It wasn't just the big, robust dogs who helped the war effort.
Smoky the Yorkie was a tiny pup who helped save lives on the battlegrounds and in the military hospitals.
Bill Wynne was serving as an aerial photographer in the Pacific Theatre, searching for planes that had gone down and taking photos to help determine if rescue was feasible.
While serving in New Guinea during the allied offensive that drove the Japanese out of the area, he met another soldier who had found a Yorkshire terrier abandoned in the jungle and he bought the little dog and named her Smoky.
The pair were inseparable and Smoky even went on combat missions but it was while Bill was serving in Luzon and US troops needed to dig a trench to lay communications wire, that Smoky earned her big reputation.
Soldiers found a covered culvert that could serve as the trench, but it was narrow and buried and much too narrow for a man to get through.
So they attached the wire to Smoky’s collar and sent her into the 70-foot culvert and Bill called her from the other side.
Incredibly the tiny dog scurried through the culvert bringing the wire with her meaning commications could be set up without the need for days of digging or exposing solder to enemy fire and bombs.
And that wasn't the end of her important work. She became a therapy dog when Bill was hospitalised during the war with Dengue fever.
Smoky was allowed to stay with Bill who allowed the nurses to take Smoky to visit the other patients, raising their spirits as they recovered.
Her cheerful company and wagging tail improved the general mood and raised spirits of not just the sick and wounded and the nurses and doctors.
Bill continued to take her on hospital visits after they returned home from the war and today she is considered to be the documented therapy dog.
In 1947 more than 700 dogs were donated to military hospitals to help soldiers recovering from the war.
She lived to the great age of 14 and Bill Wynne passed away in April this year aged 99.
