War Dogs

by Shane Bryant

  Nikki and I had broken up, and I’d first had contact with Nat via a mutual friend, when I was on my second tour at Cobra. I was keeping in touch with a few ex-army mates via a social networking site, and Nat contacted me out of the blue one day to say hi, as she’d been interested to learn I was working with dogs in Afghanistan.

  Social networking. The internet didn’t even exist when I first got married, and now I’d met via a computer the woman I would end up living with. Not for the first time, I wondered how things would have been during World War II, or the Vietnam War, if soldiers had been able to talk to their loved ones back home every day via Skype or see their faces on the jumpy, grainy screens of webcams. They say that one of the good things about striking up a relationship over the net is that you become friends before you become lovers; Nat and I had a lot in common and we’d met in person for the first time during my last vacation. I couldn’t wait to see her again.

  Nat worked in an administrative job with the West Australian health department, in Perth, so when I knew what date my next vacation would begin, I arranged to fly straight there instead of to Sydney, planning to spend five days with her. She is a beautiful woman with a lovely personality and kind heart. As I stood in the Emirates aircraft and waited for the passengers ahead of me to file off into the terminal, I was impatient to see her in the flesh, and kiss and hold her.

  I was in civilian clothes, not a soldier’s uniform, but it was clear to the customs officer who inspected my arrival form that I’d been somewhere there was a war going on. I wasn’t expecting a handshake or a pat on the back, but neither was I expecting what happened next.

  After clearing immigration and collecting my bags, I pushed my trolley into the queue to clear customs and quarantine. I’d filled out my arrival card and had nothing to declare. When I handed it to the customs officer, he asked me to wait to one side. I checked my watch. We’d landed at five in the afternoon and I knew that Nat was waiting for me, just beyond the sliding doors. ‘OK,’ I said.

  As an ex-policeman, I knew something was up when my card was checked, and rechecked by two other officers. I also assumed I was being watched on closed-circuit TV, so that my reactions could be assessed. I tried to stay calm and patient. I had nothing to hide, and, more to the point, had no clue why I might be under suspicion.

  Another officer came over to me. ‘I’d like you to come with me to a private search area.’

  Shit, I thought. I had expected this but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with. ‘All right.’

  My bags were laid out on a long stainless-steel table, and a couple of officers wearing disposable rubber gloves started opening and unzipping them, and unpacking all my stuff.

  ‘Afghanistan’s a hostile country. What were you doing there?’ the officer asked.

  I took a deep breath to calm my rising anger. ‘I’ve been working as a civilian contractor, as a dog handler, for two years.’ I pulled out my wallet. ‘Here’s my US Department of Defense contractor ID.’ I held the card up to the officer, but he made a point of ignoring it, and continued going through my gear.

  ‘Are you in possession of any illegal drugs, weapons or pornographic material?’ he asked me.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have any needles or drug paraphernalia in your baggage?’

  ‘No.’

  While the arrogant guy continued his search, another officer, who had an American accent, started speaking to me. He told me that he’d served with the US military in Iraq, and his tone was friendlier and more conversational. What was this, I wondered, the good-cop-bad-cop routine? It would have been funny if I hadn’t had my girl waiting outside, and if I hadn’t been getting so pissed off. I was exhausted from the long flight and in no mood for any more of this.

  In my bags I had bits and pieces of military equipment, such as clothes and pouches, and papers with military crests on them and even souvenir SF coins, which the Yanks are mad keen on collecting. Even if the officers hadn’t been paying attention to what I was saying, it was quite obvious from the stuff in my bags who I was and what I’d been doing in Afghanistan.

  One of the officers held up a piece of paper and started reading it. ‘What’s this then?’ he said triumphantly.

  It was a one-page gym routine, from my time working out in the FOB.

  ‘Have you ever taken steroids?’

  I wondered how a one-page gym routine could warrant such a question. Having worked in law enforcement, I understood that these guys had a job to do, but their presumption that I had to be guilty of something sucked. Not satisfied with my answers about drugs, they opened my daypack and took out my laptop.

  ‘Is there any pornography, child pornography or that sort of stuff on here?’ one of the officers asked, opening the laptop.

  ‘No!’ What the fuck, I wanted to yell at him. ‘I’ve got five kids and I’m a former policeman and soldier in the Australian Army. That’s insulting.’

  The officer ignored me and went through my computer accessories. He held up my portable hard drive. ‘What about on here?’

  I took a breath. ‘There are photos of my girlfriend on there. They’re personal, and a bit sexy, but not pornographic.’

  The prick’s eyes widened. He told me they were going to view the pictures on the laptop and the hard drive. By this time, four officers had gravitated into the private search room, although not all of them were going through my bags. I told the officer that I wanted to be in the other room with them while they were going through my pictures.

  ‘That’s not allowed. It’s against Customs policy,’ he said.

  Fuck. I didn’t want four jerk-offs staring at and joking about pictures of Nat or, even worse, maybe saving the pictures to other computers or memory sticks.

  To make things worse, the officer then tactlessly told me that they had viewed ‘lots of private pictures’ of male passengers’ partners. If this idiot thought that was going to reassure me, he was out of his mind.

