Phan Rang Airbase, 1969 - Red Alert (Revised)

I have added an additional paragraph at the end of this story.

The Juliette sector of the base was the worst area to patrol for a dog handler. There were no trees or shrubs to hide ones movements. A soldier was silhouetted by the lights of the base. Other posts had trees or hills between the flight line and the fence line, but not the Juliette sector. There were bushes on the other side of the perimeter road, but it was not enough to give the dog handler any suitable shadowing of his silhouette. This was my least favorite area to patrol and not because it was the area that the tower guard wanted to shoot me. The Juliette area had one other very bad feature. A canal ran along the perimeter just outside the fence allowing the enemy to approach the fence line virtually undetected.

Because the Juliette area was so vulnerable, trip wires were connected to small flares attached to the concertina wire in the hopes that an intruder would set off the flare and illuminate himself as he crawled through the concertina wire. We did have a few false tripping of a flare every now and then, but nothing tripped the night we got attacked in the Juliette area. Every flare had a pin in it that prevented it from being triggered by the trip wire. Apparently the local kids, who would scurry along the perimeter scavenging unopened C rations, had crawled though the wire and put pins in all the mechanisms of the flares prior to the attempted penetration of the base.

Naturally, the attempted penetration of the base occurred on the one night of the week that I was in charge of the Flight. It started off with a tower guard calling Control and saying that he saw movement in front of his tower. Control asked the dog handlers to make a sweep of the area. Just as the Security Alert Team (3 men in a jeep with an M-60 machine gun, an M-79 grenade launcher and flares) arrived at the tower, the dog handler closest to the tower called control and informed them that his dog had an alert. The Security Alert Team told the dog handler to take cover and they popped a flare. The handler had no place to hide, so he flattened himself on the ground in the tall grass. 

There were sappers attempting to crawl through the concertina wire and more coming up out of the canal. A grenade was launched in the direction of the penetration. The M-60 machine gun stopped the enemy from advancing. Several of the enemy were killed. It was unknown if any of the intruders were able to get across the perimeter road and into the cover of the bushes. Even if they had, the rapid response teams were dispatched to the bunkers which were between the fence line and the flight line. They would not reach the flight line if they had gotten beyond the perimeter road.

We did have one person wounded during the attack. It was the dog handler that took cover in the tall grass. Apparently he was not visible, because the USAF soldier that launched the M-79 grenade put it right between his ankles. Fortunately, it explodes upward and it did not strike the dog and only one small fragment struck the handler. It was not life threatening, but I do not know if he was able to have children after the shrapnel was removed from the base of his penis. His tour of duty was over and he was sent home to the states.

When the fire fight stopped, the dog handlers swept the area between the perimeter road and the fence in order to secure the area. One dog picked up an alert, and an enemy combatant jumped up out of the tall grass about 20 feet in front of the K-9 team. Flares lit up the sky and the handler shot the enemy soldier. The combatant was a sapper loaded with satchel charges and he exploded. The handler was filled with shrapnel, that is still in him to this day, but he did survive, unlike the sapper who did not. A K-9 supervisor without a dog came across the enemy hiding in the grass and the enemy soldier, while laying on the ground, stuck his AK-47 into the belly of the sergeant. The supervisor shot and killed the enemy soldier.  The K-9 supervisor is alive today because the enemy soldier's gun still had its safety on. The area between the road and the fence was finally cleared and secured.

This is a two part story if you are reading this for the first time.  Scroll through the archive if you are interested in reading Red Alert Part 2.

Life on the Air Base

Compared to the Army and Marines in the field, being in the Air Force was like belonging to a country club.  Even though the barracks was one long open room, we formed 4 man cubicles with our lockers and bunks. My three roommates and I bought a refrigerator off of someone who shipped out. We then promptly stocked it with beer and soda.  The refrigerator was never locked and beer and soda was sold on the honor system and the paper money was put into a box in the fridge.  We doubled the actual cost of beer and soda.  We sold beer for 50 cents and soda for a quarter.  This allowed us to drink as much soda and beer as we wanted to for free. The sale of beer covered the cost of our beer and soda.

Ken, who was from my home state of Massachusetts, always bought one case of Carling Black Label Beer. Everyone was forbidden to drink his beer.  What he did not understand is that no one else wanted his beer, so it worked out fine. We only had one problem, beer was rationed.  We could only buy 3 cases of beer a month.  We always ran out of beer before the month was out, so we had to find someone who was not a beer drinker and entice them into going to the base exchange (BX) with us to use his ration card to buy 3 more cases of beer.

I had a friend on our flight, who refused to walk to the BX to use his ration card because a walk to the BX caused one to sweat so badly that you felt like you needed to take another shower when you got back to the barracks.  No problem.  Walter was blue eyed, blond, weighed about the same as me and was about my height. Instead of walking to the BX, he gave me his ID and his ration card,  3 more cases of beer became available for the refrigerator, and as soon as I retire I will visit my friend Walter and thank him for being such a great friend during one of the most stressful times of our lives.

No Water

One of my earlier stories was about the night a typhoon hit Phan Rang Airbase. If you recall that story, I stayed at the kennels with several other guys in order to take care of the dogs if an emergency arose. The storm did not damage the kennels, but it dumped a lot of rain.

The rain caused the canal to overflow and the water from the canal got into the wells and contaminated our drinking water. When I got back to the barracks, I could not take a shower because the water was shut off to the showers. Water was only used for flushing the toilets. The chow hall used paper plates and plastic eating utensils, only using water to clean the pots and pans that were used for cooking.

We did not know how long the water would be restricted. So, on the 14th day of having no shower, I caught the first bus to the beach instead of going to bed after a long night of sentry duty. I figured it would be better to itch from the salt of the ocean than to suffer one more day without bathing. Everyone on the base must have thought the same thing because the bus was packed. I did not get a seat and, therefore, had to stand for the whole trip. I was so tired after working all night that I fell asleep and woke up as my knees buckled. The bus was so tightly packed that I did not collapse to the floor. I stayed awake after that.

The beach was about a 15-minute ride. It was a beautiful white sand beach. I went for a swim and it felt good to rinse away 2 weeks of crude. I caught the next bus back to the base and I was able to wash the salt off of my body when I got back because the water had been turned on. After a long refreshing shower, I went to bed.

Working Nights

When I became a dog handler, I doomed myself to working nights. If you have to work nights, having a dog for a companion is a good thing. I liked nights with a bright moon because I could see a long distance, but then so could the enemy. I loved dark nights because I could not be seen, but my dog would know if something was out there in the darkness. My dogs made me feel safe at night, well Tusky and Dawn made me feel safe.  With Duke, however, I was more inclined to hide in the bushes and chew my fingernails. The only thing Duke would alert on was my C-rations.

I loved my dogs and I took good care of them. We spent hours together every night; more time than you would spend with a pet every day. We became best buddies and teaching them new tricks was fun and I had plenty of time on my hands to do that. In Vietnam, ticks were a big problem. I would groom my dog every night and pick ticks off of him. I would also check my dog for cuts because untreated cuts could get infected easily and in the tropics flies would also lay their eggs in a cut causing an even bigger problem.

Dinner at night was sometimes a challenge. Some things, like a pecan roll or crackers, do not need to be cooked. Other things, like canned spaghetti or beef with spiced sauce, needed to be cooked. Some of the guys would not cook their dinners because the flame would light them up, making them a target. I figured, if the enemy wanted to enter the base, they would avoid me if they could see me, so I always cooked my C-rations. The movie "Sniper" had not made the movies yet.

In Vietnam, the early shift got off post about 2 hours before the chow hall opened. In order to get three meals a day, one had to stay up for a couple of hours and wait for the chow hall to open. Way back in 1968 and 1969, before dinosaurs roamed the earth, there was no internet, no cable tv, no smartphones and no computers. I suppose I could have read a good book, but that might cause me to fall asleep and miss breakfast. Instead, I learned how to play tennis. We would go out to the tennis courts, turn on the lights and play for a couple of hours. Despite being far from home and in a war zone, I found time to relax and enjoy myself.

New barracks

This is my 26th story. I have been posting one a week for a half a year. Most of my stories have been about my dogs. Some have been about leadership. But this one is about everyday life in the service.

Phan Rang Airbase Republic of Vietnam 1969.

When I arrived at Phan Rang Airbase I bunked in a two story barracks.  It was outdated and new barracks were built for us. The new barracks was one floor and one long building with the showers and latrine in the middle. A Flight had one side and B Flight had the other side. There were no windows in the building, only screened louvers running along both sides of the building just below the soffit of the roof. There was no air conditioning. Vietnam was oppressively hot and humid.

On move-in day, the troops arranged the lockers to form cubicles for four people and then set up the bunk beds. We worked quickly because we had to get settled and get some rest before going to work for the night. The paint was barely dry when the barracks was occupied. Like most construction projects, the building was completed before the landscaping was done.

