K-9 Korea

by J. Rachel Reed

  STAHLKE

  Larry Gean Stahlke was an independent Midwestern boy. One of four kids growing up on the family farm, he had a lot of responsibilities beyond school. Taking care of siblings and taking care of livestock was grueling work. He never much cared for being told what to do and was looking for an escape from his rigorous life. When he was seventeen, in an ironic twist for a rebellious spirit who hated the voice of authority, he talked his mom into signing him into the Army early. Somehow Stahlke knew that the Army would help him to grow up and become his own man—even though it would mean following orders more than ever before in his life.

  JELLISON

  Paul Raymond Jellison was a soft-spoken young man from rural Johnson, Kansas. His daddy was a pastor who believed in hard work and sent Raymond out to work on local farms. Raymond’s natural next step in a servant’s life was to enlist and do his part. Before leaving for Army duty, he married his high school sweetheart, Eva.

  STEWART

  Donald David Stewart was the youngest of five kids growing up on a family farm. The farm was inhabited with livestock, which included dogs. Stewart’s father had instilled in him that dogs were always a farmer’s tool and never a pet. One dog, Stewart later remembered, was used for herding cattle into the milking stalls. He really liked that dog, but his father didn’t care for all of its behaviors. After the dog killed and devoured a dozen of the family’s chickens, his father grabbed it and dragged it behind the barn in a fit of rage. Stewart cried and begged his father not to do it, saying, “I can train him to stop!” His father shot and killed the dog in front of him, reinforcing the idea in his young mind that dogs were only good as long as they were useful.

  When Stewart was old enough, he went to Fort Riley, Kansas, and volunteered for the draft. He went into Basic Training at Fort Ord, knowing that he was destined for Army Infantry. When he was pulled from infantry with special orders, he never really questioned it. He thought it must be a fortunate turn of events in his favor, and he hoped it meant he could avoid the action in Korea.

  BENEVENGA

  Norlin J. Benevenga (“Ben”) moved from the big city of San Francisco to the less populated part of Marin County, California, when he was a boy. His new home stood in stark contrast to where he had come from: the area only had fifty residents in total. The dairy farm, a few miles down the road, had other people and animals that drew gregarious Ben’s attention, and as soon as he could, at the age of ten, he went to work there. The animal population consisted of dogs for working cattle and dogs who kept the ’coons treed. As Ben grew older he only thought about dogs as he knew them at the farm: they were there to do a job. He even began to see an absurdity in dogs living in houses with people like they had in the posh neighborhoods of San Francisco.

  When Ben graduated from high school in 1952, he took his love of animals to the University of California Davis and started in their agricultural sciences program. After a year of study, though, his life took an unexpected turn. When Ben received his draft notice from the Army he didn’t think too much about where he would be going or what he would be doing; it was simply a task to be accomplished before he could get back to school and work with animals. When he received word in infantry training that he would be moved to the sentry dog unit at Fort Carson, Colorado, he was excited to at least be working with animals again.

  PAULUS

  Boulder, Colorado, was a bucolic setting in the 1940s and 1950s. Dean Paulus grew up there in the shadow of the Rockies, on a small wheat farm with mountain meadows spreading all around him. He never knew his birth father, and his mom was always very ill. There wasn’t much of a family life for him to speak of, but Paulus’s stepfather had a dog that became the boy’s constant companion. He wasn’t very close to his stepfather. That dog was his family.

  When Paulus went to the Army recruiting station in Denver, he was okay with leaving his family behind, but knew that he would miss his canine brother. He went to Fort Ord for basic training and was sent immediately into Light Infantry. A bout of double pneumonia delayed his training, however, setting him back several weeks. Unable to catch up in training, he was washed back into a heavy artillery company. This assignment was a first class ticket to Korea, and for the first time since joining up, he was concerned. Going to fight in Korea was the last thing Paulus had wanted. As it turned out, Heavy Infantry wasn’t to be his home, either. At the end of his training he received a different set of orders, changing his course once again.

