War Dogs
Authors: Rebecca Frankel
Dogs are inducted into the Army at Front Royal, Virginia in August 1942. World War II was the first war in which the United States officially brought dogs into its military. Over 10,000 US dogs served during World War II and most were donated to the cause by patriotic civilians who offered their pets for service.
Courtesy of the US National Archives and Records Administration
War Dogs
Tales of Canine Heroism,
History, and Love
Rebecca Frankel
Foreword by Thomas E. Ricks
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For the handlers who let me get close to their dogs, and for the dogs who let me get close to their handlers.
For Tippy and Rippyâthe dogs who came first.
Foreword
This is a lovely book. The image of a small but enthusiastic dog pulling the author up a hill at dusk in the Arizona desert in a military training exercise will stay with me.
But it is also a surprising book. I opened it looking forward to reading a few good stories about the use of dogs in war. But midway through, the realization hit me that this is something larger than that, and far deeper: it is a meditation on war and humans. It illuminates conflict from the unexpected angle of the allure of war, and the damage it does to both species.
This book is the account of a journey. We accompany the author, Rebecca Frankel, into the small but lively world of military dogs and their handlers. She brings a gimlet eye for its idiosyncrasies, such as the jockeying to be the handler with the toughest dog. We learn about what makes a “good” dog as opposed to a weak one. We become aware of the danger of the trainer “melting the dog.” We see that the essential ingredient in partnering with a dog, as with a human, is trust. “The dog will often rather lay down life itself than betray its trust,” we are told. Frankel posits that dogs, unlike other animals, have been “hardwired” by evolution to develop trust in certain humans. I believe it.
But this volume about dogs is also a very human story. Some of its best passages are about the dogs' handlers. They take deserved pride in their line of work. But like many soldiers, they also feel misjudged by the larger military world, yet for an unusual reason: “Leadership doesn't understand us . . . Don't quite grasp us because they don't understand dogs.”
Frankel adeptly shows us how bonds form and expand between handler and animal. I did not know that dogs and handlers often work together for years. We meet one team that was joined for a decade, until canine death did them part. Nor did I know that the drive of the handler is the single most important ingredient in a team, or that handlers are taught to “see” spots in the flow of air where dogs might best detect odors.
But, in keeping with the deeper themes of the book, we also learn that dogs require proportionally larger doses of morphine to ease pain than do people. And when one handler wrestling with severe PTSD dies, a comrade comments, “Well, officially it's written up as an accident. But I know it wasn't.”
Frankel is a good and observant writer. She brings a fresh eye to military affairs. Our recent wars have made us familiar with the grainy, green images produced by night vision goggles. But I had never seen the image captured quite as well as her phrase herein, “shades of neon lemon and lime.”
There is also some interesting history here. I didn't know that dogs were introduced to the Iraq war relatively late and were not part of the invasion force. It is significant also that they were not initially brought to help detect roadside bombs but turned to that task once there. This makes them a central part of the Iraq story, because the roadside bomb, or IED, is the characteristic feature of the war there, just as trenches and machine guns were during World War I.
As shown here, the tale of the US military war dog is the history of the US military buildups and drawdowns in miniature. Old lessons are relearned in new wars, and then forgotten as units demobilize in the postwar era.
Indeed, the world of the canine military is an obscure part of our huge armed forces establishment, somewhat akin to, say, meteorology or airborne medicine. But as Frankel drills deep into it, it becomes clear that this is the most military of worlds, hard-core in its own way. One true lesson: “If you aren't humble and honest with yourself and what you're really capable of . . . then you need to get the hell out of the way and let somebody else do it.” Another one that rings true: “Shortcuts get people killed.”
The bonus is that anyone who reads this book and has a pet dog will come away with a greater appreciation for, and understanding of, their companion. As I write this, one of my terriers, a rescue dog with fear issues, is sleeping by my feet. Frankel's observation that the leash is the wire through which emotions and feelings are transmitted, both ways, will change the way I think about my walks with him and my other, calmer dog. Most of all, I will think of the daily requirement to earn and retain their trust. Or, as that bumper sticker says, to be the person my dogs think I am.
Thomas E. Ricks
Author's Note
Here are a few things that I feel might be worth explaining before readers begin.
To head off the understandable questions (and readers with a copy-editing eye) about the spelling of some of the military dogs' names that appear in these pages, those that begin with two of the same letter are not spelling errors. The US Military Working Dog program breeds dogs, and the resulting puppies are identified by names that begin with the same double letter. For example, in June 2010 a litter of Belgian Malinois puppies were born into the “R” litter and were given names like Rrespect, Rromano, Rruck, and Rrisky.
You'll notice too that when I write of “the handler” or “the working dog” at large, I employ “he” or “his.” I did this for consistency's sakeâit should not be viewed as gender bias or emblematic of a working dog culture that is still dominated by males, but rather because it was simpler.
I also made a conscious decision at the beginning of writing this book not to assign the pronoun “it” when talking about these dogs. Therefore, they are always “he,” “she,” or “who.” In my mind “it” refers to a
thing,
and dogs are not things; they are our feeling and emotionally engaged companions. And, especially in this book, they are oftentimes more than that, certainly nothing less.
