On the morning of July 10, 1943, Pvt. John P. Rowell and his sentry canine, Chips, hit the seaside throughout Operation Husky. When a hidden machine gun nest opened fireplace, pinning down the platoon, Chips tore free from Rowell and charged straight into the fortified place. He seized the gunner by the throat, silenced the weapon and compelled 4 Italian troopers to give up.
“There was an terrible lot of noise,” Rowell recalled. “Then I noticed one Italian soldier come out the door with Chips at his throat. I referred to as him off earlier than he might kill the person.”
That single act of heroism by a mixed-breed household pet from Pleasantville, New York, set Chips on a path to grow to be essentially the most adorned warfare canine in American historical past. It additionally triggered a nationwide debate over whether or not animals deserve navy honors.
From Household Pet to Army Recruit
Chips was born in 1940, a mixture of German Shepherd, Collie and Husky-Malamute. He was bred by C.C. Moore, who ultimately gave the canine to the household of Edward J. Wren in Pleasantville, New York.
The canine connected himself to Wrens’ daughter, Gail. He adopted her on the stroll to highschool most mornings and rested beneath her desk in school. If different children acquired too bodily on the playground, Chips would wedge himself between them and pull Gail to security.
Chips additionally had a mischievous streak. He chased chickens across the neighborhood and as soon as bit a rubbish collector, habits that may mockingly assist him throughout his navy profession.
After the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the American Kennel Membership and a newly shaped civilian group referred to as Canine for Protection started recruiting privately owned canines for navy service. The group initially supposed to supply sentry canines to the Coast Guard for seaside patrols alongside the American shoreline.
On March 13, 1942, Below Secretary of Warfare Robert P. Patterson formally approved the Quartermaster Corps to start coaching canines, formally creating the Warfare Canine Program that shortly grew to become referred to as the “Okay-9 Corps.”
The response from American households was overwhelming. Greater than 19,000 canines had been donated between 1942 and 1945, although roughly 45 p.c had been rejected as unsuited for coaching on account of poor temperament, sensitivity to gunfire or insufficient sense of scent. Of the roughly 10,425 canines that accomplished coaching, fewer than 1,900 had been shipped abroad.
The Wren household acknowledged Chips’ potential and donated him in August 1942. John Wren, a toddler on the time, later mirrored on the sacrifice his dad and mom made.
“It killed my mom to half with him, however Chips was robust and sensible, and we knew he’d be good as an Army Warfare Canine,” John Wren stated in a later interview.
Coaching and Early Service
Chips shipped out to the Warfare Canine Coaching Heart in Entrance Royal, Virginia, for coaching. He skilled as a sentry canine for weeks, studying to detect intruders, maintain positions and work alongside a handler beneath simulated fight circumstances. His herding and guarding instincts served him effectively.
He was paired with Pvt. John P. Rowell, a navy policeman from Arkansas. The 2 had been assigned to the third Army Police Platoon, thirtieth Infantry Regiment, third Infantry Division. They deployed collectively to North Africa within the fall of 1942 as a part of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa. Chips was among the many first American warfare canines to serve abroad.
Even earlier than his most well-known exploit, Chips demonstrated his worth. In accordance with the Army Working Canine Heritage Museum, one in every of his earliest notable acts in theater was alerting Rowell to a pending ambush. In the course of the ensuing firefight, Chips galloped again to base with a telephone cable connected to his collar, dodging small arms fireplace and permitting the platoon to name for assist.
In January 1943, Chips obtained a novel project. He was one in every of three canines chosen to supply safety for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill throughout the Casablanca Convention in French Morocco, the place the 2 leaders plotted Allied technique for the rest of the warfare.
The Machine Gun Nest at Licata
After 5 months of preventing throughout North Africa, the third Infantry Division ready for Operation Husky, the large Allied invasion of Sicily. Maj. Gen. Lucian Okay. Truscott led the third Infantry Division ashore close to Licata on Sicily’s southern coast on July 10, 1943, as a part of the biggest amphibious operation of the warfare to that time.
As daybreak broke and Rowell’s platoon pushed inland, an Italian machine gun nest hidden inside a constructing opened fireplace. A number of People had been hit within the opening burst. The remainder of the platoon dove for canopy with no place to maneuver.
