[00:00:00] (HOST) The Vietnam war costs the lives of more than 58,000 American service members. They’re memorialized on a wall that stretches nearly 500 feet from end-to-end. Now imagine another 30 yards of wall, enough to accommodate another 10,000 names. That’s the number of lives that were saved because thousands of Viet Cong and bushes bunkers, secret tunnels and booby traps were detected and avoided. And by detected, I mean, quite literally sniffed out. August is National Dog month in the United States. So, in this episode, we salute the four-legged warriors who helped us fight the war in Vietnam, saving an estimated 10,000 American lives from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial fund founders of the wall. This is Echoes of the Vietnam war. I’m your host, Michael Croan, bringing you stories of service sacrifice and healing from people who still feel the impact of that conflict. Nearly 50 years later,

[00:01:11] [MUSIC]

[00:01:30] (HOST) This is Episode 11, Canines in Combat. The Vietnam, war introduced American troops to a new kind of warfare patrolling thick triple canopy jungles was dangerous by day and even more perilous by night enemy fighters used the jungle to their advantage. Employing guerrilla tactics, such as ambushes, minds, tunnels and traps in ways that us troops hadn’t encountered before a well-trained dog became an extension of his handler senses, seeing, hearing, and smelling danger that was otherwise undetectable. These dogs were so effective that the enemy actually issued a bounty on them and their handlers. When you talk to these dog handlers about their experiences in Vietnam, they rarely talk about themselves. They talk about their dogs today; we’ll hear from two of them. First Callie Wright interviews, Terry Kehoe about his German shepherd dog prince. And then after the break, we’ll bring you my interview with John Dupla, who talks about the use of Labrador retrievers as trackers in the war.

[00:03:03] (TERRY) I was a Sergeant infantry, Sergeant scout, dog handler, and I had a, a dog named Prince who he and I were called out to different units in the, in the field in Vietnam. And we would walk point for the infantry,

[00:03:23] (CALLIE) Terry. Can you tell me, how did you become a dog handler?

[00:03:29] (TERRY) It’s a funny story. They, when I was in MCL school at Fort Benning they were asking for volunteers for scout dog school. And I didn’t know anything about scout dogs, except that I knew that scout dogs only went to the field for 10 to 12 days at a time. And I knew the infantry grunts were out there for 45 days. So I’m not a whiz at math, but I figured out it was better to be out there a shorter time. So when they interviewed me for that being from Minnesota, I told them that I did a lot of things in Minnesota was sled dogs. I don’t know a sled dog from another dog, but it works. And I became I sa-, I was sent to scout dog school at Fort Benning and then onto Vietnam.

[00:04:15] (CALLIE) And what was scout out of school like? At Fort Benning

[00:04:20] (TERRY) Scout dog school was, they tried the best they could to recreate Vietnam. That was after, you know, the first part of the school was how to walk with a dog, how to work a dog on a leash, how to talk to a dog and all that. But the second part was the hands-on and working with the dog crossing rivers, going through jungle type things, firing weapons staying out in the field with the dog, all of the things that we would do in Vietnam with the dog. So it was pretty realistic. The difference was is that the dog I had at Fort Benning whose name happened to be Prince was a different dog than the dog I hadn’t Vietnam.

[00:05:06] (CALLIE) And when you got to Vietnam when did you meet your dog there or had you already met?

[00:05:12] (TERRY) No, I whe-, when I first went to the 39th and I’ll say this infantry, platoon scout, dog IPSD I walked in and, you know, they said welcome to our little compound, which was, attached to the hundred 73rd airborne brigade. We had our own little corner of the Hills in English and I went up there and all I saw were these buildings covered with sandbags and I could hear dogs barking. And they said, you’re going to get Prince 672M. That was his number that was tattooed in his ear. And so I went back there and all these dogs are barking and here’s Prince sitting there not barking, looking up with these sad eyes and wagging his tail. They said, this is your dog. And I thought, you know, it’s easy as others and so active. And he doesn’t, and somebody said to me, be happy. You’re one of the lucky ones you’ve got one of the better dogs. So Prince had been there for, for two years already. He was a combat veteran. I was not, I’m just getting to Vietnam. I didn’t know what I was doing or anything. So Prince I’ve always said Prince was the smart one. I was there to carry his food and water.