Introduction
Dogs in the Time of War
People have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't. I may be wrong, but I call it loveâthe deepest kind of love. . . .
It's a shame that people all over the world can't have that kind of love in their hearts. . . . There would be no wars, slaughter, or murder; no greed or selfishness. It would be the kind of world that God wants us to haveâa wonderful world.
âWilson Rawls,
Where the Red Fern Grows
Despite the many distant stars, there was no moon, and the night sky was all the blacker for it. The desert air had chilled but the tension in the village was palpable and rising. Gunfire crackled down the market lane, rapid and loud. A high-pitched hiss sizzled in the distance, followed by the deep shudder of an explosion.
Boom!
Then came another, and another.
Shouts chorused through the cramped alleyway. Someone in the unit had been hit. There was the scuffle of boots, the cries for “Medic!” and the sound of gravel scratching across the ground in a rush to get to the wounded.
Inside a hut, a group of soldiers huddled around the injured party while the damage was assessedâit was a broken leg and a bad one at that. Only the casualty wasn't one of the men kneeling, but the dog lying next to them.
When Staff Sergeant Fred Roberts, the dog's handler, went to treat his partner's wounds, the panicked dog resisted, thrashing and twisting, his hind legs kicking. It took two able-bodied men to hold Turbo down and Roberts was rattled, his hands fumbling over the gauze as he struggled to set the bone and wrap the bandage. Finally, after what felt like many breath-held minutes, the dressing was secure.
Roberts leaned back, sweat slick across his brow. Turbo lay panting, the fight in him subsiding as if he knew the worst was over. And it was, at least for that night. After all, this had only been a careful simulation, part of a predeployment training session taking place not in the throes of a warzone but on a remote military base in Yuma, Arizona. There were no insurgents' bullets flying; the injuries were feigned, only pretend.
I stood watching a few steps away, my heart pounding inside my chest. Though the scene unfolding before me was practice, the anxiety and the adrenaline rush had been real. It was March 2012, and I was observing not only Roberts and Turbo, but a slew of 17 dog teams from all military branchesâMarine Corps, Air Force, Army, and Navyâas they readied themselves for war.
The Inter-Service Advance Skills K-9 (ISAK) course hosted at the Yuma Proving Ground in the Arizona desert is designed to prepare handlers and their dogs for what awaits them in a combat theater. Perhaps Roberts slept better that night, knowing that if his dog were ever hitâif it happened for realâhe and Turbo would be better prepared to face it. Either way, they would be deploying soon enough.
As events would unfold in the months that followed, the end of spring and into the summer, most of these handlers and their dogs would deploy; many of them would go to war. Not all of them would return.
It's not known, not really,
when the first dog took the battlefield to wage war alongside his human companions. Historians believe that
millennia ago, the ancient Egyptians used canines to carry messages. The Corinthians surrounded their seashore citadel with guard dogs in 400
bc,
and the Romans employed them to raise alarms for their garrisons. The feared invasion forces of Attila the Hun brought ferocious hounds with them to protect their camps during battle.
1
The United States, historically, has been woefully behind in adopting dogs into its military ranks, not doing so officially until 1942 with the Army's Dogs for Defense program. So crucial were these animals during World War II that the US canine ranks swelled to over 10,000 dogs strong. In Vietnam, scout dogs were so successful at thwarting the ambush tactics of the Vietcong that bounties exceeding $20,000 were placed on their heads while only half as much was promised for their human handlers. In recent years, working outside the wire in Iraq and Afghanistan, military dogs have become the single greatest advantage allied forces have against the signature weapon of the post-9/11 eraâthe improvised explosive device, or IED. Try though the military has to outdo them with technology and electronic machinery, nothing has been more effective at uncovering these unpredictably lethal roadside bombs than a handler and his detection dog.
But what is a war dog exactly? A furry but devoted weapon? A faithful fighter? A fierce soldier? A guardian who keeps watch in the night? A war dog is at once all of these things and still somehow more than the mere sum of those collected roles and qualities. Never so dire or profound is that exchange of dependence and trust between a man and his dog than on the battlefield. In combat lives are at stake, and so the capacity to expand that bond between handler and dogâto have it deepen in intensity and feelingâis exceptionally great.
It is a relationship built first on a mutual trust, one that can flourish into something more intimateâtrust with a greater sense of loyalty and even love. It's this bond that, in a combat zone, encourages the dog's desire to work his keen senses to the advantage of his human companions and inspires heroic feats of bravery when the instinct to flee or sense of fear might dictate otherwise. Together this team endures what seems unendurableâtrauma, injury, and even death. And if all this proves too much to bear, the
handler and dog who suffer the same afflictions can even heal together. It is a symbiotic relationship that challenges and changes the way a person experiences war.
The journey that took me to Yuma
that March night in 2012 really began with a photograph I found during the winter of 2010âan image of a Marine battalion kicking back at Camp Huskers, located along the outskirts of Marjah, Afghanistan. In the photo, the sunlight slanted warmly over these Marines and the bomb-sniffing dogs who were sprawled across their laps and curled close against their sides.
