November 2007
It was different when I got back to Afghanistan this time. Instead of the excitement I’d felt in the early days, and the thrill and satisfaction I’d had from doing the job for real, now I couldn’t wait for the next four months to be over.
I used to chat to Nat on MSN and, while I tried to put on a brave face for her, she could tell I was down. ‘I’m not getting Ricky back, babe,’ I said to her in an instant message.
When I got back to Kandahar, I found out that Ricky had been teamed with another handler, a guy from the Dominican Republic. Ricky was working out of Kandahar and when I went to the kennels, I saw him. He recognised me immediately. It was a tough moment.
I met his new handler, and watched him and Ricky working as a team. I could tell straightaway that the handler was still unfamiliar with him. He was using too much lead control, jerking too hard and too often on Ricky’s collar to try to make him obey. Having been able to work Ricky off-lead sometimes, I could see that this forced control was aggravating him. I spoke to the guy, to try to give him some guidance on how best to work with Ricky, but I knew I could only go so far. They had to get to know each other and learn how to work as a team. My interfering might only make it harder for both of them. Ricky was the new handler’s dog and I had to let him bond with him.
However, that didn’t change the fact that all I wanted to do was take Ricky off that bloody lead, and give him a big hug and tell him I was back.
It’s sort of a catch-22 situation working with dogs. If you’re not a dog lover you’re not going to make a good handler, but you’ve got to treat being a handler like any other job. You need to bond with your dog and establish a relationship with him, yet, as I’ve said, at the same time you know, as a professional, that the dog isn’t your pet and you have to be capable of re-teaming with a new dog at a moment’s notice if required. But Ricky had slept on my bed and in my sleeping bag with me in the deathly cold mountain nights, and he’d been at my feet in the gun truck when we were being shot at. He was almost like another child to me, or at least a really good mate.
On MSN I told Nat that I’d been walking another dog, Jan, and that, while he’d showed some promise, it was unlikely I’d be teamed with him. Jan had already been working with another handler, who was on leave, and the kennel supervisor couldn’t give me Jan to train or work with, as the other handler would have the right to stay with him when he got back to Afghanistan, if that’s what he wanted.
That left Benny. Benny the Bouncer, they called him, because of his hard-arsed, no-nonsense attitude.
‘What do you think about being teamed with Benny?’ Nat asked me.
‘I’ve always liked him, but he can be a little aggressive,’ I replied. ‘You could get him under control, but once they are aggressive, isn’t that in their nature?’
I told Nat that I’d known Benny for a while and that I partly put his aggressive behaviour down to the way he’d been handled. In the past eighteen months, he’d had three handlers, including Chuck, the dude who was so fond of smoking people, and who I’d seen not give a fuck about his dog’s welfare on board the Chinook from Tarin Khowt to Kandahar.
‘Well, babe, give him a go, you can sort him out,’ Nat said.
I hoped she was right. Benny the Bouncer was actually a lot more aggressive than I’d let on to her. Once when I’d passed through Kandahar airfield not long after I’d arrived in Afghanistan, I’d seen Benny in the kennels with five metal food bowls in his enclosure. When I asked the trainer what was going on, he said the kennel attendants were all shit scared of Benny, and none of them was game enough to go in and retrieve his empty bowl. They would slide a fresh bowl in each day and then run. When I spoke to Benny that first time, he had a bowl in his mouth and was growling, as though he were demanding food.
I found a lead, opened his enclosure, walked in and snapped the lead on his collar. He didn’t growl or bite, or otherwise try to pick on me. I’m not, despite what Nat sometimes says, a ‘dog whisperer’. When I go into an enclosure with an aggressive dog, like Benny was, I just don’t make a fuss of the dog, or try to be overly domineering. I just get the lead on him quickly and get him out into the open. A lot of dogs are kennel-aggressive; that is, they become very territorial and protective of the space they’re in. However, they don’t necessarily want to be in there and once they’re out walking on a lead, their attitude changes immediately. Nero was like that. I think Benny picked up on the fact that I was there to help him and that I wasn’t going to be intimidated by him. I took him for a few walks, just so the poor thing didn’t spend all his days locked up.
Maybe Benny remembered me because, when I eventually picked him for a re-team after I’d lost Ricky, we got along like best mates who haven’t seen each other for ages but can still pick up with each other straightaway. You make a lot of those kinds of friendships in the army.
The next time I spoke to Nat on MSN, I had Benny with me.
‘What’s he look like?’ she asked.
‘He’s a shepherd – very alert with pointy ears. He looks like a small black and tan wolf.’