[00:06:27] (CALLIE) How did you train with Prince?

[00:06:28] (TERRY) Um I, the first couple of weeks, I just spent time with him all the time. I mean, whether it be sitting and just talking and coming with the guys, he was very friendly. He liked people. We did some training, we had some stairs and tubes and things like that set up in the back part of the compound that we would take the dogs to and they would train doing that sort of thing. So agility type things, and, you know, walking with them, sit, stay, crawl. And he and I learned together to do. I mean, he already knew them and I knew them, but we worked together to work with hand signals. That was how I alerted him. And then he’d look at me and I’d give him hand signals of where I wanted him to go, because people think it’s also noisy out in the field, which it is when people start shooting their weapons.

[00:07:21] (TERRY) But otherwise you try to be quiet. You’re not trying to give your position away. And when we were walking point, it was very quiet. So we did all hand signals and stuff, but the training was actually out in the field. Also, we would go out once a week with the dogs that were not out in the field at the time. And we had a spot few miles outside of LZ English that was sorta like out in the field. I mean, it had brush heads and trees. It wasn’t dense jungle, but we would hide somebody or something out there and then have the handler and the dog, uh, walk toward it and, and hope to find it.

[00:08:00] (CALLIE) After Prince was trained, what was the next step like?

[00:08:03] (TERRY) Somebody called for the unit and we went out, but I had to go the first time with another dog handler, a senior dog handler that with me because they had been out in the field. I’d never had them. And but it, it all fell into place because like I said, Prince had already been there. Prince knew what to do. He was teaching me really. And so we went out and the first time went very well and subsequent ones, he and I went out just the two of us.

[00:08:36] (CALLIE) What were his jobs when he was out there? What did, what did he do for you or for the unit?

[00:08:42] (TERRY) Prince was like all the other scout dogs. They were, they were trained, but also have the natural ability to smell things, see things and hear things much better than a human being. And he was trained to find weapons, enemy personnel, booby traps, tunnels, trip wires things like that. And he would he wouldn’t turn around and bark at me. He would sit and sit in facing the way of what he found. And then I had to kind of interpret what was going on, especially with the wind. If it was a sound and then I would pull back with Priance and the infantry grounds would go out and find whatever it was. So my job wasn’t to do away with what he found my job was to interpret what he tried to interpret what he found.

[00:09:35] (CALLIE) Were the dogs pretty accurate?

[00:09:38] (TERRY) The dogs were extremely accurate. They were so good. They could find things that nobody ever would have known were out there. Prince himself speaking for him. He did find trip wires. And if you think about a fishing line a, a monofilament fishing line stretched across, stretch across a path hooked to a, a grenade and a can, if you walked up on it, you wouldn’t see it. He knew it was there. He would either smell the person that had put it out there, or if it was stretched, tight he could hear it. I don’t, I don’t think he probably could see it because, you know, that clear line you can’t see, but he found those on a lot of other things too. And so basically the scout dogs in Vietnam, it’s been estimated that they saved 10,000 lives. In other words, there would be, if it wasn’t for scout dogs, there’d be another 10,000 names on The Wall. And my only thing is I wish that the dogs who never were allowed to come home, that their names were on there too, because they were soldiers and they died in Vietnam and not always in, in action, but by the hands of the military, but still they, so we need a wall for the, all the scout dogs.

[00:11:04] (CALLIE) Can you talk about what happened to scout dogs that served in the military at the end of the war?

[00:11:11] (TERRY) Not just scout dogs, but century dogs and, and tracker dogs, also. All the dogs that were sent by the military to Vietnam of the 4,000 dogs, there were only like 220 that early on in the Vietnam war returned to the United States. After that, none of them did they, they said it was because of diseases, but in reality, it turned out to be that they considered them excess equipment, like helicopters and weapons and so forth. And they gave, there were three choices that they did with the dogs. One would just let them go to fend for themselves, not a good state two then give them to the RBMs the army, the public of Vietnam scout dog handlers, and thirdly, the United States vet-, veter-, veterinarians euthanized them. And in the case of Prince, our unit was deactivated in July of 1971 just a few months after I left country and their orders were going to send them to Saigon, to the main vet clinic.