  Angry and frustrated, there was nothing I could do but stand there and wait for them to finish their smirking trawl through my computer and hard drive. They found nothing incriminating because there was nothing to find. By the time I was finally allowed to go, it was seven o’clock, nearly two hours after I’d landed. Poor Nat was waiting for me, wondering what had happened.

  ‘Hi, babe,’ she said as I wrapped my arms around her. It was so good to be home, even if the welcoming committee had been a pack of power-drunk uniformed arseholes.

  I wasn’t fighting with the Australian Army, but I’d been serving with US forces in Afghanistan, trying to help stabilise a shaky fledgling democracy. My reward, when I got home, was to be accused of being a drug smuggler and pornographer, and treated like a criminal. I was so incensed that I lodged a formal written complaint with Customs about the – in my opinion, totally unprofessional – way the officers had acted. I was told, eventually, that the matter had been investigated and that they had been following procedure. It still pisses me off today.

  Nat made the decision to relocate her life and her dog, Tyra, a lazy but cute little Staffy, from Perth to the steel town of Port Kembla on the New South Wales south coast.

  With the money I’d earned as a contractor in Afghanistan, I’d been able to get on top of my debts and buy a place of my own, a run-down 1930s house near Port Kembla beach. The place needed a lot of work, but Nat was keen to renovate, saying that the work would help keep her occupied while I was away overseas.

  For the first couple of years I’d been in Afghanistan, I’d been working four months on, with 21 days’ vacation. As my leave included travel, a day or more was knocked off each end and, after 24 hours of flying and sitting around in airports, I’d arrive home jet-lagged and dead tired.

  There was no wind-down time anymore, as there had been on my first leave, when I’d stopped off in Thailand; no time to chill out and just get used to not being in Afghanistan, and to being in a first-world country again. It took me about two weeks to sett
le down: to get used to not living in a war zone, and to being around my kids and Nat again. By then, it would be time to start psyching myself up to go back to Afghanistan. Vacations were quickly turning from being a source of relief to a source of depression for me, as the high of coming home was replaced all too soon by the sinking feeling in my gut that I’d have to go back. Prior to leaving Afghanistan, I’d be counting down the days until I got home, thanks to a digital clock on the screen saver of my laptop that showed the number of weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds to go, but once I was home, the clock started ticking the other way.

  These days, soldiers in the Australian Army who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq undergo a psychological debrief before they come home, and have access to counselling, if they need it, back in Australia. There’s nothing like that for contractors.

  It seemed that every time I came home, everyone wanted a piece of me. ‘When are you coming home for good?’ was the most common question they asked me, and they do to this day. My ex-wives wanted to know, so that they could get back into some sort of routine for my access to the kids, and my mum and dad were always worried about my safety. I heard that in the army psych debriefs, they suggested that when a soldier comes home on leave, or for good, his partner should organise a barbeque or party where all the friends and family get to ask their questions, and that after the big event the person who has come home should just be allowed to chill, and catch up slowly and quietly with those closest to them. It sounded like good advice, which I was never given.

  ‘Why are you going back? When are you going back? When are you coming home for good?’ I felt as though I answered the same old questions a hundred or more times whenever I was home on leave.

  After I’d met Nat and she had decided to move to Port Kembla, I told American K9 I needed more than a 21-day vacation, minus travel time. My initial contract had expired, and I told them that I was going home for three months and would let them know when I was ready to come back.

  As well as wanting to spend time with my kids, I needed to build a foundation for my relationship with Nat. She’s an independent person, as am I, and is happy to get on with her life and do what she wants while I’m away but, as we hadn’t been together all that long, I knew that we needed more time together. American K9 told me I could have my three months off, but added that there were no guarantees I’d be re-teamed with Ricky. I knew that, unlike in the army or the police force, I couldn’t be guaranteed to get the same dog for the whole time I was in-country if I were gone for too long. I had expected and understood the reasons for this, but I felt sad about it.

  Ricky was an experienced working dog and it made no sense, either economically or for his sake, for him basically to be locked up in a kennel for three months. Sure, he’d be fed and walked, but there would be no training or work for him without a handler. It would have been too confusing for Ricky to be teamed with someone just for three months.

  I needed the time with Nat and the kids, but something still hurt inside when I thought about Ricky. You learn to be professional as a dog handler, and that your dog is not your pet, but there is no denying that you build a relationship. You live, eat and sleep together 24-7, and you do become friends. That relationship is one of the keys to your success as a team. To make things tougher, I knew that even if I didn’t get Ricky back as my dog I would probably see him from time to time but we would never work together again.

  FOURTEEN

  Benny the Bouncer

  November 2007

  It was different when I got back to Afghanistan this time. Instead of the excitement I’d felt in the early days, and the thrill and satisfaction I’d had from doing the job for real, now I couldn’t wait for the next four months to be over.

  I used to chat to Nat on MSN and, while I tried to put on a brave face for her, she could tell I was down. ‘I’m not getting Ricky back, babe,’ I said to her in an instant message.