Chips all of a sudden broke free from Rowell. Regardless of intense gunfire and Rowell screaming for him to come back again, the canine sprinted towards the place. He leapt into the fortification, clamping his jaws across the gunner’s throat. Within the chaos, the machine gun was knocked over and one of many Italians fired a pistol at Chips, wounding him with powder burns and a scalp laceration.
The platoon superior and captured the 4 Italian troopers as medics tended to Chips. His work was not completed. That very same night time, Chips alerted Rowell to motion past their perimeter. The handler and his unit acted shortly, capturing ten extra Italian troopers making an attempt to slide by means of their traces beneath cowl of darkness.
The story traveled quick by means of the division and reached American newspapers not lengthy after. Chips went from an nameless sentry canine to a family title virtually in a single day.
Medals, Controversy and Congress
The corporate’s commander, Capt. Edward G. Parr, really useful Chips for the Distinguished Service Cross, citing his “brave motion in single-handedly eliminating a harmful machine gun nest and inflicting give up of its crew.” Chips additionally obtained the Silver Star and Purple Coronary heart for his accidents.
Warfare Division rules technically prohibited awarding decorations to animals. However Truscott felt Chips had earned them. On Nov. 19, 1943, the overall personally pinned the Distinguished Service Cross on Chips’ collar.
The loudest opposition got here from William Thomas, nationwide commander of the Army Order of the Purple Coronary heart. Thomas fired off complaints to the White Home, the Warfare Division and the Adjutant Common’s workplace, calling it an insult to each soldier who had bled for a similar ribbons. The controversy reached Congress, the place lawmakers spent three months arguing over the problem
In accordance with a February 1944 report in Time journal, Maj. Gen. James A. Ulio, the Army’s Adjutant Common, in the end determined that Chips would retain his medals, however the navy wouldn’t award medals to animals once more.
Wire service studies from the identical interval inform a barely totally different model, suggesting the DSC was rescinded whereas the Silver Star and Purple Coronary heart had been retained. No matter which account is definitive, the U.S. navy shut the door on official recognition for warfare canines going ahead.
His fame remained undiminished among the many males who served with him. Chips even met Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower after the Battle of Salerno when the Supreme Allied Commander visited the unit to congratulate them. When Eisenhower leaned all the way down to pet the canine, Chips nipped his hand. As a skilled sentry canine, Chips was conditioned to reply aggressively to anybody apart from his handler. Eisenhower reportedly took it in stride.
“His response was, ‘That is OK. I perceive that is what you are skilled to do,'” John Wren later recounted.
Eight Campaigns and a Homecoming
Chips continued to serve with Rowell and the third Infantry Division by means of a number of the warfare’s hardest preventing. His campaigns spanned North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, the push to Rome, southern France, the Rhineland and Central Europe.
The lads of Chips’ platoon discovered their very own solution to honor him. They unofficially awarded him a Theater Ribbon with an arrowhead, a distinction reserved for airborne and amphibious assault landings, together with eight battle stars representing every marketing campaign during which he served.
Chips was formally discharged from the Army in December 1945 and returned to the Wren household in Pleasantville. John Wren was 4 years outdated when the canine arrived residence in a picket crate, accompanied by photographers and reporters.
“Chips was one thing of a star when he returned from the warfare, however we had been simply happy to have our canine again,” Wren stated.
Chips died in 1946, roughly seven months after his discharge. Some sources allege his loss of life was attributable to issues associated to his fight accidents. He was six years outdated.
Rowell and the Wren household stayed in contact after the warfare, exchanging letters for years. Rowell wrote that he was heartbroken when he realized Chips had died.
“He stated that Chips and he had slept collectively an terrible lot and that Chips had saved his life many occasions,” Wren stated of Rowell’s letters.
The Army’s Altering Angle
The controversy over Chips’ medals did greater than strip honors from a single canine. It helped set up a authorized and bureaucratic framework that categorised navy working canines as tools, a standing equal to a rifle or a tent.
In the course of the Vietnam Warfare, roughly 5,000 canines served with American forces, credited by navy estimates with saving roughly 10,000 lives. When U.S. forces withdrew, the Division of Protection deemed these canines surplus tools. Most had been handed off to South Vietnamese forces that had neither the coaching nor the funding to take care of them. Others had been put down by American veterinarians earlier than the withdrawal was full.
