Judy was born in 1936 and purchased in Shanghai as the mascot for HMS Gnat, a British river gunboat based on the Yangtze. After the crew transferred to HMS Grasshopper in 1939, the Second World War broke out and the ship was withdrawn from China and sent to Singapore. There the vessel remained for a couple of years until the Battle of Singapore in 1942. Grasshopper was evacuated and was sunk near Sinkep Island. As the crew evacuated to the nearby island, Judy was not among them. She was found alive when a crewman went back to Grasshopper for supplies, and upon returning to the island she managed to discover the only source of fresh water - saving all of the surviving crew. They took control of a passing vessel and headed to Sumatra. Once there, they trekked 200 miles across the jungle but several miles short of the British lines, they were captured by the Japanese. Judy was smuggled by the crew into a prisoner of war camp, where she met Frank Williams who would look after her for the rest of her life. He shared his rice ration with the dog each day and arranged to have her registered as a prisoner of war in order to prevent the guards from killing her. She was the only dog registered as a prisoner of war during the Second World War. At the camp, she would warn the prisoners of the arrival of guards and if there were wild animals nearby. The men in the camp were sent to another camp, this time back in Singapore. Williams trained Judy to stay still in a sack, which he held for three hours over his shoulder on the upper deck of the cargo ship they were transferred on. The ship was torpedoed, and Williams and Judy were separated. He was sent to another camp where he began to hear stories about a dog saving people during the sinking of the vessel. She arrived later in the same camp, and after the end of the war, was smuggled back to Liverpool on a troopship.
