Horrie lived in idyllic surroundings on a dairy farm at Cudgewa owned by Eddie Albert Bennetts, a friend of Moody’s from the 6th Division who had fought with the Tank-Attack (formerly Anti-Tank) Battalion. Horrie sired two litters of seven pups with his partner, Ishmi II. Over the years, most of the Rebels managed to visit Horrie at least once and Barry the Butcher was known to have made the trip from Sydney six times.
Moody kept in contact with Horrie and on average made monthly visits to him, keeping Imshi II and the pups with his (Moody’s) family. He decided with Bennetts to give Horrie the new name of ‘Benji’—an amalgam of Bennetts and Jim. Calling him Horrie would have been dangerous. Word would have leaked out that a dog fitting the famous animal’s description was alive and well. Moody was based in several places within a few hours drive of Cudgewa.
It gave him great joy to see his beloved mate happy and contented into his maturity. Horrie always greeted him (and Imshi II) with unbridled enthusiasm, as if thanking him for his wonderful life that his master’s many risky actions had given him. Horrie was closer to Eddie Bennetts’ wife Gladys because Eddie was not comfortable with dogs around cattle.
On one occasion at a Melbourne reunion on Anzac Day in the late 1940s, Moody, Bennetts and several of the Rebels got themselves merry. As usual Moody was ready for some spirited behaviour. He took Bennetts, Featherstone and Gill for a hair-raising ride in the old Rolls Royce he had converted into a moveable workshop for his wool-classing operations. Imshi II was in the car. Moody, in a reckless mood, careered through Melbourne’s beautiful Treasury Gardens, where vehicles never travelled. The thrill-ride ended up with them all partying at a nearby pub. Eddie Bennetts noticed Moody left the celebrations several times in the night. The next morning his intermittent departures were explained. He had been with Imshi in the Rolls, helping to deliver four pups sired by Horrie.
At age ten years, Horrie was overweight and slowed up by severe bouts of rheumatism in his back. This less-than-nimble condition led to him being accidentally run over and killed at Log Bridge near Cudgewa. Moody was devastated by the news. But all the Rebels consoled him by reminding him that had he not taken Horrie out of the Libyan Desert he would have died there as a pup. Hundreds of men of the 2/1 Machine Gun Battalion and many more in units of 6th Division then would have been killed and injured by German Stukas in Greece, Crete and Palestine, on the high seas and on land.
‘Every dog has his day,’ Moody said, ‘and except for a week or so in Syria, Horrie was on top of life, every day.’
Horrie’s sad demise drew Moody closer to Imshi and the pups, and he often commented to his family about ‘all the little Horries running around.’
Imshi died in 1959, aged 14. Moody gained great personal satisfaction from knowing that Horrie’s fine genes lived on through many offspring, and that he and the Rebels had beaten the system. But the long-running sting did not end there. In 1966, 21 years after the ruse by Moody and the Rebels, he felt comfortable enough to donate Horrie’s ‘uniform’ and his mode of travel, the pack, to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Included were an Africa Star, ribbon, colour patch, and chevrons: his insignias indicating rank and length of service. These were displayed by the Memorial and the event created another round of publicity on the story. But Moody kept the EX1 tag and RSL medallion as keepsakes for his own vivid memories. They were his equivalent to the sock given to Horrie to always remember Moody by. Being a professional photographer he also kept stylish snaps of Horrie, Imshi II and their pups.
Jim Moody gained fame from his association with Horrie but his life was never the same after his traumatic war and the dramatic events of 1945. The government noted his record of being AWL, and also his attacks on its Health Department, and decided he was not eligible for any soldier settlement block. He ran his Manly photography shop for a while and also worked for another photographic business, Peter Fox Studios in Melbourne. He and Don Gill enjoyed a couple of years after the war as daredevil motorbike racers at Sydney and Melbourne speedways. He and Gill were always able to provide spectacular acts, which had been practised and honed in Libya’s Western Desert in 1941.
