K-9 Korea

by J. Rachel Reed

  There were other moves before Harlan ever went to high school, but the family’s situation gradually improved. His mom found work at a bakery and his dad took up a cream route. The hours Harlan shared with his father were long and surprisingly hazardous. Farm dogs trained to protect property were never happy to see the Hoffbecks’ truck lumbering down the lane. As far as these farm guardians knew, their cream was being stolen. Harlan learned a healthy dose of respect for dogs in these outings. He helped his dad with the route for a while, but after being run down and snapped at by too many disgruntled hounds, he decided to find another job. The bowling alley paid ten cents a game to set pins, and that was fine by Harlan. It was an occupation far less dangerous than outrunning testy guard dogs.

  Harlan was still a young man when the war came to America on Pearl Harbor Day. By then his family had managed, like many other Minnesotans, to pull themselves out of the Depression’s ruinous hole. They still weren’t wealthy by any stretch, and it required the help of every able-bodied family member to contribute to the family income, especially with a nationwide war effort. Harlan thought of the soldiers serving overseas often, but unlike many boys in his grade, he didn’t necessarily aspire to be like them someday. He had hopes of college and a job which would take him away from the hard-scrabble life of farming.

  Post-war, Harlan’s family had a home in town, next to his grandparents, and many comforts they had never enjoyed before. Harlan had kept his job at the bowling alley and had picked up a few other odd jobs as well throughout high school. It had been difficult to save, but where there was a will . . . and by his senior year, he had managed the grades, and the nest-egg, to buy at least a semester of college.

  Harlan was smart, but he found college to be a challenge. It was difficult to keep up with classes, work, and family responsibilities. After his first semester, Harlan reluctantly accepted his failure. Still, going home without a promising income was not an option. He needed to find a fresh start with some hope of independence. Many of his friends had found that in military service, and Harlan decided the Army was as good a place as any to look. With some hesitation, he volunteered for the draft. On January 29, 1953, he was officially drafted into service in the U.S. Army, board number one hundred. The Korean War was still raging.

  Harlan was sent from his little hometown, Morgan, Minnesota, to Fort Ord, California, for basic training. Because he had a little more life experience than most of the other guys in basic, with a whole semester of college under his belt, the training instructors gave him more responsibility. They saw him as a natural leader. Harlan breezed through basic because his adaptation to military life was not that big a transition. He had known struggle in a personal way, even as a little boy, living through bitter cold and hunger. Basic was, more or less, a breeze.

  The only thing hanging over Harlan’s head was the shot line—a whole line up of immunizations given in rapid succession. Not that Harlan feared shots, but there were so many of them. These were not just the basic inoculations for new soldiers either. As Harlan saw his shot record filling up with mark after mark, he realized that many of the diseases he was being vaccinated against had been nearly eradicated in America or had never developed here at all. The U.S. Army was preparing their new recruits for an exotic deployment. He knew right away he was bound for Korea.

  Passing through the headquarters building one afternoon, Harlan noticed a sign on the bulletin board.

  “Join the Doggies!”

  “Trainers and handlers needed!”

  “Sign up today.”

  Harlan knew that K-9 training could take as long as six months to complete. At least six months deferment before going to Korea? Without hesitation, he picked up the little pencil dangling from the bulletin board by a piece of yarn and signed his name. Surely the conflict would be over within six months. Of course, there was no guarantee he would be picked, but he hoped they would remember the leadership he had displayed in basic and would call his name for this selective duty. He feared that his life depended on it. When Harlan received word that he had been selected, he felt a combination of relief and trepidation. Harlan was glad that he might avoid Infantry duty on the now infamous front lines of Korea, but he really wasn’t as knowledgeable about dogs as it might seem; he hoped he hadn’t bitten off more than he could chew. This was going to be a shell game, but one that he hoped he could pull off.

