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?