Moody kept in contact with all the Rebels and they would have a reunion every Anzac Day for two decades after the war. Most of the group would make it to Melbourne and take a private room at the Bowling Club in Union Street in the suburb of Windsor. As the decades rolled on, the dispersed group members were down to phone calls, cards and letters. Moody had divorced during the war after his wife became involved with another man in Melbourne. In 1948, he met Joan Booth, an army nursing lieutenant, and they married in 1951 (the same year Brian Featherstone married his wife Betty). When asked what attracted her to Moody, Joan replied after some thought: ‘His sense of humour.’
Betty Featherstone agreed with that Moody characteristic and added that he was ‘a larrikin with a good heart.’
The lack of a base caused Moody to be peripatetic in his search for work. Each of their three children, Leonie, Ian and Ann, was born in a different part of Victoria. Moody was never able to settle down and he developed a drinking problem brought on by his war and the pressures and consequences of defending Horrie’s life. He also had intermittent nightmares, over his war experiences, including Stuka attacks, the deaths of the girls of the Larissa convent, Horrie and the substitute dog. They never abated. He and Joan divorced in 1957.
Moody married a third time but again he was unsettled, although he held down a good job for more than 20 years as a wool-classer for Southern Farmers, working the many shearing sheds in western Victoria’s Portland and Hamilton districts. His third marriage ended in the late 1960s. In the mid-1970s he became involved with an Adelaide woman, Natalie Thompson. She was a hotelier, which suited Moody’s lifestyle.
There was one further dog ‘incident.’ He was doing some classing at a big grazier’s property in Victoria when a farmer objected forcefully to his then dog, a kelpie, being on his property. It brought back memories of incidents involving Horrie in 1941 at Ikingi with the sergeant-of-the guard, and also with the Nazi spy in the Greek village. Moody got into an altercation with the farmer. This was reported to Moody’s employer, but such was his standing as a wool-classer and admired character that his employer supported him in preference to keeping the major client. In the end the client allowed Moody back on his property with the kelpie to do further wool-classing.
Another event demonstrated the extent of his drinking, when he was picked up by Portland Police after his involvement in a car accident in 1975 at age 64. He was given a blood test. Even though he bad-mouthed the arresting policemen, they did not charge him. This was in part because of his local popularity. When Moody asked for the result of his blood alcohol level, the doctor on duty told him: ‘It’s okay, you’re fine; there was no blood in the sample.’
Brian Featherstone’s situation as the senior cop in Colac, Victoria, was just another reason that Moody would never disclose the true Horrie story publicly. All the Rebels could have been charged with perjury and several other offences for the complicity in the Horrie smuggling and subsequent cover-up. It would have ended Featherstone’s career in the police force. None of the Rebels would have been given land after the war. As it was, their reputations had led to some of them not receiving good blocks in commercial or valued locations.
Moody lived out his days with Natalie at Portland in an old tram car in the bush, and in the depth of winter in Adelaide. In typically cynical, yet fatalistic fashion, he called the tram car The Last Stop. A Rebel to the end, he ran the tram car’s electricity system on kerosene, but had trouble with local authorities for short-circuiting and blacking out the Portland region when using a double adaptor. It led to his tram car being properly wired.
Moody died in 1979, aged 68. His son Ian carried out one of his father’s last wishes that the tram car should ‘not end up on the scrap heap.’ Ian arranged for it to be donated to Portland’s Vintage Car Club where it is on permanent display.
Jim Moody’s efforts on behalf of a lost and doomed dog in a Libyan desert form an integral, if unusual part of the enduring Anzac legend of mateship and high sacrifice. No one who knew Horrie ever doubted that every risk and effort for this exceptional animal was merited. Moody’s love of dogs caused him much personal loss, but he was first to say, without equivocation, it was all worth it for Horrie, the grand dog of war.