[00:12:27] (TERRY) And be assessed for reassignment. But a couple of few years ago, I met with our Lieutenant that was over there. And he told us that all 42 of them were euthanized. So you know, you take a five year old dog that’s very active, very good at what they’re doing and all the others. And instead of letting them come back and hopefully be with their handlers, like they are nowadays they, they put them down or, or the other. So it was you know, at the time, right after Vietnam, it wasn’t so traumatic because we didn’t know that for about 30 some years, but in the last 10 years or so for most of us dog handlers its very traumatic and has really increased our PTSD problems.

[00:13:23] (CALLIE) Can you talk a little bit about the shift in terms of how we treat dogs who served now? You mentioned it, you mentioned it in that last piece, but just, you know most of them come home now, correct?

[00:13:40] (TERRY) That’s correct. They come home, they’ve mostly go to Lackland airport space to be debriefed or whatever you call it before they can be adopted out. And then they are allowed to be adopted out with their handlers being the first one to have choice. And after that, it would be to the public that’s of course, if the dog is a dog, that can be with the family some of the century dogs may be couldn’t be. But because of dog handlers of the 10,000 dog handlers, I don’t know how many, but there were many of us that did things after about 30, some years. When we found out in 1999, what actually was happening to the dogs, we gathered together in groups and so forth. And finally it ended up that a proposition or whatever it’s called was signed by president Clinton at the time allowing dogs to come back. So prior to 1999 or 2000, whatever the year was, none, none of the dogs were able to come back even from other places. So the Vietnam veterans feel good that Vietnam handlers feel good, that what we did will make a difference for the future, for the dogs and the handlers in the future.

[00:15:02] (CALLIE) Absolutely. and would you have, would you have taken Prince if he could have come home with you

[00:15:10] (TERRY) In a heartbeat. Absolutely. I know he wouldn’t have been me with me now. I mean, he’s here, he’s in my mind now in my heart, but he, he would have, you know, Prince was uh, Prince, of course my mind was the best scout dog, but they were all good. And they deserve to come home that maybe get that chance. So, you know, we, we dog handlers, many, many of us have emotionally paid that price. And I know that all Vietnam veterans obtain some emotional price. We just had one more issue to deal with.

[00:15:52] (CALLIE) Is there a specific day or specific memory that you have of Prince that really stays clear in your mind?

[00:16:01] (TERRY) Yes I do. And it has nothing to do with warfare. Basically, we were out in the field and we had set up for the night and of course, oh, we didn’t, you know, they give these pictures of people having tents and so forth. I had a poncho that’s what Prince and I had was a poncho. And we were all set for the night. And at night I would book my leash that I had to have my rucksack and to Prince so that he would have about a five foot radius, but not being able to go where he, wander, not that he would, but just in case. And when I would first get to a unit, I would let everybody, or let Prince smell everyone there. And I always told them that at night, Prince is very protective of me, you know? So here’s this wonderful lau-, laughing, happy wag his tail dog. But at night he was, he was going to protect me. And during one night the medic in the unit walked within the distance of that leash and Prince bit them in the rear end. And so it, it just shows that the reason, one of the reasons why we’re so close with these dogs is that not only when they were working with this one, they were resting, they were protecting us also.

[00:17:23] (CALLIE) Can you, I know that Prince influenced your life when you came home from Vietnam. Can you talk about what it was like for you coming home?

[00:17:35] (TERRY) Just before coming home, you know, I had to, I was, I turned Prince over to another handler and I was still at the 39th for about two weeks, but I could not see Prince. I could not talk loud enough. So he would hear me because he was trying to get used to a new handler. But tell you the truth at that time, that wasn’t what was bothering me or anything, because I was going home, I was excited. I was getting out of Vietnam. So, you know, at that time leaving a dog, there was, unfortunately at the time it was secondary in my mind. My first thing it was the, I get to go back to the real world. And and I did that. And for all those years afterwards until 1999, when, when the movie or whatever it was called, war dogs came out documentary most, most of us handlers didn’t talk.

