Bill Wynne Remembers WWII Service of Smoky, The Tiny War Dog

Last spring, retired Plain Dealer photographer Bill Wynne traveled to the United Kingdom to accept a posthumous certificate for animal bravery on behalf of one of the tiniest heroes of World War II – a Yorkshire terrier named Smoky.

The 89-year-old Mansfield resident, who published a memoir about his canine companion titled Yorkie Doodle Dandy in 1996 using the byline William A. Wynne, will share Smoky’s story at 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, at , 10050 Ravenna Road.

Smoky, who was found in a foxhole in New Guinea, pulled communications cables through a 70-foot-long drainage pipe under an airstrip in on the Philippine Island of Luzon, while Wynne called to her from the other end of the pipe.

The little dog saved the military several days - the time it would have taken to install lines by tearing up and rebuilding the airstrip. She also kept her human comrades from being exposed to enemy fire while performing their mission in a combat zone.

Smoky’s actions have been recounted numerous times in print and on the air and earned the Yorkie several honors – most recently from PDSA (People's Dispensary for Sick Animals) veterinary services in England in May.

After the war, Wynne took Smoky home to Greater Cleveland, where she died in 1957 at age 14.

Wynne was born in Scranton, PA, while his mother was visiting her family, but he grew up in Cleveland.

His parents split when he was a toddler. His single mother placed him in Parmadale, a Catholic-run orphanage in Parma, for a couple of years until she could afford to keep him at home.

“Age 8 to 17, I was a poor student, running the streets of Cleveland's West Side, enjoying life to the fullest with dogs and kids,” Wynne said recently. “For me, it was so very important in directing three phases of my life vocations.”

Phase 1: Training and handling dogs in Hollywood motion pictures, in show business and as a TV personality.

Phase 2: Wynne’s work with the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory, the forerunner of what is now NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Glenn Research Center.

“As a youth, we had little in the Depression, yet we made things we could ride,” Wynne said. “It stimulated the opportunity to invent.”

He used motion picture camera timers that placed immediate time on events being filmed accurate to 1/10,000th of a second.

“I had accomplished photographing rain drops in free flight for a camera setup that was to be used on airplanes to measure drop size identification for coordinating rainstorm forecasting with radar,” he said.

Phase 3: Wynne’s career as a Plain Dealer photographer, chronicling life adventures for 31 years.

“Many of my award-winning photos were messages depicted through the actions of children,” Wynne said. “I recognized myself in these situations.”

Wynne, who worked part time for a florist during his years at West Technical High School and after that at a steel mill before joining the Army in 1943, was hired by the Plain Dealer to handle color photography for advertising and the Sunday magazine in 1953.

“I had been deeply involved with color at NACA/NASA, while most photographers were still in black-and-white,” he said.

After retiring from the newspaper in 1984, Wynne returned to NASA for four years before starting work on his book.

Yorkie Doodle Dandy features the story of Wynne’s fascinating life and the lives of Smoky and other dogs he has known, loved and/or trained.

Wynne will offer more on his and Smoky’s wartime service during his library talk, the second in a three-part series on World War II. On Nov. 12, Stan Wolczyk, a former Wadsworth schools principal, will talk about serving in the Aleutian Islands during the Japanese invasion.

Click here to listen to an NPR segment about Wynne and Smoky.