The Only Dog Ever Officially Enlisted in the Royal Navy.
In 1939, a Great Dane named Nuisance had a problem. He loved riding the trains between Simon's Town and Cape Town, South Africa, escorting drunk sailors back to base. The state railway company didn't love him back, they threatened to have him put down unless someone paid his fares.
The Royal Navy's solution was breathtaking in its bureaucratic elegance: they enlisted him. On August 25, 1939, Able Seaman Just Nuisance, surname Nuisance, first name Just, trade listed as "Bonecrusher," religion as "Scrounger", became the only dog in history officially enrolled in the Royal Navy. As enlisted personnel, he was entitled to free rail travel. Problem solved.
His service record reads like a sitcom. He was charged with sleeping in the Petty Officers' dormitory and sentenced to "deprivation of bones for seven days." He went AWOL repeatedly, refused to leave pubs at closing time, lost his collar, and, in his most serious infractions, killed the mascots of two Royal Navy warships, HMS Shropshire and HMS Redoubt. He never once went to sea.
He died on April 1, 1944, his seventh birthday, after being put to sleep due to a paralytic condition called thrombosis. The Royal Navy buried him with full military honours, a firing party, a bugler sounding the Last Post, and a Union Jack draped over his grave on the slopes above Simon's Town. His bronze statue still watches over the harbour today.
They gave a dog a rank, a salary, and a disciplinary record just to get him a free train ticket. Peak military logic.