  GRETA

  Harlan had never been a dog lover, but he respected the power and aggression of a dog—maybe more than most, given his experiences riding the family cream truck back home. As his bus pulled up to his new home at Camp Carson in the late spring of 1953, Harlan felt some trepidation. The sign out front reading 8125th Sentry Dog Detachment only made the butterflies in his stomach flutter harder.

  The day after their arrival, the men were taken to the kennels where they would meet their dogs for the first time. Their arrival was surprisingly unceremonious. The sergeant handed Harlan his dog’s paperwork. He had been given the only spayed female certified German Shepherd in the group. She had been shipped from the kennel where she was born in Silver Springs, Maryland, to Falls Church, Virginia. There, she received her vaccinations (probably not as many as Harlan), but very little else. In an odd shift from World War II policy, the dogs which came to the 8125th, at least initially, were not tattooed with a serial number. Without the serial number, the dogs could not be easily identified as military equipment. No one knows if military officials planned to send the dogs back to former owners at the end of this trial run, and therefore did not identify the dogs as their own. Perhaps it was an oversight or something miscommunicated as a task to be done before shipping her off to her next active assignment. Either way, Greta had been ushered into camp, it seemed, as an after-thought.

  As the men entered the kennels for the first time, the sergeant warned them: “Some of the dogs are mean, some aren’t. You’re gonna have to be smarter than the dog, and just a heads-up—some of you aren’t going to make it.”

  As Harlan walked down the rows of dogs, he felt a little smaller than his actual six-foot height. Dogs snarled, snapped, and showed teeth as he slinked by their individual kennels. He was thankful for the chains that held them in place. Some dogs were indifferent to the presence of a stranger, just as the sergeant had said. Many even seemed happy as their tails wagged and tongues lolled. Harlan looked at every kennel, searching for her name. Suddenly, he found it. Her placard read simply, Greta. Thoughts of the farm came rushing back to him, and he knew it was time to put his fears aside and get to work.

  Harlan sat next to his beautiful Shepherd and slowly reached inside her kennel. Greta, aware of his presence but suspicious, shifted her butt to his approach and lay down with a sigh. She was tense, a 70-pound, muscular beast, uncertain about what this stranger wanted from her. Harlan understood that for both their sakes he had to move slowly. The trust they would build in those first few days was critical.

  “Hey girl,” Harlan softly chanted, reaching to scratch her around the tail. Greta shifted, softened just a little, and adjusted. Harlan lost track of how long he sat there before going to get her food. For two days this ritual continued before Harlan got the courage, and before Greta willingly submitted, to slip the choke chain around her neck, signifying they were ready to be partners.

  Their first preparation for war came in the form of obedience training. Much to his surprise, Harlan found Greta was already an expert on obedience. It seemed as if she knew this stuff by heart, and the training was more for his benefit than hers. She could follow a limitless amount of commands. The “sits,” “downs,” and “stays” were seamless. For the first time in his life, Harlan was impressed by what a dog could actually do—besides chasing cream collectors. It was apparent to him that she had seen this type of training before. Greta respected Harlan, hanging on his every word, waiting for a motion of his arm or a flick of his wrist to fly into action. She still had to put him in his place from time to time, often cocking her head
to the side, looking at him like she thought him stupid.

  All in all, Harlan’s time in training was going better than even he had imagined. Although he missed his mom, he had adequate downtime to write to her often. He wondered how to tell her that this was better than he had imagined, and even the Korean War, looming over everyone’s head, was not as terrifying as it first seemed, especially with a dog by his side. Word at Camp Carson was that some resolutions were being reached in Korea and our nation’s involvement there wouldn’t last very long. Regardless, he could rely on Greta. He trusted her to be his lifeline in even the worst of times. In July 1953, before any deployment orders came, Harlan wrote home to ease his mother’s mind.