[00:18:36] (TERRY) We didn’t get together handlers. We didn’t talk about our dogs. It was just something in the past, but it was kind of subdued. And then when it came out, that’s when we realized what we had done, the guilt of leaving the dogs behind and the, the sadness of leaving them behind. And that’s when most of us dog handlers now, we were really upset, not only emotionally, but we were mad because had what we found out they had done to the dog. So coming back to the world was, I think for most Vietnam soldiers at the time was an exciting time. You know, we had had little calendars that knocked down the days until the day you leave and, and that type of thing. But after all those years, so 1971 to 1999, for me, it took all those years, 38, I guess that is for me to realize that I had left Prince behind. And I should’ve been more vocal about it.

[00:19:46] (HOST) That was Terry Kehoe interviewed by VVMF’ss Director of Education, Callie Wright. More after the break. Here at the Vietnam veterans Memorial fund, we wish everybody could come and visit the wall in Washington, DC, but we know that isn’t practical for a lot of people. And that’s why we created The Wall That Heals. It’s an exact replica of the wall at three-quarter scale. And it travels to communities all across America, The Wall That Heals and the Mobile Education Center that travels with it will be in Rice, Minnesota, August 19 through 22 and Marysville, Kansas, August 26 through 29 for more 2021 tour dates and locations visit vvmf.org.

[00:20:45] (HOST) We hope you’re enjoying this episode, dedicated the use of military dogs in the Vietnam war. If you’re interested in learning more about this topic or others such as the draft helicopters, the Tet offensive and more check out our topics page at vvmf.Org/Topics. And if you are enjoying this podcast, you probably have a friend or a family member who would enjoy it as well. Why not share it with them, or another thing that helps us out a great deal is if you leave us a rating or a review, wherever you get your podcasts, like Apple podcast or Spotify, for example, that tiny gesture has a huge impact in terms of helping new listeners find us. In the meantime, you can always let us know what you think by emailing [email protected].

[00:21:48] (HOST) When most people think about military dogs, they usually think of the German shepherd dog. And indeed the vast majority of the dogs used by American troops in Vietnam were German shepherds, but they weren’t the only breed that saved American lives in that conflict. A fact, that my next guest is very quick to point out. John Dupla, a former army tracker is both vocal and active in the Vietnam Dog Handlers Association. And the essential role played by Labrador retrievers in Vietnam will not be overlooked, not on John’s watch. I asked John to talk about the path that led him to become a paratrooper and eventually a dog handler in the US Army’s very first tracker program.

[00:22:33] (JOHN) So I was born in Galveston, Texas. Galveston is an island. And my father was had just gotten out of the service in World War II and married my mom in Galveston. We moved to a little town called Telemaque, but as I was going up in this community I was exposed to a lot of World War II veterans, including my father who served in the Philippines. I took skydiving lessons from the, and the gentleman that jumped in Normandy with a hundred birds, a young couple moved in across the street. He just got out of the military and I would hang out with him. And he was one of the first Green Berets. He was telling me all about the military. He was teaching me judo and all of this. I thought it was pretty neat. He told me that if he ever go into the service, try to find the smallest group to get involved in because the military does everything by the numbers and the smaller the group, the better chances of surviving, because they look each other better. After high school, ao as I was looking around for a job, nobody was hard. So military is where I went. I volunteered for the army to become a paratrooper like this gentleman told me about. I actually volunteered to become an infantry paratrooper. So you know, you go into the infantry and everybody said, everybody’s trying to get out, anything but infantry, well, that’s where I volunteered to go into, and that’s where I wound up

[00:24:18] (HOST) So when you joined the army. You said you volunteered for the infantry. What year was that? John?

[00:24:23] (JOHN) 1966. I graduated from high school in 1966. And there were some of us that became skydivers and that’s how I met the man who jumped in the army. He, he had skydiving club and come Thanksgiving around that time, I was looking around and I still didn’t have a job. And college was working for me. So all four of us joined the army.

[00:24:51] (HOST) And you joined with the intention of becoming a paratrooper. You ended up being a dog handler. So how did that happen?

[00:24:56] (JOHN) I became a paratrooper too.

[00:24:57] (HOST) Oh, you did?

[00:24:58] (JOHN) Oh yeah. Yeah. What happened was that I went through training, you know, the basic training, then the, what we call AIT. Then I went through jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia from there, they gave us orders to go to Vietnam. And by that time I was infantry, infantryman with a paratrooper qualified. But when I got to Vietnam, while we were standing there at what they call the 90th replacement battalion in Bien Hoa, er Long Bien, excuse me, Long Bien they had a couple of sergeants come through asking for volunteers for this program, that the Army was starting up that involved a highly motivated, volunteer, only program that the Army was developing. Thinking back with that gentleman that I grew up with, who was told me about looking for a small group to join with that in mind, I’ve volunteered for this program did not know what it was.

