohibition, and Private Conroy was fully aware of it.
He spent two evenings thinking about it. Then he bought a large canvas duffel bag.
The morning of departure, Stubby was fed a generous breakfast of salt pork and hardtack, walked until he was calm and tired, and then was introduced to the interior of the duffel bag. He investigated it thoroughly, turned around twice, and settled himself inside it with the pragmatic adaptability of a dog who had spent a year as a stray navigating whatever situation the world presented.
Conroy carried the bag up the gangplank of the SS Minnesota with the unhurried, deliberate movement of a soldier who was absolutely not doing anything unusual. He was not the only soldier smuggling something aboard — there were a number of unauthorized cats, a parrot, and at least one accordion that the Army would have preferred not to share a ship with — but Stubby required more concealment than a parrot, and Conroy had arranged in advance for a lower deck berth away from the officer quarters.
The SS Minnesota departed Hoboken harbor on October 1st, 1917, carrying four thousand soldiers, their equipment, and one brindle terrier in a canvas duffel bag. By the second day out, the duffel bag was unnecessary.
Stubby had been quietly liberated from it once the ship was far enough at sea that turning back was not a realistic consequence, and he had spent the following twenty-four hours conducting a thorough investigation of the troopship from stem to stern. He had inspected the engine room, the mess hall, the officer's quarters (briefly), and the gun deck, and had apparently concluded that the ship was a satisfactory environment.
The soldiers loved him. A troopship crossing the Atlantic in wartime was not a comfortable or cheerful journey — the sea was rough in October, the quarters were crowded, and the knowledge of what waited on the other side of the ocean created a particular weight that settled over even the most confident men in the quieter hours of the crossing.
Stubby moved through that heaviness without touching it. He was simply present — solid, cheerful, compact, and interested in everyone — and his presence worked on the men the way the presence of animals sometimes works on people who are carrying too much worry: it did not solve anything, but it reminded them that not everything in the world was the thing they were carrying.
He learned the ship's schedule within three days. He appeared at the mess at meal times without being summoned, sat beside the radio operator during evening broadcasts, and stationed himself each night at the base of the gangway that led up to the gun deck, as if maintaining watch.
On the twelfth day of the crossing, a junior officer named Lieutenant William Doyle discovered Stubby curled beneath a navigation table and prepared to make an issue of the regulation regarding dogs on military vessels.
Conroy appeared at the lieutenant's elbow.
"He salutes, sir," Conroy said.
Lieutenant Doyle looked at the terrier. Stubby looked at the lieutenant. Stubby raised his right paw.
Lieutenant Doyle stood in silence for several seconds. Then he returned the salute, straightened his cap, and walked away without another word. The SS Minnesota docked at Saint-Nazaire, France, on October 15th, 1917. The men of the 102nd Infantry Regiment filed down the gangplank in their columns, their full kit on their backs, their faces set toward the interior of a country they had never seen.
Stubby walked down the gangplank beside Conroy, on a lead, in his canvas jacket, looking at France with the same alert, interested expression he had worn watching the Yale Bowl drill field on his first morning there. He had crossed an ocean. He was ready for whatever came next.
France received them with grey skies and the smell of coal smoke and horses. The men of the 102nd marched off the dockside in silence, carrying their full kit on their backs, looking at a country that had been at war since before most of them had known exactly where France was on a map.
Stubby walked the dock boards beside Conroy, his broad head turning left and right, reading the smells of Saint-Nazaire with the methodical thoroughness of a dog cataloguing a new territory.
The salt water, the diesel, the particular chemical smell of a military port, the horses waiting at the far end of the pier. He processed all of it, filed it, and walked on. He was ready.