Dog handlers work nights. That means that the grading of the outside of the building was done during the day while I slept. The earth was a dry red clay. The monsoons were over. I am not a light sleeper and the heavy equipment grading the yard did not wake me up. But when I woke up I knew that the construction company had been grading the yard. The red dust had filtered in through the screened louvers and covered my sheets, pillow and one side of my face. When I lifted my head from the pillow, I left a white silhouette of my face on my pillow. Nothing a change of linens and a good shower could not fix.

I may be able to sleep through a lot of noise, but my olfactory nerves apparently do not rest. Or maybe it was the sound of several people yelling at the mamasans and threatening to kill them that woke me up.  But really, it was probably one of my roommates that woke me up. But, when I did wake up it became apparent what the problem was. The mamasans were cooking their lunches in the entryway between the two halves of the barracks.

I have never tried fermented fish heads. I will never try fermented fish heads. Anything that smells that bad should be thrown out, not eaten.

Each flight had two mamasans that kept the barracks clean and shined our boots. They worked while we slept. As the assistant flight chief, I collected the necessary fee from each handler in the flight and I paid the mamasans who worked on our side. They respected me and when I told them that they could no longer cook their lunches and eat them inside the barracks, they moved outside. The riot was quelled and everyone went back to bed.

.

Snowball

Phan Rang Airbase Republic of Viet Nam 1968 to 1969.

When my dog Duke was relieved from duty, he did not get to retire and spend his life in comfort in a nice home some place. Sentry dogs are not rehabilitated but euthanized. I loved my dog and went to his necropsy. I probably should not have done that because I nearly passed out from the odor when his stomach was cut open. That is why I never went into the medical field.

If you have read my previous posts, then you know I had to choose between several available dogs after Duke was relieved from duty. I chose a dog named Tusky. Tusky had one major problem, he was basically white with a patch of black on his back. All white german shepherds were not eligible to be sent to Viet Nam, but the black spot on Tusky's back made him eligible.

Unless you were in a helicopter, Tusky was an all white dog. What is the problem with having a white dog? You probably already answered the question, white is easily visible at night. If you were me and walking a dog along a fence line in enemy territory, what type of dog would you want? Okay, black, so that the dog is as invisible as you.

Well, Tusky and I performed well despite him being white. I wore camouflage fatigues and blended into the background at night. One night one of the tower guards told me that he could not see me, but that he could see my dog as we approached the tower.  When I was close enough for the tower guard to see me, he said that it looked like I was walking a snowball.

Bad Decision

Most of the war stories that I have shared showed my good judgment, but this one was not one of my best moments. It was January 1969, I was 22 years old, and I was on post in the Echo sector of the perimeter. I had less than 30 days left in country, therefore I was a "short timer." I even wore a short timer ribbon tied in a bow to my button loop; a ribbon that comes on a bottle of Seagram's VO Gold. When you are a short timer you start thinking about just surviving a few more days so that you can go home. Odd, but prior to the 30-day countdown, one does not really think about the possibility that the trip might be made in a pine box. Over 58,000 Americans lost their lives in this senseless war.

At guard mount, the H & I (Harassment and Irritation) fire missions were announced. H & I fire missions were missions where a heavy weapons team would fire at possible enemy infiltration routes. It was a way to train our heavy weapons teams in case they were needed in combat. On the night in question, a 50 caliber machine gun, mounted on a jeep, was going to set up to fire off base a half mile down the perimeter from my post. The 50 caliber machine gun fired tracers and exploding rounds with a .5-yard kill radius. That means that the bullet does not have to hit you; it just has to hit close to you.

Prior to the heavy weapons team setting up, Control contacted all of the posts and told us to clear our posts by withdrawing to the perimeter road. I was sitting behind the metal dump, seeming well protected and decided that I was safe. Even though I was notified to clear my post, I was comfortable and decided to stay where I was and I called in that I was clear. I was not alone. The handler on the post next to mine had stopped by for a visit. He decided to stay where we were sitting and he also called in that he was clear.

Once everyone had reported that they were clear of the line of fire, the heavy weapons team set up to fire. They were not a half a mile down the perimeter. Someone had changed the fire mission or they just set up at the wrong post. When they chambered a round, it sounded like they were directly behind us. They were actually 150 feet from the fence line where we were sitting and 100 feet to our left. It was too late for us to withdraw to the road. We could only hope that the eight-foot high pile of metal junk would be enough to protect us from the bullets.

Even though I was scared and afraid that I might not survive, I watched in amazement as red tracers and exploding rounds impacted the area just a few yards from me. Because you are reading this, you know that the metal dump saved the life of a very foolish young man. Life is full of decisions and we cannot escape the consequences of those decisions. I was fortunate to survive my poor decision and vowed to do better with my decision-making in the future.

Complaint

After posting the dog handlers and posting my squad leader, the Flight Chief pulled me aside to talk to me before sending me to post. He started by telling me that one of the 35 dog handlers had complained that I did not like him and that I was assigning him to all the bad posts. As Assistant Flight Chief, my duties included assigning each dog man team to their post every night. It was not an easy task, but one I took quite seriously. It was important not to keep a dog in the same area night after night so that they would not become too familiar with the area. If the dog became too comfortable with the surroundings, he might become less alert. It was also important that the same dog teams not be posted together night after night for the same reason. So I continually shuffled them around the perimeter mixing up the handlers and areas. I treated everyone the same.

What do you do when the person complaining really thinks that every post is a bad one? What do you do when the Flight Chief does not realize that is the real problem? Well, I did the only thing that I could, I pulled out his dog's record and showed the Flight Chief that he was moved continually around the perimeter just like everyone else. He was never in the same area or on the same post two nights in a row. There it was in black and white. When we wrapped up our meeting, the Flight Chief told me not to let it happen again. How do you think I felt as I walked my dog out to our post?

Monsoon Season

I arrived at Phan Rang Air Base in February of 1968. It was the dry season. The Phan Rang area was the closest to a desert area as it got in Viet Nam.  It was not a jungle area and the trees were small and had to survive a few months with very little rain. The monsoons started slowly. I do not remember what month, but one afternoon about 4:00pm it rained hard for five minutes. Each day after that, it continued to start raining right a 4 o'clock and rained a little longer each day. It was so regular that you could almost set your watch. The good thing was, it stopped before I had to go on post.

Then, suddenly one night it started pouring after I was on post and it did not stop. In the middle of my post was a small clearing amongst the tall grass with a log that I could sit on, cook my C-rations, and relax between sweeps of my post. Fortunately, I had cooked my C-rations before the rain started. I put on my poncho and sat there while it poured. I was miserable. It was so hot and humid that I would have been more comfortable without wearing the poncho. In the days and weeks to follow, I finally figured that out and started wrapping my gun in the poncho to keep it dry, because there was no way for me to stay dry.

As I sat there in my misery, I did not notice the water rising about my ankles until my dogs leash floated out from under my poncho. I decided that I should head for higher ground. I followed my dog up the path towards the tower that sat on higher ground. What I did not realize until too late was that I had been sitting on an island in the middle of a dry canal, which was no longer dry and no longer an island. As I followed my dog, I suddenly stepped off the edge of the island into chest deep water. I had not realized that my dog was swimming. Fortunately, the stream was narrow and my dog pulled me up the bank on the other side. When I got to the tower, I had the tower guard call my supervisor to bring me a dry gun and a new radio.

I am so thankful that Tusky was a good swimmer. With combat boots and a gun, I would not have been able to even float.

I'm Lost

As the Assistant Flight Chief, I was in charge of keeping the records for all the dogs.  I scheduled what posts all of the dog teams would patrol each night, the hours they worked, recorded their obedience training, attack training, on-post training and probably other things I can no longer remember. The Air Force was good at keeping records.

Once a week the Flight Chief had a night off and I ran the flight. Each dog had to have on-post alert training twice a year. That meant that I had to run two on-post problems almost every night I ran the flight. It helped the night go by quickly. This also allowed the crazy medic that rode around with me time to chat with the closest tower guard to the post where I was running the post problem.

I liked to run the post problems in the Juliette sector because it had been cleared of brush and was just tall grass. At guard mount, I always informed whoever it was that they were getting a post problem that night. It was my routine to call the dog handler and inform him that I was ready to start the post problem. I did this for three reasons.  The was first totally selfish; I did not want the handler shooting me because he thought I was the enemy. The second reason I called him before walking on his post was so that he would know when I was coming and not mistake his dog's alert for me when it was really the enemy. The third reason I called the handler was so that the dog and handler had a greater chance of success. The purpose of the on-post training was to keep the alerting skills sharp for both the dog and the handler. It is just as important that the handler be in tune with how his dog alerts as it is for the dog to find the intruder. I would check the wind, locate the handler and then set up the post problem for a high rate of success. If a dog did poorly, I would document it and rerun the problem in a different area of the base in a few days.