Our kennels at Kandahar backed on to the Australian compound, where the headquarters and rear echelon people for the task force were based. I’d see the Aussies most days and got friendly with a few over meals in the mess hall. I invited a few Australian soldiers over one night, to hang out and visit the kennels.
I’d made great progress with Benny and received some good news. In a couple of days, I would be heading back out to FOB Cobra. The last team I’d served with, including Captain Mike, Mickey and grumpy old George, had all rotated home and a new team had taken over, but Lee the dog handler was still there. I was really looking forward to seeing my mate again and to introducing him to my new dog.
When they came to visit me, the Australian soldiers were just like Americans; a dog was a link to home, and to a life they’d left behind. Maybe for some of the Aussies, seeing the dog also brought back memories of their childhood, and of a time before the planes flew into the World Trade Center, when it seemed it was other people’s countries that went to war.
After visiting the kennels, the Aussies came back to my room, along with a couple of other civilian handlers, so it was getting crowded. I got up to go for a piss and, just as I closed the door of the bathroom, I heard one of my handler mates yell, ‘Benny, no!’
I burst back into the room and saw a female Australian soldier on her knees with her hand over her face and blood streaming out between her fingers. Benny had bitten a nice big chunk out of her lip.
‘Fuck!’
We tried to clean her up as best as we could, but it was obvious to all of us that the party was over and the girl needed medical attention. One of the Aussie soldiers raced back to their lines and woke up their doctor.
‘Shit, I’m sorry,’ I said to her. ‘No,’ she insisted through her swollen, bleeding lip, ‘It was my fault, I’m to blame. I put my face down near his and I knew I shouldn’t have.’
We were all on edge for a couple of days, as at first the word was that she’d have to be flown home to Australia for a skin graft. If that had happened, everyone there that night would have been in the shit, but luckily the task force’s medical officer was able to get her patched up in-country.
Benny and I, however, were temporarily grounded. The doctor wanted Benny to be tested for rabies and other diseases, and that meant we had to stay in Kandahar for another ten days before leaving for Cobra. Nat was pleased when I told her the news, as she thought I’d be safer at Kandahar than I would be at a FOB, but I was pissed off. I told her that I was sick of Kandahar already and hated the place. If I were going to be in Afghanistan, I wanted to be out at a FOB where I’d at least be doing my job and where the time would go quicker.
‘Did you get a warning from Benny that he was going to bite that girl?’ Nat asked on MSN.
‘No, he was really good with everyone and he’s been coming along in leaps and bounds.’
‘Well, being with you, he’s with a good person for a change. He’ll be fine,’ Nat said. And she was right. We were soon back in business and on our way to Cobra.
‘I don’t like the sound of this one, man,’ Lee, the US Army special search dog handler said to me while we were waiting to saddle up for a mission at Cobra. ‘It just doesn’t feel right.’
I nodded. The convoy’s route would pass along a stretch of road and through a long wadi at Yakhdan we called IED alley. The Afghani minesweepers would be searching the track at choke points along the way, and Chief Chin Nuts and I were pretty sure we’d be called out with our dogs to search.
Benny had tested negative for rabies and any other nasties, and I’d finally made it back out to where I belonged, at Cobra. While it was good to be getting back out on missions, Lee’s sudden attack of wariness was infectious.
Lee was my best buddy at Cobra. Nothing was ever a hassle for him and he’d do anything to help a friend. He was a happy-go-lucky guy in his late thirties and, like me, had heaps of kids and had been married more than once. We’d talk for hours about our kids and our homes, and our dogs.
‘What do you reckon about the US Army using civilian dog handlers?’ I asked Lee. As he was an army dog handler, I wondered if he saw us civvies as a threat to his trade.
‘I’ve got no complaints,’ he said. ‘Hell, yes, there are some that don’t belong out here where we are, like at Cobra, but overall I think it comes down to how people are trained, and how the handler thinks. You and me both know the job’s important and we save lives. We train every day – even when we’re out on patrols – so, I guess, if a man takes the job seriously, knows his stuff and keeps on training, I’ve got no problem whether he’s army or civilian.’
After I returned from vacation and had been re-teamed with Benny, Lee told me he was pleased to see me back at the FOB. Guy went to Cobra to replace me when I went on my extended vacation, and I’d told Lee the other Aussie was a good bloke. Lee had said he would look after Guy.
Not long after arriving at Cobra, Guy went out on a mission and was sitting in my regular spot behind the 240 on the back of a GMV. The convoy was ambushed and while Guy was getting some rounds down range, a Taliban bullet came in from the rear of the vehicle, went straight between Guy’s legs and hit poor Apis in the foot.