[00:26:13] (JOHN) We were told that we were going to go to Malaysia and go to what they call the British Jungle Warfare school in Malaysia. We just called it BJWS. Once we got there, we went in civilian clothes. We had orders not to talk about this to anybody we had had to go into Saigon and get a passport, made. And we flew in civilian clothes to Malaysia, to this British camp where we were issued American jungle fatigues, but no insignias, no name tags, no insignias, no rank or anything like that. We went to the jungles of Malaysia for two months, eight weeks, a special jungle training. And that is when they came out. So here’s what the program’s going to be at. We’re going to take a bunch of American soldiers and develop tracker teams, combat tracker teams. The tracker teams are going to go to each infantry division in our brigade in Vietnam.

[00:27:24] (JOHN) And each tracker team will have what they call a visual tracker, a cover man, a team leader, a dog handler, and a dog. We were divided into two groups. One was the visual tracker program. And one was a dog handler program. All the dogs were Labrador retrievers. The Americans did not have any Labrador retrievers. So they bought the dogs off the British, the Royal Veterinarian Corps and all the dogs that were there were already in Malaysia. And they had, some of them had already been in combat through the, the New Zealand and British what they call the Malaysian uprising prior to Vietnam. And that’s how they came up with this program. And our military was contacted, said, well, Hey, this would probably be good for our American soldiers to learn these tactics and take it and take it back to Vietnam and use it for our purposes because our military did not have anything like that. And at BJWS, we got acquainted with the dogs, the Labrador retrievers. I start off as a visual tracker training program. I wasn’t startecd off as a dog handler, but once we were assigned a team, then the Labrador retrievers was assigned to us to train with. So as part of the team, we would know about how, how to handle the dog. And after our training, when we got our orders go to back to Vietnam,

[00:29:17] (HOST) Can you just mention where in Vietnam you were?

[00:29:20] (JOHN) Okay. Well, in my case, I wound up going back as a replacement to the first Calvary division and in Vietnam, that wa-, at that time they were operating in the central highlands of what we call Two Corps.

[00:29:35] (HOST) Yeah. So what are, what are some of the earliest memories you have of being on the job?

[00:29:41] (JOHN) Well, it was interesting in the fact that I had to learn these new personnel that I had to work with, and that’s when I learned about the four dogs. First cavalry division had, There was Bruce, Shadow, Lucky and Sambo. My job was to follow Lucky and Bruce. We were divided two teams team seven, and team eight. So I was on team seven. So when team seven went out, the team had two dogs it was Bruce and Lucky the other, team eight had uh, Sambo and Shadow. But sometimes we would, co-mingle.

[00:30:23] (HOST) And all four dogs were Labs?

[00:30:26] (JOHN) Uh, every, everyone of them were labs, every dog, ever tracker dog in Vietnam were labs. There was one attempt to train the German shepherds. And they used a a scout dog and they tried, develop him eh, the dog’s name was Blaze. He washed out didn’t work. So in Vietnam, the only tracker dogs were Labrador retrievers.

[00:30:56] (HOST) And what do you think It is about that breed that, that makes them better trackers than say a German shepherd dog?

[00:31:03] (JOHN) Well, that’s an interesting question because while we were training, we were exposed to the labs and they’re very confident dogs and that was brought up because it Vietnam, if I’m not mistaken around 5,000 German shepherds and only 45 Labrador retrievers but the labs, we were told that they were better for tracking purpose, because one, where do you use Labradors, mostly for it’s like duck hunting, you know bird hunting. So they were already trained and bred to be silent and be around gunfire. And they had to develop a sense to retrieve their game by ground scent. So they became very good round scent dogs. And they went after a specific target. They didn’t bark. A lot of people ask us, did we cut their vocal chords or said, no, the labs were silent. There were sturdy. They followed ground scent because when you try it, you, the scent does not necessarily stay.