Solely about 200 made it again to the US. Handlers who begged to carry their canines residence, even at their very own expense, had been refused.
The outcry from Vietnam-era handlers and the general public ultimately pressured widespread change. In 2000, President Invoice Clinton signed the “Robby Legislation,” requiring that retired navy working canines be made obtainable for adoption by former handlers, regulation enforcement businesses or certified households somewhat than euthanized.
The 2016 Nationwide Protection Authorization Act went additional, guaranteeing transportation residence for navy working canines serving abroad and giving handlers the primary alternative to undertake them.
Immediately, the Division of Protection employs greater than 1,600 navy working canine groups. The canines are acknowledged as integral members of their models, a standing that took many years of advocacy and tragedy to safe. The direct line between Chips’ revoked medals in 1944 and the deserted canines of Vietnam within the Seventies stays one of many extra painful chapters in American navy historical past.
Recognition, Seven A long time Later
On Jan. 15, 2018, precisely 75 years to the day after the Casablanca Convention, the place Chips as soon as stood guard, the Folks’s Dispensary for Sick Animals awarded him the Dickin Medal in a ceremony on the Churchill Warfare Rooms in London. Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s great-grandson, even attended the ceremony.
The Dickin Medal is the best honor any animal can obtain for service in navy battle, usually described because the animal equal of the Victoria Cross. A navy working canine named Ayron stood in for Chips on the ceremony whereas U.S. Army Lt. Col. Alan Throop accepted the medal on behalf of the regiment.
John Wren, then 76 years outdated, traveled from his residence in Southold, New York, to witness the presentation.
“He acquired a variety of unhealthy press through the years for being a rogue and being harmful so far as the individuals had been involved,” Wren stated. “They did not like the truth that he’d gotten medals and issues like that. So, it actually made me really feel nice to see him lastly obtain some recognition as a particular creature, which, in our view, he was.”
After the ceremony, the Dickin Medal was housed on the Nationwide World Warfare II Museum in New Orleans earlier than being transferred in April 2022 to the third Infantry Division Museum at Fort Stewart, Georgia, the place it now sits as a part of the everlasting assortment.
In 2019, Chips additionally obtained the Animals in Warfare and Peace Medal of Bravery, an American equal to the Dickin Medal. That very same 12 months, a life-sized bronze statue of Chips, sculpted by Lena Toritch, was unveiled on the Path of Honor in Lasdon Park in Katonah, New York, roughly 20 minutes from the Pleasantville neighborhood the place the Wren household as soon as lived.
In 1990, Disney produced a made-for-TV film primarily based on his life referred to as “Chips, the Warfare Canine.” Smithsonian Journal named him essentially the most notable wartime canine in American historical past a decade later.
No American warfare canine has obtained extra honors for fight service. Army working canines in the present day are acknowledged as integral members of their models somewhat than tools, a change that traces immediately again to the battle over Chips’ medals. A household pet from Pleasantville served in eight campaigns, saved his handler’s life greater than as soon as and single-handedly took out an enemy machine gun nest. He stays essentially the most adorned warfare canine in U.S. navy historical past, honored alongside names like Audie Murphy and Gen. Joseph T. Dickman as one of many third Infantry Division’s personal.
Sources: U.S. Army Quartermaster Museum, “Quartermaster Warfare Canine Program”; U.S. Army, “The Canine Hero of the third Infantry Division” (2022); U.S. Army, “Warfare Canine: The Beginning of the Okay-9 Corps” (2016); PDSA, “High Honour for WWII Hero Canine” (2018); Nationwide Structure Heart, “Honoring the First Canine to Be Awarded the Purple Coronary heart” (2015); CBC Radio, “A Particular Creature: Chips the WW II Hero Canine Honoured” (2018); Army Working Canine Heritage Museum, “Chips: A Blended Breed Canine with Pure Grit”; Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, “Canine of the Vietnam Warfare”; Westchester County Authorities, Warfare Canine Memorial Dedication (2019); EBSCO Analysis Starters, “Chips the Warfare Canine”; Vice, “The US Army Euthanized or Deserted Hundreds of Their Personal Canine Troopers on the Finish of the Vietnam Warfare” (2014); Newsweek, “Hero Canine of the U.S. Okay-9 Corps in World Warfare II” (2025); Animals Across the Globe, “Honoring Army Working Canine All through Historical past” (2026).
