Another GI then sold Smoky to Corporal William A. Wynne of Cleveland, Ohio, for two Australian pounds (equal to $6.44 at that time)—the price paid to the seller so he could return to his poker game.

She faced adverse circumstances, living in the New Guinea jungle and Rock Islands, suffering the primitive conditions of tents in equatorial heat and humidity.

"[5] On those flights, Smoky spent long hours dangling in a soldier's pack near machine guns used to ward off enemy fighters.

Wynne credited Smoky with saving his life by warning him of incoming shells on an LST (transport ship), calling her an "'angel' from a foxhole".

As the ship deck was booming and vibrating from anti-aircraft gunnery, Smoky guided Wynne to duck the fire that hit eight men standing next to them.

[3] In the downtime, Smoky learned numerous tricks, which she performed for the entertainment of troops with Special Services and in hospitals from Australia to Korea.

[5] Smoky's tricks enabled her to become a hero in her own right by helping engineers to build an airbase at Lingayen Gulf, Luzon, a crucial airfield for Allied war planes.

[5] Early in the Luzon campaign, the Signal Corps needed to run a telegraph wire through a 70-foot-long (21 m) pipe that was 8 inches (200 mm) in diameter.

[4] When they arrived home from the war, Wynne and Smoky were featured in a page one story with photographs in the Cleveland Press on December 7, 1945.

[5] Over the next 10 years, Smoky and Wynne traveled to Hollywood and all over the world to perform demonstrations of her remarkable skills, which included walking a tightrope while blindfolded.

Wynne and his family buried Smoky in a World War II .30 caliber ammo box in the Cleveland Metroparks, Rocky River Reservation in Lakewood, Ohio.

[3][9] Nearly 50 years later, on Veterans Day, November 11, 2005, a bronze life-size sculpture, by Susan Bahary, of Smoky sitting in a GI helmet, atop a two-ton blue granite base, was unveiled there.

Her service in this area began in July 1944 at the 233rd Station Hospital in New Guinea, where she accompanied nurses to see the incoming battlefield casualties from the Biak Island invasion.