[00:32:24] (JOHN) Like if you walk on the pathway, the wind changes. The path may be several feet off the track because that’s where the scent is. German Shepherds were trying for, along with sheep, they would go along until they alerted on some danger that they perceived at the time. So that’s why they made excellent scout dogs. They were better suited for what we call air scent. However, some of the things that came up was that the infantry guy says, well, here’s a scarf or here’s a body part or somebody of a dead soldier or whatever. And we said, we don’t use that. You know, I see this in the movies here, give them a hat or something for the dog to step out that wasn’t practical for us. One enemy found out that once they found out they were being followed, they would drop one or two people off and do a diversionary tactic.

[00:33:29] (JOHN) They would try to get the dog and they would leave scents for the dogs. Okay. Well, the visual tracker and a team leader, and basically it was a group. See, we looked at it and found out that it looked this trail needs either a dog or a visual tracker. Okay. The visual tracker was one to determine like the age of a track, how long ago it was, how many. The dog couldn’t tell us that. So we needed the visual tracker and we would follow that to make sure that the one we wanted to go after then the team leader would signal and sometimes it was a touch to the nose or something like this to tell the ring, the dog up the dog was then put into a harness. Once the dog was put into a harness, that’s when the dog was basically told, go to work. Almost all the tracker teams from the beginning to the end, all developed, wearing soft caps.

[00:34:33] (JOHN) We never wore a helmet. We have basically a doctor, south Vietnamese like cowboy hat. That was turned up on one side. The British used that the one hat turned up and we always laughed at them. And then they told us that a head on the shoulder to the distinctive silhouette in the jungle, there’s nothing round in the jungle. Shadow wa-, became very aggressive. After I left he had a new handler and they got into a skirmish and he broke away from his handler and was killed. He was KIA by the enemy because he actually broke away and attack. The enemy and was killed. His handler was severely wounded too. But that’s a case where the dog changed from being uh, docile to aggressive dog. Bruce on the other hand became somewhat neurotic. Today, they recognized PTSD in dogs. Bruce had that distinction because after a while, well later in the tour, he got more and more reluctant to go out. And when he went out on a mission, his alert, everybody knew what his work was because he stopped and went behind the handler and sat down behind the handler. He didn’t go any farther. You could pull him

[00:36:08] (HOST) Approximately 4,000 military working dogs served in more than 90,000 missions during the Vietnam war. Of those only around 200, made it home to retire in peace time.

[00:36:20] (JOHN) 98%, 99 of the dogs that served in Vietnam never came out of Vietnam. And that’s the sad part about the legacy of them. They provide so much for us today, but nothing we can do for them, but remembered them and what their contributions are. And I thank this program for bringing this out, because if it wasn’t for this, nobody would know that what they did in the beginning, we were the catalyst to where we see military dogs today.

[00:36:54] (HOST) In 2000 Congress passed Robby’s law for the first time military working dogs had the chance to live out their lives in loving care at the end of their service.

[00:37:04] (JOHN) Prior to that, the military would not allow any military dogs to be adopted, but it’s gotten a lot better now. The fact that we do have military dogs being adopted today is great.

[00:37:19] (HOST) Well, and it’s, it’s due largely. I think Robby’s law was pushed through by Vietnam war, dog handlers. It was your, it was your generation. Again, you’re very active in, in the Vietnam dog handlers association. Is that right?

[00:37:33] (JOHN) Yes. I’ve been there since the very beginning. That’s how I know a little bit about the army, the Navy, the Marines. It’s not just the tracker dogs. Part of the harmonization, I’m always for the lab and they’re all German shepherds. They have a national monument in Lachlan air force base. And I had some input into that because they were all going to make a national war dog Memorial with a German shepherd. And I said not no, but hell though. And today they have four dogs on there. They have the Doberman pincher, the Belgium Elwha the German shepherd and the Labrador retriever

[00:38:33] [Music]

[00:38:35] (HOST) Thanks for checking out the official podcast from the founders of the wall in Washington, DC, we publish a new episode every two weeks. So be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts big, thanks to John Dupla and Terry Kehoe for sharing their stories and to Callie Wright and Elaine Koontz for their heavy lifting in this episode.

[00:38:59] (HOST) We’ll see you in two weeks. [Music]

Full Interview with John Dupla

Full Interview with Terry Kehoe

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