Now let me explain why I titled this story I'm Lost. On the night in question, I went to the tower closest to the post where I was going to run the post problem to see if I could see the dog handler. I saw him and then called him on the radio and told him that I was ready to start the post problem. His response puzzled me, "I'm not ready. I'm lost."  Really, how lost could he be? His post was 100 to 150 yards long and was 50 feet wide starting at the fence line. The fence line was about 150 feet from the perimeter road. There is a post marker on the perimeter road and a matching one at the fence line. He was dropped off at his post marker, he was supposed to walk to the fence line and then patrol between the marker for his post and the marker for the next post. How do you get lost on a post just covered with tall grass?

I told him to stay where he was. I walked out to him and asked what was happening. He said that after he got off the truck he set down his duffle bag someplace and walked out to the fence line. When he went back to get his duffle, he could not find it. He had been wandering around looking for it and now did not know where he was or even whether he was on his post. He was still between the markers for his post, so I walked him to the perimeter road and found his post marker. I had him start a sweep 50 feet wide and we started working our way towards the fence line. His dog found the duffle bag in a small barren patch of ground next to a rock about halfway between the fence and the perimeter road. A perfect spot to take a break and eat your C-rations, if you could find it again.

I had the handler grab his duffle and we went out to the fence line. We walked his post so that he knew where it started and ended. I told him that we would run the post problem later in the week. This handler and dog was one of the dog teams that were on a low-priority post the night we were attacked. The Kennel Master thought I should have used this handler to sweep the search area for the enemy. (If the last two sentences do not make sense, read the previous story, Red Alert, Part 2.)

If you are enjoying my stories, please leave a comment for encouragement.  If you follow by email (you can find this option in the right-hand sidebar), you will not miss a story. I am enjoying writing a piece of history you will not read in any history book.

Phan Rang Airbase, 1969 - Red Alert Part 2

The penetration was stopped. The surviving enemy retreated. The night duty officer called me to the kennels. He explained what he wanted to do and how we were going to accomplish it. I was to select eight handlers and dogs and take them to the Juliette sector of the base. At daybreak we would sweep the area between the perimeter road and the rapid response bunkers, a width of about a quarter of a mile. I was instructed to choose any dog/handler I felt would be best for this sweep and disregard the priority of the post. Normally, when choosing to leave a post unoccupied, the lowest priority posts would be the ones left empty.

I did as instructed. I chose eight teams of dog handlers. I chose the best teams possible for the job. I only chose good handlers with good dogs. We had some good handlers with poor dogs, like my first dog Duke. We also had some poor handlers with good dogs, like the kid who had the loaded automatic weapon pointed at my back on the fence line. If the poor team combo were on a low priority post, I left them on duty on the low priority post. They were less likely to get shot or shoot one of us.

We took a truck from post to post and picked up the teams I selected. At daybreak we assembled at one end of the Juliette sector and I instructed the teams to spread out in a line from the perimeter road to the bunkers. Each handler should be able to just see the handler to his right and left.  If anyone picked up an alert, he was to raise his hand and stop the line moving forward. Each member of the team would relay the signal until the advance was stopped. The dog handler with the alert would then determine what the dog was alerting on. He would call it into Control if he discovered enemy combatants or release the line to advance if it was a false alarm.

We had about two miles of perimeter to sweep. About half way through the sweep one of the dog handlers gave the alarm for the line to stop advancing. He advanced with his dog and called out to a rustling bush. The person hiding in the bush did not answer him, but suddenly burst out of it. Thankfully, the dog handler did not shoot that crazy medic who loved to ride with me on his night off. The medic wanted to help with the sweep and had gotten ahead of the advancing line and had been picked up by one of the dogs. We then continued the sweep and discovered no one hiding in the bushes.

The duty officer thanked me for a job well done as we loaded the trucks to take the dogs back to the kennels. When I returned to the kennels, I was grilled by the Kennel Master as to why I did not pull the dogs from the lowest priority posts. I explained my reasoning and the instructions I had received from the Duty Officer. I was told never again to do what I had just done and to vacate the posts according to their priorities. No thanks for doing a good job, and the teams I chose did a great job! All I could think is that the medic could have been shot by a scared panicky kid if I had chosen the wrong teams for the job. What would you have done if you were in my position?

Phan Rang Airbase, 1969 - Red Alert

I have added an additional paragraph at the end of this story.

The Juliette sector of the base was the worst area to patrol for a dog handler. There were no trees or shrubs to hide ones movements. A soldier was silhouetted by the lights of the base. Other posts had trees or hills between the flight line and the fence line, but not the Juliette sector. There were bushes on the other side of the perimeter road, but it was not enough to give the dog handler any suitable shadowing of his silhouette. This was my least favorite area to patrol and not because it was the area that the tower guard wanted to shoot me. The Juliette area had one other very bad feature. A canal ran along the perimeter just outside the fence allowing the enemy to approach the fence line virtually undetected.

Because the Juliette area was so vulnerable, trip wires were connected to small flares attached to the concertina wire in the hopes that an intruder would set off the flare and illuminate himself as he crawled through the concertina wire. We did have a few false tripping of a flare every now and then, but nothing tripped the night we got attacked in the Juliette area. Every flare had a pin in it that prevented it from being triggered by the trip wire. Apparently the local kids, who would scurry along the perimeter scavenging unopened C rations, had crawled though the wire and put pins in all the mechanisms of the flares prior to the attempted penetration of the base.

Naturally, the attempted penetration of the base occurred on the one night of the week that I was in charge of the Flight. It started off with a tower guard calling Control and saying that he saw movement in front of his tower. Control asked the dog handlers to make a sweep of the area. Just as the Security Alert Team (3 men in a jeep with an M-60 machine gun, an M-79 grenade launcher and flares) arrived at the tower, the dog handler closest to the tower called control and informed them that his dog had an alert. The Security Alert Team told the dog handler to take cover and they popped a flare. The handler had no place to hide, so he flattened himself on the ground in the tall grass. 

There were sappers attempting to crawl through the concertina wire and more coming up out of the canal. A grenade was launched in the direction of the penetration. The M-60 machine gun stopped the enemy from advancing. Several of the enemy were killed. It was unknown if any of the intruders were able to get across the perimeter road and into the cover of the bushes. Even if they had, the rapid response teams were dispatched to the bunkers which were between the fence line and the flight line. They would not reach the flight line if they had gotten beyond the perimeter road.

We did have one person wounded during the attack. It was the dog handler that took cover in the tall grass. Apparently he was not visible, because the USAF soldier that launched the M-79 grenade put it right between his ankles. Fortunately, it explodes upward and it did not strike the dog and only one small fragment struck the handler. It was not life threatening, but I do not know if he was able to have children after the shrapnel was removed from the base of his penis. His tour of duty was over and he was sent home to the states.

I am breaking this story into two parts in order to keep the story shorter.  Next week I will explain how the duty officer had the K-9 units respond to clearing the area between the perimeter road and the flight line.

Click Click The Sound of a Round Being Chambered

After Guard-mount the dog handlers get their dogs in the kennels and take them to the trucks.  The trucks then take them out to their posts and drop them off, one by one.  A canine post is between 100 and 150 yards long and 50 feet wide, right at the fence line.  Every 300 to 500 yards stands a guard tower set back about 150 feet from the fence line along the perimeter road.  During the day the guard towers are manned by cooks, flight line mechanics, administrative staff, etc.  These are the troops that joined the Air Force so that they would not have to carry a gun and were still trying to figure out where their plan went wrong while they stood guard duty. That could have been me if I had become an office clerk.

At night the towers are manned by Air Force Security Police. The day shift tower guards are relieved between 9 and 10 at night, well after dark. All of the K-9 posts had a post marker at the perimeter road and at the fence line.  I was dropped off at my marker, about 100 yards from the closest tower. The truck, now half full of dogs and handlers, rumbled by the tower and dropped the next dog and handler further along the perimeter, while I walked Duke and my gear down to the fence line. Duke was ready for a break, but I thought I should make a sweep of the area first. So we started walking down the fence line and just as I was about in front of the tower, I heard the click click of a round being chambered in the tower. 

That round was being chambered because the scared person in the tower had seen some movement in front of him. I was that shadowy movement he had seen in the darkness. He chambered that round in his M-16 so that he could shoot me. I quickly spoke up. He failed to give me the verbal challenge, used to identify friendlies at night, but did allow me to approach the tower. It must have been my Boston accent that convinced him that I was not the enemy.