To their credit, the SF team called in a medevac for Apis, and Guy was flown out with his injured dog – there was no point in the team carrying a handler without a dog on the mission. Apis was treated by the US Army vet at Kandahar and later made a full recovery. Even though he could have gone back to work, he was retired as he’d been wounded. He ended up being shipped home to the US, where he found a home with the family of one of the American K9 project managers.
Guy never returned to Cobra after that incident.
Spaulding, Lee’s dog, took after his master, and was a warm and sociable individual. Spaulding got on fine with Ricky and Benny. While we were training, we could let both dogs off their leads, which was something I could never do with Guy and Apis, as Apis and Ricky would have torn strips off each other if they’d been running free. Spaulding was friendly, though. Too friendly, in fact, as, although they were both males, Spaulding loved sniffing Benny’s arse and, when we weren’t looking, would often try to mount him.
Benny was funny around people. He hated some individuals at first sight and could be unpredictable, like when he’d bitten the Australian Army woman. With others, he was more relaxed, though still a little guarded. He loved Lee, though. When Lee came in the room, Benny would be all over him, rubbing up against him and looking for a pat. It was just the way things were with Lee – he was friends with everyone.
Lee had introduced me to his wife, April, via MSN, and once she contacted me while he was out on a mission.
‘I’m worried about, him, Shane. Something doesn’t feel right,’ April tapped into her computer, half a world away.
‘Nah,’ I replied; ‘Lee’s a good man. He knows his stuff. He’ll be fine, April.’
The team had stayed out for longer than originally planned and I guess April’s imagination had got the better of her. Lee came back from that mission safe and sound, but now he had the bad feeling, right before we were due to leave. I felt a bit of a shiver down my spine as I loaded Benny on to the back of the GMV and climbed up behind my 240. I tried to shake off Lee’s concerns. He loaded Spaulding and gave me a wave.
As we drove out of the base, I told myself there was nothing to worry about. It was a MEDCAP, so it wasn’t as though we were going out to pick a fight with the Taliban. However, we were passing through an area where other vehicles had been hit by IEDs, which was why there were Afghani minesweepers and us two dog handlers along for the ride.
The convoy drove off road, as usual, but after we crossed the Sakhar River we had to go on to the road for a while, down the long Yakhdan wadi that had been christened, for good reason, IED alley.
We came to a halt, and the Afghanis dismounted with their minesweepers and began sweeping the road ahead. The word came down the line that the Afghanis had found something and also needed a dog handler to search and, as Lee had lost the toss, he and Spaulding got out and started to work. At the time, head office had told the civilian dog handlers working for American K9 that we were not to do roadside searches. As handlers and dogs had been injured by IEDs and pressure plates along roads, we’d been instructed to confine our searches to compounds, buildings, open fields, choke points and wadis. The greatest danger to the team, as far as I could see, was roadside IEDs, so I ignored the company rule and always searched a road when it needed to be done or, as was the case today, when it was my turn to do so. There was no point, I thought, trying hard to win a team’s acceptance and then saying, ‘No, I can’t do that job to protect you because my company says it’s too dangerous.’
I stood in the back of the GMV, stretching my legs, and grabbed a pair of binoculars. I focused and could see the ASG guys with their minesweepers, moving very slowly up the road.
‘They’re taking their time,’ I said to the staff sergeant in the gun turret.
The two Afghanis stopped in the middle of the road and appeared to be having a discussion. Behind them, I could see Lee and Spaulding. Spaulding was straining against his lead, and Lee had obviously kept him attached because of the close proximity of the Afghanis, and to stop the dog from roaming ahead of the sweepers. Surprisingly, the team captain had also dismounted, and was walking along next to Lee and Spaulding. I could see one of the Afghanis gesticulating with his hands to his comrade, as though they were arguing.
‘What the fuck are you doing, Lee?’ I whispered to myself.
Lee, Spaulding and the team captain were moving past the two arguing Afghanis, apparently impatient with their lack of progress. This was a really unsafe practice, and there was no reason for the team captain to be out walking around while the road was being cleared.
I shook my head. ‘Shit, man.’
Behind me, Benny was stirring and whimpering. I put the binoculars down and turned to my dog. ‘What’s wrong, boy? You’re not spooked too, are you?’
Boom!
I scrambled back to the turret and snatched up the binoculars, which had vibrated off the ledge where I’d left them. Dirt was raining down on the wadi, and a cloud of black smoke was twisting and turning up into the clear blue sky.
‘What the fuck was that?’ the gunner in the turret said. The intercom radio was squawking with urgent conversation, but I couldn’t focus on what people were saying. Benny was barking, as if asking me the same question the staff sergeant was.
‘I think Lee’s just been killed,’ I said.