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Rick Claggett: Labrador retrievers were used for only one job: Following blood trails. So if contact was made with the enemy and they were wounded, then they call in a Lab team—which was the dog and the handler. They used Labs because they're silent trackers. You don't want a Bloodhound or a Beagle, which have an equally strong nose, but make a lot of noise when it's on track. We also trained Labs to alert us of a human ambush or a mechanical ambush.
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They might alert you to a human ambush, but you're out in the open and the enemy knows that they've been detected, so they open up and kill the dogs and the handlers. Four hundred handlers were killed in Vietnam.I've heard people say that there would be 10,000 more names on that wall in Washington DC if there were no dog soldiers in Vietnam. That's somebody's estimate about how many lives they saved. As far as the dogs' mortality, there were about 4,000 dogs that served in Vietnam over the course of the war, and about a thousand of those dogs were killed, either from direct gunfire, booby-traps, heat-stroke, snake-bite, disease, accidents, old age… a myriad of causes. [Editor's note: As these dogs' deaths went largely undocumented, VICE was unable to corroborate exact numbers with the US Military, though one technical sergeant stated that the facts "sounded correct."]
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You have to bond with the dog tremendously. My dog was named Big Boy, and he'd been there for four years. He'd been through several handlers already, so he knew what he was doing. I was the green one. I spent about two weeks with him just bonding, just building up a relationship, so he wants to work with you and you want to work with him.They weren't a piece of equipment to us. I think I can speak for around 95 percent of the dog handlers that I have talked with since the war, and everybody said, "I loved that dog." It wasn't a piece of equipment like a gun or something like that. It was a living, breathing thing that had emotions and played and did all kinds of dog things. You just fall in love with that dog, and that certainly was the case with my dog, Big Boy.I was fortunate that not only was he experienced, but he was very friendly. Some guys had aggressive dogs and couldn't take them around like I could. I would take Big Boy with me almost every place I went. And I didn't even have to have him tied up [on a leash], because he would just follow along with me. He was so well-trained. I would go into a club to have a couple of beers, and he would lie down on the floor beside me. It's a wonderful feeling knowing that he has your back.
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Yes. There were potential conflicts with South Vietnamese, but there was a lot of racial tension amongst the US soldiers. That's an unfortunate aspect of it, especially with the infantry guys. You're out in the field, your life's on the line, and then you come back and want to get drunk, blow off steam—some of the guys did drugs—and there would be fights between blacks and whites in the rear. But I tell ya, nobody messed with dog handlers, because we had our dogs with us all of the time. People gave us a lot of space.RELATED: It's Like Vietnam All Over AgainHow long did you serve in Vietnam?
Just under eight months. A normal tour is a year, but the reason mine was shortened was primarily because our unit was standing down, and they didn't need more dog handlers. This was in March of 1972. I had put in for an early-out to go back to graduate school. So between those two things, I got my tour cut short, which I was thrilled about. The only negative was that I couldn't bring my dog home.He wasn't going to be used anymore, and there's no good reason on God's green Earth that we could not have brought our dogs back. We would've paid for them ourselves. I was just an E-4, so I didn't make much money. But I sure would've paid for his flight back, and let him live the rest of his life with me. Because he was only seven years old, so presumably he was only through with half of his life. And yet, he was turned over to the South Vietnamese, who didn't work with us and had no idea how to use these dogs. Cultural issues being what they were, the Vietnamese eat dogs.
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We made some phone calls while we were over there trying to convince people, saying, "Hey, let us pay for our dogs to come back!" The problem was we didn't have much time to negotiate this, and we didn't want to jeopardize our going home, we wanted to get the hell out of there as quickly as we could. And once we started pushing this, some people came back and said, "If you guys keep jacking around with this thing, you're gonna be staying here." I don't know how much of a hollow threat that was, but it was enough that some of us backed off.So it was a set in stone policy of the US military to not bring military dogs home?
Yep. Ironically, we had some 40,000 dogs that served in World War II, and all the dogs that were physically able at the end of the war [came home]. Korea, same deal: [The dogs] came home.There were some concerns that [the dogs] would pick up diseases; but there was nothing that they could pick up that couldn't be treated. Some people were saying, "These are war dogs! Are they gonna go back to a family situation and freak out when kids start wrestling with them and attack the kids?" No. They can distinguish between war and a home situation. Somebody in Vietnam made the decision that dogs were surplus equipment, and as surplus equipment, they were expendable at war's end. Just like the choppers that we pushed off the aircraft carriers in the South China Sea.
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No, I never heard statistics on that. My guess is 50/50, but I don't know. I have talked to vet-techs in Vietnam since returning home, who say the toughest thing they ever had to do in their life was stick that needle into a healthy dog, who did nothing more than try to save our lives and protect us.Do you think any of the dogs that were abandoned made it to good homes?
No. I doubt it. Maybe a handful of them were "adopted" by a Vietnamese family, but that would be rare. I think they ate them. I don't think they had any particular affection for these dogs at all, even though these dogs were saving their lives, too. There was an intimidation factor, because these dogs were so big. Even when we were in the field with South Vietnamese, they stayed away from us, they didn't want anything to do with these dogs.
Oh, yes. When I was in training in 1971, they told me "These aren't pets! You don't play with these dogs!" Well, that's bunk, because we did play with our dogs. We didn't throw balls and things that they could fetch, because if you were out in the field and threw a hand grenade, you don't want the dog bringing it back to you. We didn't have any toys for them. Now they've got little chewy toys and stuff like that, and any dog owner knows how much they love these toys. So, they now officially have playtime.
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Yeah. There was certainly trauma for me, leaving my dog there. But it was probably overmatched by the fact that I was happy as heck to be out of Vietnam and out of harm's way, to not be shot at anymore. But yes, I felt horrible for that dog.I made some calls to Congressman, and wrote some letters. The problem in Vietnam was that nobody knew that these dogs were left there. Because the only people who knew about this were the dog handlers who wanted to take their dogs back and weren't allowed to do so. A lot of us tried to change that, but nothing happened. It took another war for anything to change.President Clinton signed a bill [in 2000] that said no military dog would be left behind. We'd like to think [the dog handlers] had a role in that, and we probably did have a small role, but I think there was enough of an outcry after people found out what had happened to these dogs that it was a no-brainer. In Iraq and Afghanistan, when those dogs either get too old or get wounded, they're not euthanized. They're put up for adoption by their former handler. That's the way it should've been in Vietnam.Follow Josiah Hesse on Twitter.