  July, 1953

  Hi,

  Was very glad to get your letter and should have answered earlier but the nights go by to [sic] fast. I really like it here. Some things are boring but with the food and good offices you can’t get disgusted. My dog is really smart. Sure hope I can keep her. She sits, heels, stops, comes, and lays [sic] down when I give her the commands. I’m going to take a picture of her this afternoon which I will send home as soon as it gets back. I’m on a detail this week to water and feed the dogs and then next weekend I’ll have off. It’s really been hot down here lately but accord [sic] to the paper it’s about same back home. My dog hasn’t eaten for the last three days but I think it’s because of the heat and then it drinks to [sic] much water just like a person does. We only feed them once a day and that’s about 4:00 o’clock [sic] in the afternoon. Then we clean and water them and get back to the barracks at 5, eat supper and get a pass if we want. We get up at 5 in the morning which isn’t bad at all. The food is really delicious and they always give you enough. One morning we had two eggs, bacon, hot cakes, cereal, and toast plus milk, butter and coffee. I think that’s pretty good.

  The men of the 8125th took meticulous care of their dogs. Grooming was thorough, and all dogs were regularly vet-checked to make sure that they were well and able to work. In turn, the dogs lived for their handlers. It seemed to the men that the more they cared for the dogs’ basic needs, the more the dogs poured out their undying love and devotion. They would jump for joy at the very sight of their handlers and relished the new jobs they had been given. Greta too, in spite of a temporary loss of appetite in her early training (Harlan thought most likely due to her excessive water consumption after a stressful shipment to Carson), remained healthy under Harlan’s doting care. She and Harlan were forming an incredible bond, and she was delighted to see him walking to the kennels every day.

  Soon, Greta and Harlan were given the green light to start their aggression training. Harlan was uncertain about how it would go. The night before their new training regimen began, he brushed Greta and fitted her with a new leather collar. From that day forward the leather collar, different from the choke chain used in obedience, would be a signal to Greta that it was time to work. Just the simple act of putting the collar on made her haunches stiffen and caused her to stand a little taller than before. Harlan wondered if she knew what they were going to undertake, both in training and in war. He wondered if her aggressive behavior would grow through training—and he both hoped and feared that it would.

  Agility training. The dogs were always rewarded for “bad behavior.”

  HARLAN AND GRETA

  In aggression training, Harlan found out what the sergeant meant when he warned that some dogs were already aggressive. Apparently, some of the unit’s dogs had been sold to the Army precisely because they were ferocious.

  Harlan, however, had to do the required work of consistent aggression training with Greta after she tested for scouts or sentries. She had gone through a dark house and alerted to a hidden “assailant” by barking. A bark, whether aggressive in nature or not, automatically meant that a dog was destined for sentry work. So Greta and Harlan, partnered for the duration, went to sentries. It didn’t matter to Greta. She was there to please Harlan, and Harlan took some comfort in knowing she would remain his loyal protector.

  Harlan noted the difference between Greta and other naturally aggressive dogs in the program. Private Jensen’s dog, King, was one of the most ferocious dogs any of the men had ever seen. King attacked his handler more than once, one time breaking his collar and turning to lunge, leaving Jensen bloodied. The protocol of praise and never punish left Jensen no choice but to pat King after the incident and tell him, “Good boy!”

  When graduation day came, Harlan and Greta were as ready as they could be. The team graduated with honors. Seventy-five young men, and over a hundred eager dogs, were ready to deploy together. Harlan knew Greta was a great dog and that she would protect him with her life. Their orders clearly put them in the direction of war, leaving out of Seattle aboard the USS Howze, with only one possible destination: Korea.

  Their entire training process together had taken only ten short weeks.

  KOREA

  The USS Howze had served as a Navy transport vessel in the Pacific during the height of World War II, commanded by U.S. Coast Guard Captain Lee Baker. The ship was decommissioned in 1946 and handed over to the U.S. Army Department of Transportation. The Military Sea Transportation Service acquired the vessel in 1950, and until late fall 1953 it served to ferry service members to Korea.1 By the time the 8125th got to the Howze, the ship was close to the end of its life. Having a group of smelly dogs aboard would be of little consequence. Looking at the ship, Harlan wondered if it would hold up.