In my tenure as an editor of
Foreign Policy
magazine, I spent many hours curating and editing large photo collections. During much of this time the United States was still fully engaged in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a side effect of this work, I'd grown more or less accustomed to graphic warzone sceneryâthe searing reds and whites of RPG blasts, sand clouds kicked up by Chinook helicopters, the bloodied limbs of soldiers and civilians, frozen moments of anguish and death. But this photo surprised me for another reason; I was struck by the unfamiliar sense of contentment radiating from these Marines and their dogs. There were no furrowed brows, no Kevlar vests or helmets, no Ray-Ban sunglasses obscuring their eyes. These young men looked tranquil, happy; the dogs were all but grinning. It evoked a sweet pang of home, if a makeshift barracks in the middle of a warzone could be called home.
I shared the image with Tom Ricks (former senior Pentagon correspondent for the
Washington Post
and, perhaps more importantly, a great lover of dogs), thinking he might like to post the photograph on
The Best Defense
, his
Foreign Policy
blog. On his suggestion, we partnered in a new Friday feature, “Rebecca's War Dog of the Week,” and he anointed me Chief Canine Correspondent. And so opened my eyes to the wide world of war dogs.
My biggest fear in stepping into this world was that I had no business in it. I have never held rank in the military. Even as a journalist writing about the policies and events surrounding these wars, or as an editor working with reporters and photo journalists assigned to cover
these regions, or dissecting and promoting expert analysis, I was at best a distant observerâperhaps well informed and well intentioned, but an outsider all the same.
I suppose in this way, I was more like most of my fellow Americans than not. The United States has been engaged on two war fronts for over a decade, and less than 1 percent of the American population has served on the front lines. The rest of the country is fatigued by the news of drone strikes and suicide bombings. We are now a country long tired of war.
And yet every time I talked with someone in the Military Working Dog (MWD) communityâwhether it was a handler on deployment in Iraq, a veterinary technician stationed in Afghanistan, a veteran scout-dog handler from Vietnam, or a volunteer for a therapy dog nonprofitâthe barriers I feared might separate us melted away. You don't have to walk a mile down a bomb-laden road in Kandahar to know the pull of devotion of a dog, or the sadness you feel when it becomes clear that the four-legged member of your family is fading and it is time to say good-bye. It's a feeling that transcends the individualized experiences that otherwise would put us on distant life plains. To love an animal is to share a kinship.
When we cannot make that human connection over war, when we cannot empathize or imagine the far-off world of a combat zone, we can still understand what it means to love a dog. These military working dogs are a bridge over the divide, the gap that separates civilians and military, participants and onlookers. The stories of their heroism and sacrifice connect those of us who have no other tie to the battlefield, to the roads in Afghanistan where our service men and women have been laying down their lives. There is something less complicated (and ironically more human) about relating to war through the story of a dog.
In May 2011,
the world was riveted by the news that Cairo, a dog reportedly attached to a Navy SEAL team, had helped take down Osama bin Laden. There was an explosion of interest in the topic of war dogs. The idea that a canine was part of this historic event was exhilarating. When it came time to pull together the world's most capable and specialized military team
to hunt down and take out the world's most wanted man, they made sure a military working dog was at this team's disposal.
I have spent more than a year exploring the world of war dogs for this book. A vast domain, it extends further and wider than I could've imagined, containing communities within communities. It is a place infused with tremendous spirit and solidarity. I thought I would be writing a book about dogs who live their lives in the service of the military, whether they come to this life by way of breeding, training, or happenstance. But as much as it is about dogs, this is a book about the indelible mark they have left and will leave on their handlers, their community inside the military, as well as all of us who depend on their bravery. In some ways, I was surprised when I realized I was actually writing a book about people, the people who bear this mark the most deeply. And in the end that included me as well. When I was offered a leash during an explosives-finding exercise, I picked it up. When I was offered a bite suit to catch a dog (teeth first), I put it on; a rucksack, I carried it as long and far as I was able.
This is also a book about cycles, wartime and otherwise. After years of reporting on this topic, I couldn't find a way around writing about our militaristic future, which inevitably led me to review our military's past. And war dog history tends to repeat itself, for though dogs have been used to great success in conflict after conflict, when a war dies down, the dogs are scaled back, their programs depleted of their resources and the advances in skill and design made at the height of conflict are shelved or otherwise lost. And when the call for the dogs comes againâas it inevitably willâyears and energy are spent rebuilding and reinventing.
I avoid the question of whether or not it is ethical to involve animals in fighting our wars. There are legitimate cases to be made on both sides, but we do employ animals in war and we rely on them heavily. This book starts with the reality that their role is significant on a level that has evolved far beyond function, servitude, and base usefulness. The one question worth asking and answering at more than one turn is this: Does taking dogs into warâwherever the battlegroundâreally make a difference? The answer is, over and over, a resounding
Yes.
Dogs are integral to our efforts abroad
as well as to our safety at home and in this role have proven their mettle again and again. A dog belongs by our sideâwhether as a fighter, detector, protector, companion, empathizer, or healer. As long as we have a military made of men and women, we should have military dogs.