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This is the Memory Palace. I'm Nate

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DeMeo. Her

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ancestors, just how many generations back we

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can't know, but historians and researchers and

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the sorts of people who spent so

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much of their lives parsing and cataloging

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and policing, this is what they do,

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the purity of bloodlines. They

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know with remarkable clarity that in

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the 1850s, her

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ancestors used to crawl in the cracks and

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crevices of coal mines to

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go eat rats. That

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is why Yorkshire terriers are so small.

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Scottish coal miners who had come down to

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Yorkshire in the north of England to find

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work wanted that miserable work to at least

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be vermin free. And

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so over time, over generations, they

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bred terriers, selecting traits that would make

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the offspring more ideally suited to the

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task. And at some point, some

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of those traits, the size,

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certainly, perhaps the hair texture

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that is kind of like the brush of a

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chimney sweep, when you think about it, probably made

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it particularly easy to shake off the coal

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dust. And other traits of

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whatever evolutionary utility, they became

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desirable for other purposes, mostly

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for sitting on people's laps. And

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these rat killers that they had bred were

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adorable and portable. And

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then people started to breed for traits that were

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useful for a cute little lapdog. It

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is likely they introduced the Maltese into the hereditary

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mix at some point in the 1860s. And

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the Yorkshire terrier, as we know it today, was

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born. We

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don't know precisely when the Yorkie at the center

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of this story was born either, but

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it was likely two years or so before she enters it, now

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in a ditch by the side of the road

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in Papua New Guinea in March of 1944.

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An American soldier was out on patrol when his Jeep

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broke down, and as he was under

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the hood futzing with the wires, he

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heard whimpering from just beyond the tall grass. And

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there in the bottom of an abandoned foxhole was

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a four-foot-tall fox. pound dog. His

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brown blonde hair was matted and dusky and

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splotched with mud. He

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scooped her up and put her in the back and got

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the Jeep going again and then slogged back to base.

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He called her smoky. Bill

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Wynn wanted a dog. When

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he was a kid in Ohio and his father just split

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one day, and his mom had to take

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on two jobs and then she couldn't take care of him, he

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had to spend a few years in an orphanage and

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there was a ne'er-dale there that they called rags. They

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loved each other. He was sure of

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it. It

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made him feel a little less afraid of the world. The

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years went on and he bounced from home to home, sometimes

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his own, sometimes with extended family,

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sometimes back at the orphanage, and

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he moved ten times before he was seventeen. And

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he always found comfort in dogs. A

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white collie, a great dame

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named big boy, and a pitbull named

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pal, and then a puppy

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named Toby that he would run home to

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after football practice to train. And

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he did so well that when he graduated high

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school he was able to take the giant German

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Shepherd to his job working the furnace at a steel

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factory. The dog would curl up on the

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warm brick floor at Bill's feet. But

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he couldn't take the dog to war. There

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were worse deployments than Bill Wynn's. He

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had taken photography classes in school and so

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he was scooped out by a unit that

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needed people to process pictures snapped by reconnaissance

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planes. The Americans were

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on the offensive at that point. They

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were leapfrogging the more heavily defended territory

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to take smaller islands, and

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aerial photography was vital to the mission. And

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so while other men were fighting their way through the jungle,

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Bill was pulling twelve hour shifts in a dark

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room. This was not

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without its dangers. Air raid sirens would

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send Bill scrambling and diving to the

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mud as Japanese planes bombed and strafed

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the base. And anti-aircraft guns

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roared and fire-flooded. flared and

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broken chains flung across the sky. But

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it could have been worse. Not

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that it needed to be. Each

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of us has, in our own way, through

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whatever media gotten our head around as best

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we can what it was like to be

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on the front lines of World War II. Some

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cinematographers' choice of a handheld camera or

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filter helped it land at some point. The

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chaos at all. Some film

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composer or some director's choice

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to go close on rain hammering on a helmet

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of a marine in a foxhole in the dark

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showed us something about the fear, where

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you found it in an actor's face. Helped

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us get it as best as we could. We

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thought that through. But

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what of the boredom on the base? Of

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the 12-hour shift in a tent that

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is a dark room, that

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is more than 100 degrees inside, that

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is humid beyond anything you'd ever

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experienced before, that smells of chemicals

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and the sweat of other men. I'm

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going to be eating the same thing. Tin

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mutton, the powdered milk, the powdered

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eggs, the fake butter that doesn't

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melt or spread, the citric acid packets

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that you put in your water so you don't

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get scurvy. All while you've

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got some drug in your system that saves

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you from malaria but makes your dreams insane.

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Makes it hard to know if you've ever even got to sleep.

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Bill Wynn was 22. He

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was in Papua New Guinea. He

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had always lived in Ohio. He

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was an introvert but he was trying to

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make friends. He was trying

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to make small talk and get to know

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these other men from other places with their

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own backgrounds and their own traumas and personalities

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and each so far from home and

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each afraid in their own way. And

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it is hard for all of them and

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hard for Bill. So

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far from his broken home and

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feeling kind of broken himself sometimes. And

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then he walks into the motor pool and

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sees a little dog. Four

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pound ball of fluff. Tied

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to a truck tire with a piece of parachute

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jumping around like crazy spinning He

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had to have it Just

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had to You

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offered the guy who found her who didn't even like dogs

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who Just put her in the back of the

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car and then cut her hair to get the mud out when he

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could just given her A bath he didn't even try to make her

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look cute Bill offered him an Australian

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pound and that doesn't sound like much but that was

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5% of the soldiers monthly pay and

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the guy said no So

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Bill doubled it He

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would have gone higher And

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then Bill and Smokey had each other all

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the time She

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was small enough to carry anywhere he

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would bathe her every night using his helmet as

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a bathtub But it was a

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war zone and she had to be trained for a war zone.