  CHAN

  Peter Dak Chan was eight years old in 1940 when his parents escaped the onslaught of the approaching Japanese Army into China, leaving Canton as quickly as they could on a transport ship bound for America. He and his sister, the only two of the family’s children to be born in China, roamed the ship on their voyage to Sacramento, California, pretending they were pirates or sailors on an adventure. They never understood the urgency that took them away from China, but they looked forward to the farm paradise they would share with cousins who had gone before them.

  Once in California, Chan learned that the American Chinese had fit into a pretty standard track based on white American expectations.

  His father told him, “Chinamen do two things in America, cook or hard labor.”

  Their family worked a farm. All of the children, which eventually became a total of seven siblings, did their part in that enterprise. Chan didn’t mind working there, as he knew he wouldn’t make much of a cook. His favorite part of the job was tending to the menagerie of animals. They raised meat rabbits and had work horses and farm dogs, and he naturally gravitated to all of them.

  But there was also schoolwork to be done, and he liked that as well. Chan learned the nuances of the English language pretty quickly, as his parents had started teaching him English from his infancy. Chan loved math, had a decent understanding of the natural sciences because of his farm life, and loved to play mentally challenging games like chess. His teachers saw a lot of potential in him. When he was in the fifth grade, his teacher offered to take him into her city home, close to a huge variety of educational opportunities, and care for him. His dad refused, stating flatly, “You are a farmer.”

  In 1953, Chan was drafted at the age of twenty. He was sent to Fort Ord for basic training and knew he was slated for infantry. He also knew that Korea would be his ultimate destination. He never balked at the duty, willing to go wherever he was needed. He struggled, however, with the thought of having to take another person’s life. To his relief, a set of orders came down that would change his destiny. He and ten others in his company were being sent to Camp Carson, Colorado, for another mission. The orders read, “8125th Sentry Dog Detachment.” Chan was intrigued.

  MELOCHICK

  Steve Melochick grew up in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, in a home without a lot of love. The day he took the train to his basic training in Camp Gordon, Georgia, he looked out the window at Pottsville and said good-bye forever. He doubted his family would even miss him. He wondered if they even knew he was gone. Then again, they must know. His mother had signed him up early at the age of seventeen. He was the youngest man in his basic training company, and he stood out for all the wrong reasons at a scrawny 105 pounds. The only member of the family Steve was sure he would miss was the family dog.

  From basic training Melochick went directly into Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) School, where he would learn to handle enemy explosives on the frontline of war. He knew without question that this would lead him to Korea, and when orders came he was not surprised. He was sent by boat, with what seemed like several thousand other soldiers, to Uijongbu Korea. Not all on board were headed for duty at the ordnance depot, but many in his company were. When he and his fellow trainees from Camp Gordon arrived at their outpost (roughly twenty miles south of the Thirty-Eighth Parallel), they discovered that much of what they had trained for was not in demand there. What the 696th Ordnance Company needed more than actual munitions handlers was security for the ammunition stored there.

&nbs
p; Thievery and pilfering by the Koreans was exorbitant in that place, and many of their efforts to thwart it had been ineffectual. Melochick noticed right away that only one program, a new approach to the problem at Uijongbu, was making a difference. The 8125th Sentry Dog Detachment had come there to guard the ammo storage, with great success.3 Melochick admired the dogs and handlers, but it was the fluid and powerful work of the dogs which most impressed him. Their attentive, loyal behavior made him miss the dog he had left in Pottsville.

  SIMPSON

  Floyd Simpson grew up on a farm in rural Ohio with three older sisters and one younger brother, his playmates and friends. The farm was full of the traditional menagerie of animals, especially farm dogs.

  When Simpson grew up, he volunteered for the draft and chose the Army as his path. He was sent to Fort Ord for basic training. From there he took a different direction than the expected infantry training and volunteered for the Chemical Corps, working with chemical, biological, and radioactive agents. His training took him to Anniston, Alabama. From there a soldier went one of two ways: Germany or Korea. Simpson volunteered for Germany, but being one of the top six in his graduating class earned him guaranteed orders to Korea instead.