  The dogs were loaded in their kennels by crane and sling. As the handlers boarded, it was their responsibility to take the kennels—two men at a time carrying their dog-laden parcels—to the hull of the ship where the dogs would stay for the duration. The handlers saw this as the perfect opportunity to smuggle booze and loaded each of the kennels up with as much liquor as was comfortable for the dogs who shared the space. There wasn’t much room for walking, watering, and feeding down in the hull, but the guys would have to make do; a bunch of rowdy Marines (who had boarded by climbing ropes up the side of the ship) were making the trip with them. Harlan noted that the ship’s captain was not too thrilled with the Marines, but he was even less excited about the dogs. He could be heard wandering around the ship, mumbling under his breath, “Those damn dogs.” Still, his disdain was not so great that he lacked compassion. The 8125th lost a dog while at sea, and the captain arranged for the military working dog to receive the full honors, due to any military member, and to give him a proper burial at sea.

  It took thirty days to get to Japan, where the Marines were unloaded. The men of the 8125th got to walk around on the dock while the Marines disembarked. The dogs, however, never left the ship until their final destination. In the end they spent a month and a half aboard ship, before reaching Incheon Landing.

  They could smell the stench of Korea for at least a mile out. It was so offensive a smell that even men and dogs who had been in cramped quarters for nearly two months recoiled. The dogs whimpered in their crates as they got closer to land, their hackles bristling with nervous energy. Many of the handlers wondered if the dogs could smell their digested canine cousins oozing out of the pores of the starving Korean people. Greta seemed to be imploring Harlan to help her escape from that place.

  From Incheon, it would be a day’s drive to their new home. The sentry dogs, still in their kennels, were loaded onto the backs of trucks headed for Yong Dong Po, Ascom City, Korea. The contingent of scout dogs which came over with them went to an unknown destination. Their paths would not cross again.

  The sentry dogs settled in to their new homes with ease, while their handlers committed to keeping them on a regular schedule. There was plenty of work to be done already built into their day. The 8125th had been tasked on arrival with guarding an ammunition storage warehouse. The post was rife with pilfering by Korean civilians who were desperate for anything of value which could be sold to support starving families. And the Koreans were terrified of these particular dogs more than wild animals. Their fero
city was notorious and therefore one of the most valuable psychological weapons available. The Korean civilians often threw rocks at the dogs out of disdain. Harlan and the men allowed it, however, knowing that this would only make the dogs more aggressive to potential thieves. Dogs had proven, during World War II and after, to be the Army’s best protection against loss. So the 8125th were welcomed and ready to achieve the mission set before them.

  Though the war was arguably winding down in 1953, tensions remained. The North Koreans had held on with all their power and used every means to continue psychological warfare on American troops. Harlan took note of this tactic when he first arrived. Every evening for the first two months he was in Korea, “Bedcheck Charlie” paid a visit to their unit. This supposed North Korean, flying an open cockpit Piper Cub, would circle the camp dropping hand grenades as he went. At first the dogs barked and yelped, but it wasn’t long before they realized this intruder was merely part of the landscape. By the time Bedcheck Charlie finally disappeared, the dogs no longer noticed.

  Harlan and Greta spent almost all of their time together. All dog and handler teams worked two days on and one day off, twelve-hour shifts, 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. But outside of that, the handlers never went anywhere without their dogs. They went to the Post Exchange and chow with their dogs. They would socialize, limited as it was, with the dogs by their sides. Harlan and Greta only parted when he slept. She would go back to the kennel, a wooden dog house, where she was chained. The chain was long enough for Greta to get on top of the box or escape inside during inclement weather. Like the other dogs, Greta was never in her box for long. Greta was always happy to see Harlan when he returned and she would rise to meet him, excited to put on the leather collar signifying work was imminent.