When I got to the base of the tower, he could see my dog and me. We started talking. He told me that when he was posted, no one mentioned that dogs would be posted out in front of him after dark. No, he had not noticed the dogs in the the truck that had just passed by a few minutes before.  He cleared his gun and was clearly relieved that he was no longer alone.

Footnote:

The verbal challenge is used at night to identify friendlies after dark, when you could not see them well enough to identify their uniforms. It was usually a two word combination that belonged together, so that it would be easy to remember, but might have several answers, but only one correct one.  For example, the security words for the night could be Snow Flake. The challenger would say SNOW and the correct response would be FLAKE, not ball or man. The security words were changed everyday.

The New Guy - Phan Rang Air Base, Vietnam 1968

Guarding the perimeter of a base in Vietnam is quite different than guarding a perimeter in the USA. We had no enemy combatants or terrorists to worry about during the 60s inside the USA, but that is not a true statement about what lurked in the darkness of Vietnam. There was absolute darkness on the other side of the fence, while a patrolling sentry dog handler was back-lit by the bright lights of the base. Therefore, patrolling the perimeter of the base was a scary thing.

Each new handler learned on the job what was expected of him after arriving in country.  K-9 was the only group of guards that were allowed to chamber a round in their weapon while on duty.  When I became the Assistant Flight Chief, I stressed at guard mount during my weapons safety briefing that there was no reason to take your weapon off of safe unless you are going to use it and even then you should only use it on semi-automatic.  The CAR-15 was designed with the safety right by your thumb when your finger was on the trigger.

One warm summer night I was doing what every handler took turns at doing.  I had a new guy from the other flight on the post beside mine and I showed him around his post.  When I was done, we walked back along the fence line towards my post.  While we were walking he told me that he kept his gun on automatic while he was on the fence line. I grasped the meaning of that sentence immediately.  I had a scared soldier with a loaded automatic weapon pointed at my back with the safety off. I stopped, gave him my weapons safety speech, had him put the safety on while I then returned to my post. The rest of the night I stayed away from the fence line if I was near his post while patrolling. Okay, I stayed as far away from his post as I could and still do my job.

Typhoon

Everything seemed to happen on the one night a week I was in charge of the flight because our flight chief had the night off. A typhoon hit shortly after dark one night. The Officer of the Day made the decision to pull all the dogs off post because they would be ineffective and the dogs and handlers would be at risk of injury. The OOD, along with the Night Supervisor, also decided that 5 people from each flight should stay at the kennels to take care of the dogs in the event that the kennels got damaged. One person was required to stay awake and alert the others if something happened requiring help. The other flight chief chose 5 guys he did not like and he left with the night supervisor for the barracks.

I, on the other hand, asked for volunteers. I had more than I needed volunteer and I chose my three roommates and one other to stay with me. Yes, I could have left just like the other supervisors. If I was not willing to stay, why should I ask anyone else to stay? We discussed what we wanted to do for the rest of the night. Soon I was in my jeep headed back to the barracks. I picked up some board games, cards, sodas, and snacks.  No one slept that night and all of us had a fun time.

Sleeping on Post

Sleeping on post was a problem that became widely accepted and because it was not properly addressed several dog handlers were court-martialed and severely punished with jail time and a dishonorable discharge. Some of the guys would joke around and laugh and say, "I hear you were caught sleeping last night."

Eventually, the Kennel Master overheard the guys talking about it. Over a one week period, five or six guys were caught sleeping by the Kennel Master and the Night Supervisor. Ironic that the Night Supervisor was the witness with the Kennel Master who would send the sleepers to jail, because he had been one of the supervisors overlooking the previous dereliction of duty. This was not someone accidentally falling asleep because he sat down for too long. One soldier had his poncho spread out like a mattress and his boots off. He was planning on sleeping.

There was a shakeup of leadership in K-9. The ones who should have been replaced were not, but the Squad Leaders and the Assistant Flight Chiefs lost their jobs. Some of the guys, who outranked me, chose not to accept a leadership role because they did not want to work for the Night Supervisor or the current Flight Chiefs. I accepted the position of Assistant Flight Chief and I decided that I would work hard at making sure no one else went to jail, for any type of breach of duty.

It was my job to give the briefings at guard mount. Every night I would give a speech about weapons safety and about being continuously alert on post along with the intelligence report and the code words of the day.

It was important that everyone believed that I would send them to jail if I caught them sleeping, including my roommates. Then it happened. Base was trying to reach one of my squad leaders so that he would clear his post for a fire mission. He did not answer. I was taking someone back to the barracks, so I had a witness with me. As we drove down the post, the kid kept saying, "I won't be a witness for you." I had to finally tell him to shut up.

When we got there, sure enough my squad leader was asleep. I swapped out his radio and attributed his lack of communication to a bad radio. After we had cleared the area I had a heart to heart talk with both soldiers. I told them that they were to tell no one that I had found the squad leader sleeping and that I had better not hear it come back to me about what had happened that night. It never came back to me that I caught anyone sleeping on post. I did not have a problem with either of them after that. The squad leader was thankful that he did not go to jail and became one of the best dog handlers I ever served with during my four years in the service.

The Squeaky Wheel

After being promoted to Assistant Flight Chief, my Flight Chief told me that I could have one day off a week, the same as him. I kept my rotation the same as the troops, one day off every 30 days. We had to cover a minimum number of posts every night and we did not have enough handlers to give everyone one a day off a week. On the nights I assumed Flight Chief's duties, I did not walk a dog, but the other six nights of the week I did. It did not go unnoticed by the troops I commanded, that I stayed in the same rotation of nights off as them.

The troops had lost faith in their leadership because their friends had been sent to jail followed by dishonorable discharges.There was a feeling of betrayal by their friends in leadership, because they knew that their friends were sleeping while on duty and they condoned it by doing nothing to stop this egregious behavior. Because of the loss of morale, I took it upon myself to do what I could to help build the esprit de corps necessary for a unit to perform efficiently. I never had a lack of opportunity.

One such opportunity presented itself when the incident of the squeaky wheel occurred. We had two trucks and two jeeps assigned to the kennels for night time duty. I would walk to the motor pool and pick up the flight chief's jeep every evening, then pick up my squad leaders and drive them to the motor pool to pick up the trucks. We would then go back to the barracks where I would pick up the flight chief and the trucks picked up the troops assigned to duty that night. At the end of our shift, we did everything in reverse and I would then walk back to the barracks and take my cold shower because the troops had used up all of the hot water. This was not a hardship because the water was not all that cold and the weather was extremely hot.

One morning, when returning the vehicles to the motor pool, I reported that a truck had a squeaky wheel. The sergeant told me that it was the bearing and that we should continue to drive it until it failed. We did and one day it failed, but it was not a bearing.  The lug nuts were loose and it destroyed the rim and the wheel. The motor pool demanded to know who had driven the truck the night before. I was the acting flight chief that night and I refused to give them the name of the driver because he did nothing wrong. The other flight chief immediately gave up the name of the driver for his flight. The motor pool then attached my paycheck and the other drivers paycheck for the cost of the damaged rim and wheel.

This was a horrible miscarriage of justice. I immediately went to our Operations Officer and explained to him what had happened. K-9 did not have a lug wrench to check or tighten the lug nuts and only the motor pool had a lug wrench. The motor pool was informed about the squeaky wheel when it first occurred. The motor pool did not check the lug nuts and told us to drive it until the bearing failed. The officer corrected the injustice and the NCO who told us to drive it until it failed was never very friendly towards me after that. But the troops I commanded knew that I was there to support them and, for the most part, they did their job for me.

Leadership

The military is interesting.  Everything is done by rank, except when it is not.  An incident happened, and a lot of the leadership was reorganized.  Leadership was slack, and sleeping on post had become pandemic. Several dog handlers, friends of the leadership, were caught sleeping on post.  They were court-martialed and sent to prison, followed by dishonorable discharge from the service.  How the flight chiefs survived this I do not know, but the assistants and the squad leaders did not. Clearly, a lack of leadership led to the court-martials and dishonorable discharges.

There were more problems than sleeping on post that got all of the squad leaders and assistant flight chiefs relieved of duty. One night our armorer accepted a weapon from a handler, went to put the CAR-15 away and put a bullet through the roof of the armory when he closed the bolt and pulled the trigger.  The weapons are stored after pulling the trigger, releasing the stored energy and relaxing the spring.

Let me explain why that should not have happened. First, while on post, the handler was supposed to show the squad leader that the chamber of his gun was clear, close the bolt and pull the trigger. Then, when the dog handler got to the armory, he was supposed to pull back the bolt, show that the chamber was clear to the squad leader assigned to the clearing box, pull the trigger in the clearing box, pull back the bolt and pass the gun to the armorer. The armorer was then supposed to check the chamber, close the bolt and pull the trigger. If all the steps were followed, there could not possibly be a round left in the chamber. In my mind, the armorer was as much at fault for the accidental discharge as was the squad leader and the dog handler, but he shared no responsibility.

