On February 2011, Pen Farthing picked up the phone at his Nowzad animal shelter in Kabul to the father of an Army hero in England asking for his help.
“I understand you bring soldiers’ dogs home,” said the man, wanting to know if he could repatriate the homeless mongrel that had kept his son company while he served in Helmand.
Pen said the region was one of the most dangerous on earth, and asked if his son could help get the animal to the Afghan capital.
But the man replied: “No, he died there two weeks ago.”
The former Royal Marine, who won a special recognition award at the Daily Mirror’s Animal Heroes Awards in 2015, would later remember how, at that moment, he decided to do everything in his power to reunite Tony Lewis and wife Sandi with the dog who had been their brave son Conrad’s companion.
Within days he had mounted a complex operation to have the pet, called Peg, flown out of the battle zone in a Chinook helicopter to Camp Bastion, then put in a Humvee and driven to Kabul.
After inoculating the dog, he then arranged to have her delivered to Conrad’s family.
She was flown via Dubai to London on a commercial airline and six months in quarantine kennels followed. Pen never asked for a penny.
Millions heard of Paul “Pen” Farthing, 52, from Exeter, Devon, for the first time in recent weeks as he made headlines by trying to get his Afghan staff and rescued animals out of the country after the Taliban took over.
After an evacuation attempt that gripped the nation, including narrowly missing last Thursday’s suicide blast, he arrived at Heathrow on a charter flight on Sunday following his Operation Ark campaign to save 173 rescue cats and dogs.
Sadly he had to leave his staff and their families behind in Afghanistan.
Pen’s efforts caused controversy, with some claiming he was diverting resources from humans in danger.
But the charity founder was already held in awe by British servicemen and their families after spending the past 14 years reuniting hundreds of ex-soldiers with the “buddy” dogs and cats they became attached to while fighting.
Tony says: “Many have seen who Pen is this past week, he’s a very brave guy, a man of integrity and moral courage.
“But what most don’t know, and Ben Wallace doesn’t care about, is that he and the Nowzad family act selflessly and never ask for a penny, they just want to do the right thing.”
Defence Secretary Wallace was among those criticising Pen’s “Operation Ark” attempt to get his animals out of Kabul.
Tony adds of Pen Farthing: “I think ‘dedication’ would sum him up.
“He was a dedicated marine for 22 years, and he’s dedicated himself to changing the lives of people in Afghanistan and honouring the lives of our soldiers.
He always said Nowzad is a lasting legacy to the 457 soldiers who died out there, a way of showing we changed something.
“That’s why it’s heartbreaking to see what’s happening now.”
Tony remembers first hearing about Peg – short for Pegasus – in one of Conrad’s letters home after he was deployed to Afghanistan with the 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment in October 2010.
He says: “We have a British bulldog at home and Conrad was a dog lover. When he first wrote back he said he’d got a dog, and that he’d taught her to sit and give him a paw. Conrad was a machine gunner and had took it upon himself to lead every patrol, and Peg came with him on every one.
“He said she was useful because she would spot stuff and warn them.
“She was also that non-human he could talk to about the things he had seen that day and what he was feeling, that bit of hope and comfort. When he came home for Christmas he brought pictures of Peg. He said, ‘There’s a bloke who brings back soldiers’ dogs after they come home, that’s your job to sort.”
But the couple never expected their son wouldn’t be coming home.
Tony says: “I remember him telling me what he was doing, leading the patrols and taking out snipers. I said to him, ‘You’ve got to be really careful, your luck’s going to run out’. He told us, ‘If anything happens to me just get on with it.’
“He was killed five weeks later.”
Conrad died on February 9, 2011 while on foot patrol in Nad-e Ali, during an operation to find enemy snipers’ nests and reassure the local population. He and Lewis Hendry, both 20, were killed by the same Taliban bullet.
Still in the depths of grief, Conrad’s parents knew they had to respect their son’s wishes and look after Peg.
Tony says: “It was very important for us to bring his dog back. I think my wife summed it up very well, she said we can’t look after Conrad any more but we can look after his dog. Someone gave me Pen’s number. He gave us his unconditional and instantaneous support.”
Peg arrived in the UK in June 2011 and after six months’ quarantine was allowed to go and live with Tony and Sandi at their rural home in Claverdon, Warks.
Tony recalls: “We let our bulldog Fergie out first to try to introduce him, and Peg went crazy in her cage. But when we let her out, she went straight past him into the house. We’d put one of Conrad’s sweatshirts in her bed, one he’d had on at Christmas and wasn’t washed.
“I don’t know if it was that, but as soon as she was there she was at home.”
Tony says Peg has received visits from other grateful soldiers who never forgot her.
He adds: “After Conrad’s death she attached herself to another pathfinder unit, and slept in the bed of an engineer and IED specialist. She continued to go on patrols.
“One guy remembered how, when the front unit came under attack, she ran to the next unit to tell them.”
And Peg has not lost her battlefield skills. Tony says: “When we go for walks she still spots things, like ‘that wasn’t there yesterday’ and ‘that ground’s been disturbed’.
"Once we were out and she saw a stick that had dropped.
“She did the whole ‘stoop, walk round it, sniff it, don’t go anywhere near it’ thing. If there’s something out of place, she’ll get suspicious and send us the warning, like she did with the troops.”
Tony flew to Afghanistan and saw the work of Pen’s Nowzad charity in 2014, an experience that led him to adopt another of his dogs, a puppy called Kohi.
He says: “Pen has rescued 1,700 buddy dogs and cats and distributed them to families all over the world.
“They also changed perceptions about animal welfare in Afghanistan, too.
“The Taliban made people abandon their pets, but thanks to Pen even Afghans began to adopt dogs from them.
“Kohi was one of four puppies who had been taken off the street by an Afghan family, but when they didn’t have enough money to care for them instead of abandoning them they took them to the shelter. Their veterinary clinic, which Pen named after Conrad, was one of the finest in the country.”
Most importantly of all for Tony and Sandi, Pen has helped make the pain of losing their son a little easier to bear.
Tiny says: “She’s been a great source of comfort and joy, knowing that Conrad loved her and talked with her. She’s a great companion and makes us smile.”
