“One of the boxes was slightly open, so I looked inside as much as I could without touching it. From what I could see, there were bullet rounds in it. I notified the sergeant in charge and we had a couple of marines guard that area while I continued. In the next room, we found the weapon for those rounds. It was some type of antiaircraft gun with a swivel mounting system. Eventually we went over to a medium-size building with only one room. Monty alerted to an area against the inside wall where there was a mound of dirt and some trash. We secured the area and had the EOD team come out and check the areas where Monty had responded.
“According to EOD, Monty found over six hundred antiaircraft rounds and a 155mm round. It was the biggest find our K-9 group had while we were there. I was so proud of him, and he was really happy, because he knew he did a great job. He loved to work for his toy, and he loved to work for me, so it was really all just big fun for him.”
I ask him what could have happened if Monty had not found those rounds. “If those rounds had been used,” he says, pausing and taking a long draw on his drink, “you just don’t want to think about what they can do with those things.”
We talk more about their adventures together. About how the dog cheered up troops by his mere presence. About the array of different toys Liebert gave Monty for successfully completing tasks. “If you were given a steak dinner every time you did something good, it would get old after a while.”
Eventually we come to how Liebert and Monty had to part ways. The pianist is playing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” now. Another round of drinks comes our way.
When they came back from Iraq, they had more time together at the kennels for several months until Monty was assigned to another handler who would be deploying to Iraq with him two months later. Liebert likened it to having your child assigned to another parent. “It’s disconcerting, really hard, especially when you’ve been together as long as we had.” But he knew this came with the territory of being a military dog handler, and he steeled himself.
He wasn’t supposed to interact much with Monty at that point, because the new handler needed to build up a rapport with him. So Liebert would pet him through the fence. Every once in a while he’d get in the kennel with him and hold on to him and hug him. “I told him, ‘Hey, I’m your stepdaddy now, that’s your new daddy.’”
The handler and Monty deployed, did their tour, and came back safely. Not too long after they got back, Monty was put up for adoption for a medical reason Liebert wasn’t privy to. He handed in his adoption packet immediately, but he learned that Monty had already been adopted out, probably to another handler. He’s not sure who got Monty, because there was an incident toward the end that caused a rift between him and the people who made the decision in the kennel. He doesn’t go into it. He kept busy, spending the next four years, from 2006 to 2010, as a dog trainer at Lackland Air Force Base. He left in mid-2010 in order to make more money as a dog handler in the private sector.
He had several good months as a contract dog handler in Afghanistan, working with Loebes, a black shepherd, but he can’t imagine anyone will ever take Monty’s place. Some days he wonders if Monty, who would be a senior citizen by now, is still around. “All I can do is hope and pray that whoever has him is taking care of him and giving him the life that he deserves as a retired military working dog.”
7
THIS IS THE LIFE
Ask almost any handler how he likes the work, and you’ll hear something like this: “It’s the best job in the world.” I’ve never heard this phrase so much as I did while exploring the world of military working dogs. These are people who go to hellish areas and get shot at and risk their lives every day, and they say things like “I wouldn’t trade working with my dog for anything,” or “Canine is a lot of hard work, a lot of extra hours, but, I mean, it’s a
These men and women (women make up only 10 percent of handlers) don’t all come from a dog background, but those who make it through the intensive training and end up with a canine partner are passionate about what they do. Handlers tend to be type A personalities who, by their own admission, often get along better with dogs than people. Not that they don’t like people. It’s just that they get to know dogs so well. Handlers in war zones must rely on the dogs for their very lives. Along the way they get to know the hearts and souls of their dogs. “It’s better than with people,” one handler told me. “It’s just simpler, and more pure.”
A big fear some handlers have is that their home kennel won’t get enough dogs, and they’ll become just regular MPs, which is where most started out. Once you’ve worked with these dogs, once you’ve experienced that bond, it seems the idea of becoming a regular “straight legs” is a lonely proposition.
Army Corporal Kory Wiens called his mine-detection dog, a Labrador retriever named Cooper, “my son.” He bought him all kinds of toys, and they sometimes shared a cot while on deployment in Iraq.
Wiens, twenty, planned to reenlist so he could stay with Cooper and adopt him when the dog was at the end of his career. He would never get that chance. Wiens and his dog were killed by an IED while on patrol in Muhammad Sath in July 2007.
His family knew how important Cooper was to Wiens. The pair’s cremated remains are buried together in a cemetery in Wiens’s hometown of Dallas, Oregon.
8
THE KILLING FIELDS, WITH DOG
What was bad in Iraq is worse in Afghanistan.
The first handler I reached in Afghanistan was an army staff sergeant named Marcus Bates. In an e-mail, he introduced himself with characteristic military formality. “My name is SSG Bates, Marcus, serving in the U.S. Army,” he began. Bates wanted to talk about his partner, Davy N532, a three-year-old Belgian Malinois, whose name didn’t match her gender.
Bates recounted how he and Davy were supporting the Fourth Battalion Twenty-fifth Field Artillery Regiment, in Kandahar Province. During their months together they’d already found 140 pounds of explosives, two grenades, and two mortars.
“We get action about every time we go on a mission,” Bates said. He described Davy as a top-notch patrol and explosives detection dog. She’d been with Bates for nineteen months, at home base and in theater. “I trust her with my life. If I didn’t trust her, I wouldn’t be here.”
Bates had deployed with a dog once before, in Iraq. But Davy is new to war. In fact, Bates is her first handler. They hit it off immediately and she sleeps on his cot. She starts off with her head on his chest, but by the morning she is sleeping nestled up to his feet.
She’s slight for her breed, weighing only forty-five pounds, but her size turns out to be an asset in more than just sleeping arrangements. She’s agile enough to scramble up and over the four- to five-foot-high hardened mud walls that surround the area’s notorious grape fields. When Bates thinks of other handlers having to hoist eighty- pound German shepherds over those walls, he’s grateful for Davy. His combat load is already fifty to sixty pounds, including weapons, ammo, and enough water and food to last both of them for a two-day mission.
One November day Bates and Davy were on patrol in a grape field when they came under fire from eighty yards away. “I hate the grape fields here.”
Grape fields in Afghanistan are a far cry from your standard lush, manicured Western vineyards. Grapes grow in sprawling, tangled rows, between humid, muddy ditches obscured by weeds. The trenches are notoriously good places to hide explosives. When a blast goes off, the narrowness of the trench concealing it intensifies the explosion. These are the killing fields of a new generation of soldier.
As bullets from the AKs flew past, Bates and his squad took cover and returned fire. After a while it was time to get away from the dangerous trenches and up close with the enemy. The squad leader and Bates, Davy alongside, moved swiftly toward the enemy, firing as they approached.
The insurgents bolted and disappeared. But their secret ally—in the form of a long strand of copper wire in