Several dog handlers, who outranked me, turned down the position of Assistant Flight Chief.  I did not.  I began my leadership role by refusing to treat the troops like they were two-year-olds.  The order was that I was to take my flashlight and check that their chambers were empty before they could get on the truck when relieved of duty.  Instead, I required that the dog handler point his gun skyward, away from the base and pull the trigger before I would relieve him of duty and allow him to get on the truck.  More than once a shot was fired into the night.  That dog handler got to give the weapon safety briefing for the next week at guard mount. Everyone knew why he was giving the weapons safety briefing, instead of me.  No one I relieved of duty handed a weapon to the armorer with a round in the chamber.

This is my management style.  Empower those whom I supervise to become the best at what they do. None of those dog handlers ever forgot how they let me down when they accidentally discharged a round out into the darkness of the night.  They never made that mistake again and their peers learned from the mistakes of others.

Tusky

After Duke was relieved of duty, I was put on kennel duty because there were no other dogs available.  In two weeks, four handlers were being sent to Japan to train new dogs and bring them back to our base.  I did not qualify to go because I only had five months left in country and a handler was required to have more than six months left in country in order to go to Japan to get a new dog.

I had the choice of four dogs, two were old and as worthless as Duke, Tusky, and a real vicious dog also named Duke.  Tusky had one strike against him, he was mostly white.  Duke had two strikes against him, he did not like me and I did not like him.  We had two kennel buildings to house our 70 dogs.  Young Duke was in the same kennel building as old Duke.  Young Duke used to bark at me when I would walk by his run to get my dog.  Sometimes I would kick his gate, just to rile him up or wave my hat at him.  He wanted to come through the chainlink and tear me to pieces.  I decided, even though he was the youngest and most aggressive of the four dogs, that it would be next to impossible to become friends with young Duke.

During the next two weeks, I spent my time cleaning the kennels and feeding the dogs.  During that time, I became friends with Tusky.  The dogs become comfortable with the kennel staff because they are the ones who feed them and keep their kennels clean.  It was easy to become friends with Tusky and I started taking him out of his kennel and training with him in the training area.  Just like my dog Jake gets all excited when I pick up his leash to take him for a walk, an attack dog gets excited when he sees a friend coming with a leash because he knows that he is going to get out of his small run. Tusky was no exception.

Then the day came, Tusky's handler put him in his run for the last time after working all night. I had the day off so that I could get some nap time before going to work that night.  When I arrived for duty at the kennels I stood guard mount with the flight, where we got the intelligence briefing, received the code words of the day, and got inspected by the kennel master or the duty officer of the day.  I guess it was important, when on patrol at night, to have polished boots, pressed uniform, a fresh haircut and shave in case you met the enemy.

After guard mount, all of the handlers pick up their gear and go get their dog.  The dogs go crazy, barking and jumping up and down with excitement.  They were getting out of lock up and going to work.  Tusky was all excited, so I opened the chainlink gate to his run and stepped in and closed the gate behind me.  Tusky sat and I started putting the choke chain over his head and got to about his ears when he pulled his head out of the choke chain, turned away from me and walked to the back of his run. This was not a good sign. With one hand, I opened the gate behind me, and my focus was still on Tusky. It appears that Tusky had decided that it was okay during the day for me to take him out, but that I was not the handler that had put him in there that morning.  I was not the person who had worked with him the night before and many more nights before that.

Tusky suddenly turned and charged me, his teeth bared in the meanest snarl I have ever seen. I stepped back, slammed the gate shut as Tusky lunged at me. I went back to the main kennel building and told the night supervisor that Tusky had just tried to eat me. After all of the other handlers had left, the night supervisor said, "Let's go get Tusky."  I think he wanted to see blood.  All the dogs that were left had quieted down, knowing that no one was coming to get them for now.  Tusky took a look at me coming with my leash, choke chain and muzzle and sat down, waiting for me to enter.  I guess he figured, since his regular handler was a no show, I was his last chance to get out of the kennel.  I watched him very closely the first few nights.  I did not want him to look up at me and think, where is my real handler and decide to take a chunk out of me.  For the next five months, we worked well together.  Tusky became a great partner.

Duke, Phan Rang Air Base 1968

I loved working a dog at night. I am an introvert by nature and this was a perfect job for me.  I had my post to patrol and no one else was supposed to be near me.  I loved teaching my dogs tricks to help wile away the hours.  Duke, however, was old.  The saying, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, applied to Duke. Duke wanted nothing to do with learning anything new.  Duke really did not want anything to do with patrolling our post either.  He limped because of his old wounds, so I am sure it hurt when he walked.  If I sat to rest, Duke immediately fell asleep.

I realized early on that training before going to post wore Duke out fast.  I talked with the night supervisor and got Duke excused from training.  That helped a little bit.  He did his job for 2 or 3 hours before he was too worn out to stay alert.

One night, fresh off the truck, we walked down to our post and there was an above-ground water line that ran across our post that was raised off the ground.  The top of the pipe was about 6 inches off the ground. Duke tripped over it.  We walked along the pipeline, I was on the right side of it and Duke on the left. There was a ditch dug at a 90-degree angle to the pipeline, on the left side.  Duke's side.  The ditch was 18 inches wide and 24 inches deep.  Duke fell into it.  If he had pulled the leash out of my hand, I might have left him in the ditch.  He was lucky; I pulled him out and checked him for injuries. He was okay.  I knew I was on patrol alone--again.

One of the flight chiefs decided to run an unscheduled unannounced alert detection on several posts, mine included. He walked the fence line and crossed several posts.  I may have been a little more than 50 feet from the fence line, but Duke should have smelled him, heard him, or seen him and alerted me.  I neither heard nor saw the flight chief cross my post.  The next morning, I told the kennel master that Duke was not capable of doing his job and I wanted another dog.  The night supervisor set up a test and watched Duke work.  He prompted me to lead Duke into the alert, which he had not picked up, but the observer and I had. When I led Duke into the alert, he did his job.  The night supervisor said, "See, he's fine." When we discussed it with the kennel master, I explained that Duke knows his job, but if he does not pick up an intruder before I do, he cannot and is not doing his job.  The kennel master agreed and that was Duke's last night on post.

Thanks for stopping by.  Leave me a comment so that I know you were here.  It would be nice to know what you think about my different stories.  I sure am having fun remembering my time in the service. If you join my blog, it will remind me of you every time I visit my blog.

Phan Rang Air Base, Vietnam, February 1968 and a Dog Named Duke

I arrived at Phan Rang Air Base in February of 1968.  I spent a week working in the kennels and getting to know the area and the dogs.  I did not get to choose which dog I wanted.  I was assigned a dog named Duke. I made friends with Duke and worked with him in the training area.

Duke was 7 or 8 years old and tired.  He was an Army dog before he was reassigned to the Air Force. I guess the "real soldiers" figured that the "panty waist" Air Force dog handlers could use a worn out wounded attack dog.  I was the lucky guy who drew the short straw and he became my partner.  So, I did the best I could with what I had.

It did not take me long to figure out that in the States this dog would belong to a guy carrying a sign displaying "Make Love Not War." I spent most of my time hiding in the bushes and chewing my fingernails. Duke spent most of his time sleeping and alerting on my C-rations. My routine at night was to spread out my poncho as a picnic blanket and sit on it to eat my supper.  One night, I unpacked my C-rations and put a packet of cellophane-wrapped chicklets onto my poncho so that I could have them after dinner. After I had finished my meal, I reached for my chicklets and found only a wet spot where my gum should have been. Duke ate my gum, wrapper and all.

Meal time is the only time Duke was alert. He would watch me eat and look at me as if to say, "Do you have anything you can share?"  One of the C-ration packages had crackers that were more like cardboard than food, so I figured Duke might like them more than me.  I picked up a cracker, put it in the palm of my hand, and extended my hand to Duke.  I expected him to daintily take the cracker out of my hand like Dawn, my attack dog from Ohio, used to do when I gave her a treat.  I was wrong.  Duke put his lower jaw below my hand and his upper jaw above my hand and chomped.  His teeth raked the cracker out of the palm of my hand as I quickly drew my hand out of his mouth.  After that, I put his crackers on my poncho and I let him steal them while my back was turned. This practice worked well for both of us.

Best Tomato I Ever Had

Once upon a mid-summer night, I had worked the 4 to midnight shift, followed with kennel duty from midnight to 8am.  Someone had to stay with the dogs at the kennel at all times, in case of an emergency.  During the swing shift, I was posted in the weapons storage area with another dog handler.  By weapons storage area, I mean nuclear bomb storage area.