  Once aboard ship to Korea, Simpson was promptly handed a gun for protection. His commanding officer, a salty colonel, had to look up his military occupational specialty (MOS) because of his unfamiliarity with that line of work. Simpson knew then that he wouldn’t be using his education over there. The need for munitions handlers had dwindled. Instead, he was stationed in an ammo depot.

  Simpson soon learned that Korea was a dangerous place. It wasn’t enemy combatants who threatened security, however, but desperate Koreans who regularly broke into the ammo depot looking for anything of value to steal for their starving families.

  OTHER RECRUITS

  In this group of new dog handler recruits, nearly eighty men received the call. Not all made it through the process from former infantry to doggie but the ones who did were diverse in every way except their rural upbringing. Slaughter was the only black man in the unit and in a newly integrated Army, stood out to his peers. The Army wasn’t trying to fill a quota however; he was chosen for his familiarity with farm life. Wooden hadn’t grown up on the family farm, but rather on the glitzy racetracks of California. But he cared for horses from the time he was thirteen and knew a thing or two about training animals. Talley and Batson were the same. Their upbringings had some marker of exposure to animals which the military identified and, as is the Army way, believed that made them good candidates for dog handling. Garfield, who would make it through the training and on to active duty as a working dog handler, was an enigma. His fellow handlers would learn very little about him and would soon see that although he was proficient at doing his job, it was never his desire to do it.

  TEAMS

  By 1954, roughly eighty men had been diverted from Fort Ord to the upstart sentry dog program at Camp Carson, Colorado. Many of those men would not make it through the program. They ended up back in infantry.

  About a hundred dogs awaited their arrival. The dogs almost never left the program, regardless of aptitude. The Army was determined to get everything they could out of their investment. Unfortunately, this meant denying that dogs, just like humans, have their own personalities, uniquely varied from one dog to the next. Some of the K-9 recruits, like their human counterparts, were flexible, teachable, and ready to work. Some would be dragged along to realizing their potential over time. Some would never fully adapt. Yet Army policy put every dog on the scout or sentry track, regardless of whether the dog had the heart or ability for either. As for retirement when the war in Korea was over, the Army would not be returning the dogs to their former owners. Instead, they guaranteed that the dogs would be returned to Camp Carson from wherever they were sent. At least the Army seemed to intend to see the dogs through to the end of their lives.4

  By the time the men reached the dogs at Carson, the K-9s had been through an extensive selection process. Each had been received at an Army depot for in-processing, where they obtained a Dog Record Card, equivalent to a soldier’s Form Twenty (a record of all their processing details). The dogs’ records showed the type and number of shots given, physical characteristics, and a personal history. One copy of the record card would accompany the dog wherever it went, another was placed on file in Washington with the Department of the Army, and a third was kept at the place of purchase with the previous owner. Once a dog made it through this process, it would be issued a serial number (like any other soldier) and tattooed on its left flank.5 This identifying mark effectively made the animal government property.

  The personal history of each dog, however, would tell a different story. These living creatures were more than mere pieces of equipment. Some of the men would read the files of their dogs, many of which were once pampered pets now undergoing training to become hardened and ferocious killers. This was cause for some concern, especially at first. Many of the men knew from past experience that if a dog had been properly handled from birth, its instinct was to be a companion to humans, not a foe.

  5

  GETTING IN

  CORPORAL FOWLER

  From the beginning of Camp Carson’s military working dog program, there was no standard for leadership or organization dedicated to the operations. Men coming into the fledgling program from basic training at Fort Ord often found themselves the ranking man in the company.