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She couldn't bark unexpectedly She'd

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give away their position to the enemy She

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had to learn come and stay can have her

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running off under the wheel of Jeep or onto

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a runway She had to

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learn to heal and always stay close one

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time Bill saw a python with an enormous

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belly shaped like the hog It was bright

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then digesting and he shuttered it's

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a thought of a snake with a Yorkie shaped bump in

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its tummy He

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loved training her the dog took

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to all of it. She was bred to be

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trained There was something

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instinctual and unknowable in her that

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wanted to please Wanted to be

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with her person all the time. That's

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what bill wanted to Taught her tricks.

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She could play dead could do that thing where

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she weaved in and out of his legs when

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he was walking along And

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people loved it. She was cute and they

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had a whole routine going but these

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people were starved for entertainment Bill entered her

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in a contest for the best mascot of any company in the

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Pacific Fleet And they won they

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beat out a rhesus monkey who is called turbo

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Which I will admit makes him sound like

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a cool monkey, but by all accounts. He was kind of a dick

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Sometimes they would get to cheer up up

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some troops or go to a hospital

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and do tricks for guys who are wounded or

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sick. Bill and Smokey

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weren't Bob Hope or Betty Grable, but in

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the grind of war and the

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monotony and the cruelty, a

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Yorkie and a shy guy who took such

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pleasure in her company, it

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helped. One time

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some engineers were trying to run some telephone

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wires through a pipe. It was

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going to take days to dig up a fence. Then they

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went to Bill and asked him if they could tie the

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wires to Smokey's collar and she could just kind of run

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through. And Smokey

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got the job done. Some

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ancestral instinct made her know just what to

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do in a tight space. But

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the war wasn't all heroic dog hijinks.

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Sometimes Bill would have to go out on those

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reconnaissance missions and other missions where he would be

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the spotter in a tiny airplane as

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they looked into the tree line and looked for

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signs of life after another plane went

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down. He

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brought Smokey with him. He

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didn't feel good about it. He

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wrote about it years later in his memoir that

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he knew he should have left her back at the base. Picked

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a guy who would do right by her. Someone

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would have stepped up to take care of Smokey if something

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bad happened. But Bill couldn't

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do it. He thought it was weak

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of himself, but he still couldn't do it. He

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needed her to be with him. He

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would do everything he could to keep her warm and

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comfortable. He would put her

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on a bed underneath his seat or

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he'd wrap her up in a pouch strapped beneath his arm.

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But he couldn't leave her. It had been that

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way ever since they spent days on a ship

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in a massive convoy off to support the invasion

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of the Philippines. There

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were air raid sirens night after night. An

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attack that wound up sinking 24 ships

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and he would hold the dog's ears and she

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would shiver with fear. In

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one night, Kamikaze pilots, two

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of them. He saw them, smashed

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into the boat, and then a stray

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round and anti-aircraft gun fired from an

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American destroyer trying to take out the

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Japanese planes, tore right through the wall

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right above his head. It

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would take hours to figure out what had really happened and

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how close he had come to death. In

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that moment, in the

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noise and the heat and the chaos, all

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he knew, all his focus was

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on the dog that he held to his chest. His

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body curled in to protect her no matter what.

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They made it through that night and the rest of

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the war. They

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went home together to Cleveland. Smokey

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was decommissioned as a corporal.

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Bill got married to a woman named Margie. They

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would be married for 57 years. And

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Bill died just a couple of years ago at the age of 99.

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He left behind 9 kids, 27 grandchildren, 41

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great-grandchildren, one great-great.

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One of those American lives. He

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spent a lot of his as a photojournalist for

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the Cleveland plane dealer. And

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he wrote that memoir that I mentioned. It is

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called Yorkie Doodle Dandy. It

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tells the story of Smokey and the war and

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so many other adventures with the

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two of them as he managed to

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milk their wartime fame. They

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had a local TV show for a little bit in the medium's

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earliest days. People would come

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on and he would help them with dog training. The

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two of them spent a lot of time on the road. They

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were entertainers. They had an

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agent. They'd perform on variety shows with

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singers and jugglers and other animal acts.

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It was hours of driving, all

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sorts of little calamities and mishaps out on

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the proverbial highways and

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byways. America in mid-century and

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none of it fazed them. Not after

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all they had been through together. And

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the book, Yorkie Doodle Dandy, it's

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good. There is a line

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in it that has stayed with me. It's

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at the beginning of the book, right in the

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introduction, and he's almost like apologetic

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for even daining to tell

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this particular story which feels

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so insignificant against the unimaginable

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scale and

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incomprehensible loss of that period. He

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writes, from the broad point

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of view of nations being pulverized or vaporized,

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any personal experience is less than a footnote.

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Yet for individuals who are thrust

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into such catastrophes, the time

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comes when little things become big things.

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Bill came home from work at the

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paper one day in February of 1957 and

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found Smokey dead on her dog bed. It

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was heartbreaking, but it wasn't that surprising. She

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had had a bad heart and he had been carrying

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her up and down stairs for months. The

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family had a funeral in the park. He

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carried Smokey in a shoebox under his arm, buried

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the box under a tree. She

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was with him for 13 of his

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99 years. Little

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things become big things. And

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this episode of the Memory Palace

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was written

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and produced by me, Nate DeMeo, in November of 2023. This

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show gets research assistance from Eliza McGraw. It

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is a proud member of Radiotopia, a network

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well. I will talk to

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you again, and thanks as always for listening. Thank

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you.