The weapon storage maintenance crew only worked days.  Apparently they did not have a lot to do, so they did a little gardening.  They grew the nicest tomatoes, which the dog handlers, like Peter Rabbit, would steal from the garden.  Some of the dog handlers even carried a shaker of salt with them, in anticipation of finding a ripe tomato.

This particular morning, one of the handlers who had worked the weapons storage area, had to excitedly share upon entering the kennel office, "Hey Russ, you missed a ripe tomato last night!  That was the best tomato I ever had!"  I explained that I had seen it and he was correct, I did not take it.  I told him that I did not pick it because my dog had peed on it before I could pick it and there was no place to wash it.  His enormous grin vanished. 

Apparently, dog pee enhances the flavor of a ripe tomato.  Forgive me if I never check out that theory.

Tiny Boy

Working dogs get old fast.  Most working dogs live to about 8 to 9 years old.  They are not pets and literally work themselves to death.  When USAF working dogs are no longer able do their jobs, they are euthanized.  When a handler's dog is, as most people say, "put to sleep," the handler is sent to Lackland Air Force Base to train a new dog and bring it back for service.  In the U.S., the Air Force trains all of their dogs at Lackland Air Force Base and the handlers take the dogs back to the base to which they are assigned.

One of our handlers from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton Ohio, brought back a dog named Tiny Boy.  During training, Tiny Boy did not bark. The instructors told the handler working him that this was the dog they would want if they were in Viet Nam.  They did this young handler a disservice. The instructors should have known better.  A dog that could not do its job was put into service.  Tiny Boy was not aggressive and, therefore, saw no need to bark at anyone or anything.

All of the other handlers helped Tiny Boy's handler as he tried to improve his dog's skills.  It did not take long before Tiny Boy got a nickname, Timid Boy.  We were unable to make him aggressive. Today, Tiny Boy would probably have made a good drug sniffing dog.  A gentle dog that could walk amongst people.  But, he did not have the temperament which would make him an attack dog.

Everyone decided that Tiny Boy and Dawn should work together as much as possible. The Weapons Storage Area had two posts and we were paired up frequently. I guess the hope was that Tiny Boy would learn from the aggressiveness he observed in Dawn.

Tiny Boy's last night on post was a night that Dawn and I were working the Weapons Storage Area together with Tiny Boy and his handler.  The alert truck showed up to give us coffee.  Dawn was barking her head off when the truck drove up to the other side of the gate.  Tiny Boy just stood there watching Dawn, but did not bark at all.  One of the guys got out of the truck and kicked the gate.  Dawn went berserk and would have torn the guy to pieces if she could have gotten through the fence.  "Timid Boy" quickly ran and hid behind his handler.  That was the last straw for the handler.  Tiny Boy was relieved of duty.

Tiny Boy was retired from duty and euthanized.  The necropsy revealed that Tiny Boy had a weak heart.  Tiny Boy would have made a great pet, but he was not healthy enough to be an attack dog. The Air Force did not allow attack dogs to be rehabilitated to civilian life. It is sad that when a dog is no longer able to work that it is euthanized.

No!

No!

One cold night, I was sitting in the break truck with Dawn's leash slammed in the door.  She was not allowed in the truck with the driver or other handler.  Unlike your average house pet with a waggy tail, Dawn would want to attack anyone who was close to me.  Unlike my dog Jake, I could not tell her they were okay.  The only thing she knew was, if you are close to my buddy, I WILL EAT YOU. So she sat outside in the cold bored to death, that is until Fred caught her attention.

Fred was driving the break truck. He wanted to call someone, so he went back to the maintenance shed to make his call.  Dawn did not like Fred, but that was nothing personal, Dawn did not like anyone but me, and I liked it that way. 

I do not know if Fred taunted Dawn on his way back to the truck, thinking he was safe, or if Dawn just got excited about Fred approaching the break truck.  Either way, she was jumping around and barking when the door to the truck popped open.  At first, Dawn was off balance, but then she got her footing and launched her attack upon Fred.  If she bites Fred, it would be the same as if I had accidently shot Fred with my Colt 38 revolver.  

I was out of the truck instantly, but I could not reach Dawn's leash fast enough.  She jumped to attack Fred.  She was attacking Fred's movement, which was his putting his arm up in front of himself to protect his body from the attack. I did the only thing I could do, I issued two verbal commands: NO and OUT.  Out is a release command, even though she had not actually bitten Fred.

Dawn closed her mouth and her nose struck Fred's arm.  When she landed on the ground, she turned her head back to me, confused about my commands.  That gave me enough time to grab her collar and then her leash and I once again had her under control.  That was closer to a court-marshal than I cared to be.  Fred had to go change his underwear! After this incident, I always held Dawn's leash even if it was closed in the door.

Why My Hand is Bandaged

Why My Hand is Bandaged

Before I start this story I must apologize to Tech Sgt. Richard Waite for being less than honest about what happened on post the night I was bitten, and to my mother for not being the truthful young man that she expected me to be at all times.  I must also apologize to Dawn for vilifying her in this incident.

At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base we had three K-9 posts near the flight line where the alert ready B-52 bombers with nukes on board were parked.  Two of the posts were between the taxiway and the runway.  The boundaries of those two posts were 100 feet apart, which means that there should be no contact during the night between the two dogs and handlers.

Halfway between the two posts there was a transformer with a chain link fence around it and a free standing cabinet with the controls for the runway lights.  It was common for the two handlers to put their duffle bags against the cabinet and sit on it while they chatted, read a book by flashlight, or occasionally napped.  I was taught how to attach my dog's leash to the fence which would release with a tug of the loop but would tighten if the dog tugged on the leash.  

Some guys came to work with the intention of sleeping.  I tried very hard to stay awake.  Walking my post, the way I should, always worked.  One night, with my dog tied to the fence, I closed my eyes longer than I should have.  The break truck started up the road from the taxiway, which I should have seen coming when it left the flight line.  I stood up, and walked down the road to meet it.  It took me a few steps before I realized that my dog was further in front of me than her six foot leash should allow. Dawn had eaten the leather in the center of her leash.  I had a foot of leash in my hand and she had a foot of leash at her collar.

Two things: That was the last time I tied my dog to the fence and I never wanted to allow a truck or a person to get close to me before I was aware of it.  After that time I tied the dog to my wrist with her leash and I taught her to alert on trucks.  She already knew how to alert on people.  

At the cabinet, we sat about five feet apart.  This made my mentor, the Flight Chief, a little bit nervous. Between the leash and my reach, my dog could attack him if I was inattentive.  We both had very aggressive dogs.  Odd, but I remember his dog's name, Jumbo, but not his name.  He was a veteran of ten or twelve years and I was a dog handler of very few months.  He suggested that we make friends with each others dogs.  It made sense to me, so I agreed.

We muzzled our dogs and each of us took turns at becoming friends with the other handler's dog. After a few nights, Jumbo's aggression had subsided, so I took off his muzzle and started patting his head.  On the second pass, Jumbo snatched my hand. He bit my hand twice and when he went for a third bite, I pulled my hand from his mouth.

Now the reasons about the less than honest report that I filed about the dog bite:

1. I was supposed to be at least 100 feet from another dog
2. The Flight Chief was supposed to also be at least 100 feet from my dog and me
3. A handler's dog biting a person is the same as having been shot by that handler
4. It was not just my career at stake
5. We both would have faced disciplinary action and rightfully so

The Flight Chief decided how I should write up the incident.  Being young and naive, this is the report I wrote up about the incident:

As I was walking across my post around 0100 hrs, I slipped on a small patch of ice and stepped on Dawn's foot.  She snatched my hand out of instinct and immediately released when she realized what she had done.

This made sense to the kennel master.  Dawn was quarantined for rabies, just as a precaution.  I worked nights during that time watching the kennels all night, while my hand healed and Dawn was quarantined. Dawn did not dispute the story and remained loyal to me.

The Training of Airman Wallace

The Training of Airman Wallace

After I muzzled her, I clipped the leash to her collar, released her chain and walked her out of the kennel area into the training area where my training was about to begin.

Upon entering the training area, I put a choke chain on Dawn and removed her collar. The collar was worn during attack training and when working on post. The dogs knew that the collar meant work and the choke chain meant obedience and play time. The dogs loved their time in the training area. It was similar to when we had recess in elementary school--you had to behave yourself, but still had fun.

The kennel master observed Dawn and me as we worked. He stressed that I should issue my verbal commands in a stern loud voice each and every time. After I was doing well at that, he explained the hand signals for the verbal commands of come, sit, down and stay. He then had me use the hand signal and the verbal command together. Then we moved on to using hand commands without a verbal command. Dawn must have been bored to death.  She was doing fine, but, interestingly, never got a treat. She worked for praise! I also learned to praise her every time she responded well. If she did not respond promptly, I was taught to jerk her choke chain and make her respond to my command. I was informed that a dog's neck is strong and muscular and it would not hurt her when I jerked on the choke chain. I was taught that dogs are much like children in that they will always test you to make sure you really mean it! If you do not correct them immediately, they become unruly and impossible to control. This training was two fold: (1) to teach me how to control my dog, and (2) to teach my dog to respond to my commands. It is important that the dog responds only to the commands of its handler. It is also important that the dogs are not looking for treats, as it would be a dangerous thing if they were looking for treats rather than attacking an intruder, or, worse, not even alerting on him. Each dog has to want to work because of the bond with its handler.

