his dog arrived at Lackland for the first time. Then all you have to do is figure out how many letters earlier than the current year’s letter M is. If you’d met Joe and Bella M430 in 2011, during the R year, you’d calculate the numerical difference between M and R. So M-N-O-P-Q-R—that’s six letters. But don’t blurt out that Joe’s dog arrived five years ago. The letters G, I, O, Q, and U are not used in tattoos because they can easily be confused for other letters or numbers. So in the case of Bella M430, you “add back” two years (for O and Q) and now you can safely say that Bella arrived at Lackland for processing three years ago. Since most dogs get to Lackland when they’re two or three, you could take it a step further and figure that Bella is five or six years old.
Beers all around!
I’m not sure how much Sergeant Stubby had to do with this, but a military myth holds that a dog is always one rank above his handler. The popularity of this story spiked after the bin Laden raid.
The truth is that, officially, dogs hold no rank—equipment never does. (Equipment doesn’t let you bury your face in its fur when you’re mourning a fallen comrade, either.) It would also be confusing when a dog gets transferred between handlers of different ranks. There would be a lot of demotions and promotions in a dog’s career—not that the dog would care.
That’s not to say that some handlers don’t refer to their dogs as the next rank up. I’ve never come across a marine handler who did this, but it’s a fairly strong tradition in the army, where it probably started during World War II. Some say it was a move to get handlers not to abuse their dogs, because they could be in trouble for abusing a superior. Others believe it was just a maneuver to warm the hearts of Americans so they’d support the war-dog program and donate their dogs to the fight.
Even in army ceremonies honoring a dog for his service, the dog will often be referred to by his rank. And handlers have fun with it in everyday life, too.
“On occasion we tease lower-ranking soldiers if they ask to pet our working dogs,” says Army Sergeant Amanda Ingraham. “We tell them if they do pet our dogs, they need to do so at the position of parade rest and show our NCO some respect. It’s all in fun, but at the same time it gets everyone to realize the value of our dogs.”
And non-handlers will also notice the names of dogs tattooed on their fellow servicemen’s arms or legs.
Ink all around!
6
HEY, IS THAT 600 ROUNDS OF ANTIAIRCRAFT AMMUNITION?
Early in the research for this book, I got a note from Brandon Liebert, a former marine sergeant who had been a handler and trainer for eight years. He deployed to Iraq in 2004 with one of the first groups of garrison handlers sent into a war zone. He’s now a civilian contractor, working as a dog handler. He gave me one of my first insights into who dog handlers are.
Dear Maria,
During my time at MCAS Cherry Point, NC (March 2003–August 2006), I only handled one dog. His name is Monty E030, a Patrol Explosive Detector Dog. He and I had a great bond. He was a very fast learner and loved to please me. Because I trained him to do more than what the military required, I ended up making sure he had a different toy for every task. He also had his personal toys. He had more toys than any other dog in the kennels. Every morning we would go out and play before starting any type of training. Even though we were not supposed to, I would feed him some human food while we would be out on patrols. While deployed to Iraq, I would take Monty with me everywhere (i.e., chow hall, internet cafe, phone center, etc). Taking him with me everywhere also helped in keeping up the morale of the troops. They loved to play with him, pet him, help me with his training. Having him around all the time was not only fun and good times for me but also the troops, whether it was on base or out in the field.
When we were in Iraq, we celebrated the Marine Corps Birthday. The Marine Corps flew in steaks for us. I asked the cooks if they would save a leftover one for me so I could give it to Monty, and they did. So we both had steak for the Marine Corps Birthday. He sure did love it.
I would do anything for him and he would do anything for me. I had full confidence in him when he alerted to something. If he was not confident about something, I could tell. He could read me and I could read him. That is how good our bond was. When I had to give him up to another handler and change duty stations, it was hard. I felt like I had lost my best friend. We had bonded for over 3 years and now it was time to say goodbye. It was harder for me to say goodbye to him than what it was to say goodbye to everyone in the kennels. But he had a new daddy, so I had to move on.
It was an intriguing note to get at the start of this project. Here was a marine who referred to himself as the dog’s “daddy,” a warrior who felt a lump in his throat when parting with his best friend of three years. His tender ways with his dog clashed with the image I’d always had of marines as super-tough, aggressive combatants. I wondered: Was Liebert the exception, or was he typical of military dog handlers?
As I came to see, Liebert’s closeness with his dog was not unusual. Phrases like “He’d do whatever it took to save my life, and I’d do the same to save his,” or “She was like my child,” come up all the time when talking to handlers. The stories handlers told me made it clear that the closer a handler feels to her dog, the better the working relationship tends to be. In the end, that translates into saved lives. If a handler knows a dog well, she’s going to know what subtle signs to watch when the dog is looking for explosives or bad guys.
I met up with Liebert and his fiancee, Amanda Lothian, when they were passing through San Francisco. No longer obligated to uphold marine standards, he wore his dark hair slicked back in a tidy ponytail and sported a trim beard and mustache. He’d met Lothian at Lackland Air Force Base, where she was a vet tech. She left the army for civilian work shortly before having their baby. She went into labor as Liebert was getting on a plane to go train as a dog handler. “I’m sorry,” he told her on the phone when she—in the throes of contractions—called him. “I have to get to the dogs.”
Dogs are still front and center in their lives. When we met at the rooftop bar at the Marines Memorial Hotel, Liebert was awaiting a high-security clearance for his second round of contract work in Afghanistan. He is now “daddy” to a German shepherd mutt, Mabel. When stateside, he plans vacations around her, refusing to put her on a plane, and taking her in his truck on road trips instead. The dog will be staying with his sister while he’s away for the next year. Lothian is now a vet tech at the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital at the University of California, Davis, and has a German shepherd, Archimedes.
Liebert and Lothian both sport tattoos of dog paws on their lower legs. His paw tattoo is big and burly and is flanked by the words “Dogs of War.” Hers is a replica of her dog’s paw, with the name written in dainty italics underneath.
With introductions made, drinks in hand, and the pianist gliding his way through the entire song list from
“We were in a little forward operating base (FOB) in a town called Husayba. The commander of the base was given information about threats made to the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) unit there. These threats came from a group of insurgents looking to take over the ICDC compound. They feared the worst, so the unit chose to abandon their compound, which was located just a few hundred yards away from our base. If the insurgents were to take over this building, it would give them a good advantage to try and take over our base.
“We got to the building with no resistance and had to sweep it for explosives. When we started searching inside, Monty led me to a back room. On the way he alerted to a mortar round and an antitank mine that had been taken apart. We continued toward the back room again, and when we walked in, he started to circle the room. This usually means that there’s a high concentration of odor and he can’t pinpoint where exactly the odor is coming from. The only things in the room were these huge metal boxes. I brought him over to them so he could search them, and he gave me a final response. Something was there.