  A few of them, however, like Corporal Roland Fowler, had some practical experience as leaders in other military career fields. He had earned substantial time-in-grade with the Forty-Seventh Mule Company at Camp Carson, and eventually transferred his experience over to the Doggies. The assumption was if a man could train a mule, he could train a dog. In reality, men like Fowler found in the Doggies a disjointed training protocol and no real plan. The scout dogs, already in place at Camp Carson in 1953, had been semi-established and benefitted from the successes of the Twenty-Sixth Scout Dog Platoon in Korea. The sentry dogs, however, were a rag-tag group of castoffs—some wash-outs from the scouts and others procured, in a somewhat sloppy way, by the U.S. Quartermaster Corp.1

  Fowler came to the Camp Carson scout dog program before it even had a name or affiliation. The program had been expanded at Carson from the small Twenty-Sixth Scout Dog Platoon from Fort Riley, and by the time Fowler transitioned there in 1953, there were around eighty scout dogs and twenty handlers in residence. It hadn’t been too difficult for Fowler to accept the assignment. Growing up he had loved dogs. In his small Minnesota hometown he had lived the outdoorsman’s dream, and dogs had always been a part of that. In fact, he couldn’t remember a time that he hadn’t had either a pet or a hunting dog at his side—until he joined the Army. His penchant for pastoral life first drew him into the mule company at Carson. In his early years of service, he was able to spend time daily in the mountains with his mule, Jasper, soaking in the Rocky Mountain air. Their regular rides to Pike’s Peak were an escape for both of them, and caring for Jasper gave Fowler a connection to home. But an incident beyond his control would lead to his next great adventure with the dogs.

  Although he never skipped grooming or picking Jasper’s hooves, the mule was prone to injury and illness. Fowler believed Jasper went looking for ways to injure himself on a daily basis. Shortly after Fowler rode Jasper in the 1952 Armed Forces Parade in Colorado Springs, the mule developed a case of road-founder that would force the Army to pull him from service indefinitely. He had been properly shod, and Fowler had checked his hooves thoroughly before ever getting in the saddle. Most likely Jasper’s love of sweet feed had caused his joints to fail, but in the Army way, someone had to bear the blame. Fowler received a demotion to stockade guard.

  Fowler’s brief stint at the stockade didn’t work out, either. In a confusing incident he discharged his weapon at a detainee. He missed, likely on purpose, but nevertheless ended up looking for another job. There weren’t too many more places
to fall from the humiliating work of guarding drunks and petty offenders in the stockade, but the Army decided to give him a choice: the icy frozen tundra of Alaska or Mary Ellen Ranch in nearby Camp Carson to work as a scout dog handler.

  The dogs were the natural choice.

  When Fowler came into the scout dog platoon, there were twenty handlers as well as rank-structured leadership. They were a somewhat experienced unit, and their training was on point. Fowler couldn’t believe how wonderful the dogs were at their jobs. The precision of their “hunt” reminded him of his favorite hunting dogs back home. These dogs lived for their daily games of hide-and-seek and relished the praise of their handlers for making a good find. Often, a decoy (usually a soldier borrowed from the nearby infantry platoon) would be set 1,400 yards away, and the dogs could find him before the platoon’s lieutenant even got to the field. Once, their lieutenant came out to observe and asked Fowler, “When are you going to start?” The dogs had already made ten captures, twenty minutes before his arrival.

  Fowler’s scout dog became his faithful companion. Smokey was a beautiful German Shepherd, with grey coat and dark eyes, and he loved his job. He had an incredibly proficient nose and was able to find a man in seconds instead of minutes. On every find, Smokey would look to Fowler for praise. An exuberant utterance of “Good boy!” was the only reward used in the early training of military working dogs, and Smokey worked hard to earn it. Man and dog spent more than half of every day together, and the bond they formed was unbreakable. Fowler could say, after only a short few weeks of training together, that he loved Smokey more than most people—like family and even more.

  Although there was structured leadership on the scout dog training side, there was very little in the sentry dog program. Fowler had established himself in the scout dog program as a trustworthy leader and was in line to make sergeant soon. He received orders to the 8125th Sentry Dog Detachment in the beginning of 1954 and reluctantly handed Smokey’s leash to another handler. He knew he could trust Smokey to this new handler: the young man had already expressed a love for the dog more than once. At the 8125th Fowler’s mission would be very different and far more complicated. The sentries needed his experience.