The obedience training went well; however, the exercise part did not. Dawn wanted no part of running the obstacle course. I inherited my dog from a lazy dog handler. He did not make her run the obstacle course and she did not want to start now. The kennel master, a really sympathetic guy, told me I could not take Dawn to post until she could run the obstacle course, and that I had one week to get her trained. It was tough. How do you make a dog do something it does not want to do? I dragged her through every obstacle. By the end of the week, she started realizing that she had no choice and that it would be easier if she ran and jumped rather than being dragged through each obstacle.

The obstacle course ran up one side of the training area, across the back and then along the other side of the training area. It started with a jump through a window about three feet off the ground, then a jump over a four foot barrier. The last obstacle on the left side looked like an inverted V. It was six feet high and had ribs across the top half. The dog was to jump, put the front legs across the top and use the ribs to give traction for the hind legs to push the body over the top. Across the back was a narrow ramp to a narrow beam that was about five feet above the ground, and the dog would jump off of it when he got to the end. Then the dog was to turn the corner and run up a steep ramp to a platform about seven feet high with stairs on the other side. The last obstacle was a ten-foot tunnel through which the dog had to crawl.

Dawn and I worked hard all week. I had to prove that I had what it took to be a dog handler and Dawn wanted to prove to me that she was my best friend.

Foot note: After one week, Dawn could successfully run the obstacle course while I ran beside her with her leash clipped to her choke chain. This satisfied the kennel master and Dawn and I were assigned to B Flight. After two weeks, Dawn ran the obstacle course off leash while I ran beside her. We still had more work to do. After one month, I sent Dawn off leash to run the obstacle course, while I walked to the end of the tunnel to wait. Dawn was able to run the whole course without missing an obstacle. Both of us had been successful! Did it come without hard work? NO! When I first let Dawn off leash, she ran around the obstacles that she did not want to do. I went back to the instructions of the kennel master, "Immediately correct your dog and make your dog do what it is commanded to do." Dawn soon realized that she should not bypass any obstacles. She really wanted to please me. Yes, we were both pleased with the end results!

How I met Dawn, 127X

How I met Dawn, 127X

As you always remember your first love, I, too, remember my first dog, Dawn.

It was in early fall of 1966 that I was assigned to the K-9 unit at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.  I was shown around the kennels and promptly put to work.  My job was to feed the dogs in the morning, clean their runs during the day, and familiarize myself with all of the dogs.  The dogs felt safe in the kennels and became familiar with the kennel personnel who took care of them during the day. I was soon making friends with Dawn and started patting her head as long as she had a milk bone in her mouth!  Dawn was half German Shepherd and half Norwegian Elk Hound.  She weighed 80 pounds and was one of the most aggressive dogs in the kennel.  Dawn was well trained and I was the one who needed to be trained.

After I had been working in the kennels for a few days, the kennel master said to me, "Here's your leash and muzzle.  It is time to take your dog out or go back to the Security Flight."  Now came the moment when I had to overcome my childhood fear of dogs and step into the range of the teeth of one of the most aggressive dogs in the kennels.  The butterflies in my stomach began choking my throat.  I started repeating in my mind, "You can do this, Russ!" My knees were weak, but I opened the gate and entered the kennel area despite my nervousness.

Because the SAC unit was not a permanent unit on the base, the kennels were temporary kennels, not the normal concrete floor, closed in runs separated by concrete and chain link walls.  We had dog houses on a pedestal with pea stone for the run.  Their chain was around the pedestal post and they formed a ring around their space with the pea stone just from their running back and forth. Their dog houses were outside in the weather, not covered by a building with a roof.  Dawn's area was at the furthest point from the gate.  I walked through the aisles and Dawn saw me coming with the leash and the muzzle.  She started jumping up and down, not with aggression, but with anticipation.  She knew that she was going to be taken to the training area for exercise.  It was not uncommon for the daytime kennel staff to exercise a dog that was between handlers.  As I approached the ring of pea stones that defined the edge of her run, Dawn sat and waited for me to put on her muzzle.  After I muzzled her, I clipped the leash to her collar, released her chain and walked her out of the kennel area into the training area where my training was about to begin.

Why I joined the Air Force

Why I joined the Air Force

Way back in 1965 the U.S. of A. did not have an all volunteer army like it does today.  There was the draft and there was no lottery number.  Anyone could be called at anytime, unless they were in college.  Well, I had dropped out of college and went to work and knew that I was probably going to get drafted.  The Vietnam War was heating up.  I did not want to carry a gun and slosh through rice paddies, so I went to my Air Force recruiter and took my tests and enlisted.  I was scheduled to be sworn in on January 25, 1966 in the Administrative Field where I had my highest scores on the aptitude test.

In December of 1965, I got a notice to report for induction to the Army on December 23rd.  In a panic I called my unscrupulous Air Force recruiter.  He told me he could get me a 30 day deferment if I changed my field from Administrative to General. I had really been looking forward to being a clerk sitting at a comfy desk writing reports.  But, I really did not want to go into the Army 2 days before Christmas. 20 year old kids just do not have enough life experiences to make good life changing decisions.  My scores were not as good in the General Field.  Basically I had the choice of being a cook, an auto mechanic, or an air policeman.  I had no mechanical skills at the time and did not know how to boil water, so I chose Air Police.  Why not, I could salute the officers as they entered the base. Easy enough job, so I thought.  So I chose Air Police.  I was sworn in on January 18, 1966.

Well, little did I know that there was a branch of Air Police called Security Police. I ended up in Security Police, in a SAC unit attached to Wright-Patterson Air Base, near Dayton Ohio, carrying an M-16 and guarding B-52 bombers loaded with nukes ready to launch at those nasty Russians.  I loved the hours: 3 swings (4 to midnight), three mids (midnight to 8) and three days (8 to 4) with 72 hours off and then do it all over again.  I never knew if it was day or night when I woke up. During the winter, 5 at night was as dark as 5 in the morning.  Scary when you wake up and are not sure if you slept through your shift and were legally AWOL.

It did not take me long to realize that I should become a dog handler, even if they only worked at night.  Here is what I saw: the sentry dog handlers stood guard mount with the security flight at 4 PM, posted when it got dark (9 or so during the summer) and got off post at midnight the same as me. Then on the midnight shift they posted with me at midnight, but got off post when it got light, put there dogs away, went to breakfast and were in bed before I got off post at 8. Better than that, they got 80 hours off.  I did the math: 9 days on 72 hours off vs 6 days on 80 hours off.  It was a no brainer, I would apply for K-9.

Well I did.  Surprisingly there were only two candidates to fill the one open position.  There was me, who was afraid of dogs growing up and one other guy. We both had negatives.  The kennel master thought I was too small to handle the dog and he thought the other guy was an arrogant asshole.  I got the nod.  I decided it was time to get over my childhood fear of dogs. The picture of me in the profile is of me and my dog Dawn, 127X.  Dawn was an incredibly aggressive sentry dog, but as you can tell, she bonded well with me.

No Contact with Kilo 9

No Contact with Kilo 9

(As published here)

Tracer rounds originating on Kilo 9 split the growing darkness and got the attention of the sentries in their towers.

“Bravo 2 to Base.”

“Go ahead Bravo 2, this is Base.”

“Shots have been fired on Kilo 9. There are outgoing tracer rounds.”

“10-4. Base to Kilo 9.”
.... (no answer) ....

“Base to Kilo 9.”
..... (no answer) ....

“No contact with Kilo 9.”

It was a very hot and humid August night at Phan Rang Air Force Base. The K-9 units were called to work early this night. Both the Early Flight and Late Flight stood guard mount together.

We were told the name of the North Vietnamese sapper unit which was going to attack us. We were told that the radio net was being jammed and we were only to check our radio if we thought it might have a problem. It was our routine to do a radio check as we were posted. This served two purposes; it let our Operations Center know we were posted, as well as insured the radio worked.

The Early Flight, which normally posted just after dark, was posting before dark. The Late Flight, which normally posted two hours after the Early Flight, began posting as soon as the trucks returned to the kennels.

I was on the Early Flight and assigned to Kilo 9. As instructed, I did not check my radio after being posted, because I was receiving all the radio chatter. It was just a little after 1930 hours and I passed the gate guard as I walked down towards the fence line. At 7:30, the double-gated entrance was locked and unmanned overnight. I had about 200 yards of perimeter to patrol, so I made a sweep of the area and it was secure.