  When I got back to Kandahar, I found out that Ricky had been teamed with another handler, a guy from the Dominican Republic. Ricky was working out of Kandahar and when I went to the kennels, I saw him. He recognised me immediately. It was a tough moment.

  I met his new handler, and watched him and Ricky working as a team. I could tell straightaway that the handler was still unfamiliar with him. He was using too much lead control, jerking too hard and too often on Ricky’s collar to try to make him obey. Having been able to work Ricky off-lead sometimes, I could see that this forced control was aggravating him. I spoke to the guy, to try to give him some guidance on how best to work with Ricky, but I knew I could only go so far. They had to get to know each other and learn how to work as a team. My interfering might only make it harder for both of them. Ricky was the new handler’s dog and I had to let him bond with him.

  However, that didn’t change the fact that all I wanted to do was take Ricky off that bloody lead, and give him a big hug and tell him I was back.

  It’s sort of a catch-22 situation working with dogs. If you’re not a dog lover you’re not going to make a good handler, but you’ve got to treat being a handler like any other job. You need to bond with your dog and establish a relationship with him, yet, as I’ve said, at the same time you know, as a professional, that the dog isn’t your pet and you have to be capable of re-teaming with a new dog at a moment’s notice if required. But Ricky had slept on my bed and in my sleeping bag with me in the deathly cold mountain nights, and he’d been at my feet in the gun truck when we were being shot at. He was almost like another child to me, or at least a really good mate.

  On MSN I told Nat that I’d been walking another dog, Jan, and that, while he’d showed some promise, it was unlikely I’d be teamed with him. Jan had already been working with another handler, who was on leave, and the kennel supervisor couldn’t give me Jan to train or work with, as the other handler would have the right to stay with him when he got back to Afghanistan, if that’s what he wanted.

  That left Benny. Benny the Bouncer, they called him, because of his hard-arsed, no-nonsense attitude.

  ‘What do you think about being teamed with Benny?’ Nat asked me.

  ‘I’ve always liked him, but he can be a little aggressive,’ I replied. ‘You could get him under control, but once they are aggressive, isn’t that in their nature?’

  I told Nat that I’d known Benny for a while and that I partly put his aggressive behaviour down to the way he’d been handled. In the past eighteen months, he’d had three handlers, including Chuck, the dude who was so fond of smoking people, and who I’d seen not give a fuck about his dog’s welfare on board the Chinook from Tarin Khowt to Kandahar.

  ‘Well, babe, give him a go, you can sort him out,’ Nat said.

  I hoped she was right. Benny the Bouncer was actually a lot more aggressive than I’d let on to her. Once when I’d passed through Kandahar airfield not long after I’d arrived in Afghanistan, I’d seen Benny in the kennels with five metal food bowls in his enclosure. When I asked the trainer what was going on, he said the kennel attendants were all shit scared of Benny, and none of them was game enough to go in and retrieve his empty bowl. They would slide a fresh bowl in each day and then run. When I spoke to Benny that first time, he had a bowl in his mouth and was growling, as though he were demanding food.

  I found a lead, opened his enclosure, walked in and snapped the lead on his collar. He didn’t growl or bite, or otherwise try to pick on me. I’m not, despite what Nat sometimes says, a ‘dog whisperer’. When I go into an enclosure with an aggressive dog, like Benny was, I just don’t make a fuss of the dog, or try to be overly domineering. I just get the lead on him quickly and get him out into the open. A lot of dogs are kennel-aggressive; that is, they become very territorial and protective of the space they’re in. However, they don’t necessarily want to be in there and once they’re out walking on a lead, their attitude changes immediately. Nero was like that. I think Benny picked up on the fact that I was there to help him and that I wasn’t going to be
intimidated by him. I took him for a few walks, just so the poor thing didn’t spend all his days locked up.

  Maybe Benny remembered me because, when I eventually picked him for a re-team after I’d lost Ricky, we got along like best mates who haven’t seen each other for ages but can still pick up with each other straightaway. You make a lot of those kinds of friendships in the army.

  The next time I spoke to Nat on MSN, I had Benny with me.

  ‘What’s he look like?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s a shepherd – very alert with pointy ears. He looks like a small black and tan wolf.’

  Our kennels at Kandahar backed on to the Australian compound, where the headquarters and rear echelon people for the task force were based. I’d see the Aussies most days and got friendly with a few over meals in the mess hall. I invited a few Australian soldiers over one night, to hang out and visit the kennels.

  I’d made great progress with Benny and received some good news. In a couple of days, I would be heading back out to FOB Cobra. The last team I’d served with, including Captain Mike, Mickey and grumpy old George, had all rotated home and a new team had taken over, but Lee the dog handler was still there. I was really looking forward to seeing my mate again and to introducing him to my new dog.

  When they came to visit me, the Australian soldiers were just like Americans; a dog was a link to home, and to a life they’d left behind. Maybe for some of the Aussies, seeing the dog also brought back memories of their childhood, and of a time before the planes flew into the World Trade Center, when it seemed it was other people’s countries that went to war.