Feeling happy and safe, I sat down on a rock and plugged my ear plug into my pocket transistor radio and tuned in the oldies on the Armed Forces Radio Network. Then, something I had never done before. I plugged an ear plug into my walkie-talkie, so I could still hear the radio transmissions. I felt good.  Both radios were working, not blaring, giving away my position.

I stood, and noticed Tusky was alerting towards the gate and the road towards the Strip, a village that had sprung up close to the base to service the needs of the off-duty personnel. I could hear the sounds of merriment wafting in on the gentle breeze.

I thought to myself, Tusky, you silly dog.  I can hear those sounds. too. They are nothing. True, the noises I heard were nothing, but the noises Tusky was alerting to were something. He had picked up the sounds and perhaps the scent of some people coming up the road towards the base.

The sky was barely light, still outlining the tree tops, but the tree line was plunged into total darkness. I was 30 feet from the gate and I could not see it. But I could hear the sounds of people approaching the gates, even though I could not see them.

It was time to call in my dog’s alert. I should have believed him from the start. He was trained to see, hear, and smell things my senses could not discern. He did his job, so I had to catch up and do mine, by calling in the evolving situation on my radio. I called it in and received a 10-4 from Base.

Little did I know, Base did not receive my transmission.  The 10-4 I heard was for someone else’s radio transmission.

I did not hear control dispatch the Security Alert Team for my back up, because they had not done so. I did not notice the omission, because I was busy focusing on what was happening right in front of me, about 40 feet away.

The men I still could not see were shouting and rattling the gates. It was an Asian language, and I remembered the briefing at guard mount about the sapper unit that was expected to attack us. We had been told that sapper units would probably be high on something which would help them overcome their fear of the dogs guarding the perimeter. These men had no fear of my dog who was being very vocal.

I found a huge rock to crouch behind just off to one side of the road. I still did not know how many men were out there in the darkness. I felt protected, and then they started climbing the first of two gates. I needed to inform the Control Center of the changing situation.
“Kilo 9 to Base.”
... (no response) ...
“Kilo 9 to Base.”
... (no response) ...
“Kilo 9 to Bravo 1.”
... (no response) ...
“Kilo 9 to Bravo 2.”
... (no response).
The men climbed the first gate and were crossing the ten feet of open space to get to the second gate. The huge rock I was crouched behind shrank to the size of a pea in my mind. I ran back 30 yards and found a rock that was twelve feet high and had a shear edge like the corner of a house. My dog was barking out of control, his adrenaline rush probably comparable to mine.

I refocused on the sounds in front of me. The men were shouting and shaking the chain link gate. Then they started climbing the last gate. I tried my radio again, but first I pulled out the ear plug. It did not matter that it would blast out radio transmissions, because my dog was louder than the radio.

I tried calling Base and the two towers that were close to me, but the ear plug was not the problem. They still did not receive my transmissions. My radio’s battery was strong enough to receive, but not strong enough to transmit. A simple radio check would have resolved that when I was posted. I could not worry about that, because there was an unknown number of men walking up the road towards me.

Suddenly, two silhouettes appeared in the middle of the road. I gave them an order to halt and they did not. My dog was barking like crazy and jumping around wanting to get to them. My warning shot was straight at them. I continued firing and they both fell. Then one of them jumped up and ran for cover, and I shot twice more at him. He fell in the ditch at the side of the road.

I thought, how many others made it to cover in the rocks? I ran from my position and took up another defensive position further up the road. Tusky had calmed down and was not barking.

The tower guard called in the shots fired and Control tried to reach me. I tried to answer, but I could not. I heard Base dispatch the Security Alert Team and then I shut off my useless radio. The base went from Yellow to Red Alert.

I finally had time to breathe and think. My dog was calm, but alert. I began wondering how many men were part of this penetration attempt. One man was lying in the ditch moaning, the other was babbling something, probably giving information to his comrades who had made it to cover in the rocks.

I wondered how many times I had fired and how many rounds I had left. I was carrying a CAR-15 with 18 rounds in the magazine. I was firing it one-handed, like a pistol on semi-automatic.  But what if someone charges me from the rocks and I run out of ammo?

 I unclipped Tusky’s leash and took hold of his collar. He was easy to control, because he had calmed down. If I run out of ammo, I could let Tusky go and hopefully get my magazine changed while the person struggled with an 80-pound attack dog.

All stayed quiet. Two dog men from the Late Flight were posted at the perimeter road and shouted out to me as they approached. I was never so glad to see two guys as I was right then.

The supervisor for the Late Flight showed up next. He drove his jeep with its lights on right down to where the South Korean non-commissioned officer was lying in the road. Fortunately for him it was not an attempted penetration of the base by a North Vietnamese sapper unit.

Two South Koreans were late returning from the bars and whore houses of the Strip. The Korean compound had a curfew of 7:00 PM, the airbase, a curfew of 7:30 PM, and the two Koreans arrived at the gates at 7:45 PM.

Both Koreans lived. They were sent to do two years hard labor in a Korean prison. I had fired 8 rounds and hit each of them twice. I found that out, during my four-hour investigation by the Korean Military Police.  I had to explain to them exactly what happened and I made sure my explanation was in line with the MACV Rules of Engagement.

If I had shot the unarmed Koreans when they were outside the fence, I would have been the one going to jail. I could only shoot at them if they shot at me first, or if I saw them setting up a crew-served weapon to be used against the base. I did my job, scared as I was.

Well they did not shoot at me, so that took me to the next scenario: penetration of the base. But I still do not have the authority to shoot them. I must give them two verbal warnings. Well, I gave them one verbal warning in Vietnamese and English -- I figured my dog barking was an even bigger halt command than my verbal one.

That did not stop them, so I gave them a warning shot -- I just did not tell the Koreans that it was straight at them. I again figured that Tusky’s bark was as much a warning shot as a shot from my gun. The two Koreans knew they were crossing a secure post and failed to halt.

The Koreans, as they interrogated me, asked a couple of interesting questions. First, “Why didn’t I tell them to halt in Korean as well?”

Let’s see, I thought it was an attack by a North Vietnamese sapper unit. Why would I even think it might be Koreans? Besides, I was so frightened, I could not remember the Korean word for halt.

Second, they asked me if I walked over and shot the guy lying in the ditch, because he was shot once through the back.

Well, he turned his back on me when he was running for the rocks and I fired twice at him. Not an easy shot, shooting one-handed from the hip, while your dog is jumping around trying to get to the guy. But they already knew the answer. All of my casings were in the one spot where I stood and fired.

After I spent four hours giving my statement and a signed, handwritten, report to the Koreans, the U.S. Air Force spent three and a half hours interrogating me. There is nothing worse than putting your life on the line and watching the justice system decide whether you acted properly, or not.

That incident had to be one of the most frightening things to happen in my life. An almost equally frightening event occurred two nights later. The Koreans I shot belonged to a White Horse Division artillery battery.

The following night, I did not go to post, because I was up all day being investigated for any wrongdoing by the Koreans and the U.S. Air Force. I had the night off. The post I should have been on was shelled short by the Koreans. Occasionally, they do make an error in their co-ordinates.

The second night after the incident, I was back on duty protecting the base from intruders who wanted to blow up our planes and I was taking cover from the artillery rounds which shelled my post short for the second night in a row.

As was normal, I heard the howitzers firing, but unlike normal, they were not hitting a point 1500 meters, or more, off base. The three rounds were whistling in on my position. It was too late to get to a bunker, by the time I realized I was the target.

I hit the ground and tried to pull my dog down -- he wanted to stand up and howl at the whistling. We survived unscathed as the shrapnel whooshed over our heads. I could hear it pepper the tin that surrounded the sandbags in the tower close to my position.

The tower guard did not have time to get to his bunker. He ducked behind the sandbagged walls of the tower and escaped injury.

Our Operations Officer visited the Koreans the next day and told them, "Once might be a mistake, but twice is not."  He let it be known that it must not happen again. Thankfully it stopped.

My wife and I are campers. There is a firing range just over the hill from the campsite our trailer is on. I guess hearing shots being fired can trigger long hidden memories.

One evening, I had the most frightening nightmare I have ever had. I dreamed we were sitting in front of our fire pit enjoying a drink, when some rounds started whistling in on top of us. My struggle was not to get my dog down, but to convince my wife to get out of her chair and lie prone.

I awoke before it concluded, but it seemed as real as the event in Nam. I was shaken and did not sleep well that night. Every now and then, I get a crazy dream like that. I am thankful it does not happen often.

Russell (Russ) Wallace
USAF - Security Police
Sentry Dog Handler
Vietnam - February 1968 to February 1969