by Sandra Lee
Back at Camp Holland Sergeant D took Sarbi to the kennels. He groomed her and inspected her paws for injuries. Standard operating procedure.
Sarbi wolfed down a bowl of Eukanuba dry food. If the cooks were feeling generous, and they usually were when it came to the explosive detection dogs, particularly after they had discovered an IED or weapons cache, they gave the hounds fresh mince topped with an egg. Occasionally, Sarbi had steak. ‘Better fed than most of the task force,’ D jokes.
Once Sarbi was settled and bedded down for the night, Sergeant D decommissioned his equipment, cleaned his weapons and gear, recharged the batteries of his radio, refilled fuel, water and rations for him and Sarbi, and restocked the vehicles. Team gear first, then personal gear. Recocked and refigured.
The patrol gathered for a forensic debrief and intel update. The Aussies were vigilant about their post-operation routine in case they needed to push out at short notice. If the word came in, he and Sarbi were ready to go in less than five minutes.
It was just as well.
Rafi and Sarbi as pups with brothers Marcelo (left) and Nic, at home in Bowral in November 2002. Rafi automatically gravitated to Marcelo and his sister, Gemma, and Sarbi loved snuggling on Nic’s lap even when fully grown. (Courtesy Wendy Upjohn and family)
On 19 June 2005 Corporal Murray Young (left) from the Explosive Dog Detection Section adopted the much-loved Rafi and Sarbi (right) from the heavy-hearted Wendy and Carlos and kids. (Courtesy Wendy Upjohn and family)
There’s no dispute about who reigns as Top Dog at the School of Military Engineering. As the sign declares, dogs and their handlers have right of way. (Courtesy Sandra Lee)
New recruit, EDD 436 Sarbi, easily identifiable by her zig-zag white blaze, breezed through her initial employment training at the EDD Section in Holsworthy, Sydney. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
Sergeant D shows the safest and most efficient way to carry the 27-kilogram Sarbi if she is injured on operations. He would also be fully armed and loaded with his backpack weighing more than 40 kilograms. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
Sarbi was a quick learner and easily mastered the intricacies of scent imprinting. She also added a few tricks to her professional repertoire, like shaking paws with Sergeant D for a job well done. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
Sapper Pete ‘Lucy’ Lawlis guides his nose-driven EDD Merlin at an Afghan market outside the wire at Tarin Kot in April 2007. The blue heeler cross was rescued from a pound in Queensland and nicknamed ‘Tipdog’. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
EDD Nova, who survived an IED blast, sits on the floor of a Bushmaster en route to a search mission in Uruzgan. Notice how happy the hound looks. Work time is playtime for the dogs. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
Sarbi and Sergeant D were ready for action as soon as they landed in Afghanistan on their first tour together in 2007. (Courtesy Lyndell Brown and Charles Green)
Looking after the dogs’ health is serious business and Sarbi was repeatedly checked for diseases during her deployments to Afghanistan. Her medical records were kept on computer by the US Army’s veterinary corps. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
The four-legged soldiers like Nova have a high-tech wardrobe for going into battle including custom-made goggles, called Doggles, and ‘puppy Peltors’ to protect their ears. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
A heavily armed Sergeant D and his trusted Sarbi find some shade during an operation outside Tarin Kot in July 2007. Sarbi is wearing her stylish red booties to protect her paws from the heat. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
Pup-a-boo. Sarbi peers over the back of a US Army Humvee on which she frequently rode while on joint US, Australian and Afghan missions as part of SOTG7. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
Sergeant D (far left) helps lower Merlin’s coffin into a grave at Camp Holland. The three-year-old blue heeler cross was accidentally killed on operations on 31 August 2007. Merlin was buried with a photograph of his mutt-mate, FloJo, to keep him company. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
A poignant memorial was built at the School of Military Engineering in Holsworthy in 2007 to honour the dogs killed in Afghanistan since they were first deployed there in 2005, including Merlin, Razz, Andy, Nova and Herbie. (Courtesy Sandra Lee)
Explosive detection dogs Harry, Bundy and Tank sit behind a portrait of their fallen brothers in arms, Sapper Darren Smith and his dog, Herbie, who were killed by an IED on 7 June 2010. Fellow Sapper Jacob Moerland was also killed in the attack. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
In March 2009, EDD 435 Rafi (left) and his canine companions Aussie, Que and Mandy were presented with the War Dog Operational Medal for performing their duties in war conditions. Rafi died of snakebite later that year. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
The Doggies make the most of a break between operations to take a group photograph on a tank. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
Sarbi soaks her paws after a long, hot day on patrol sniffing for deadly weapons and lethal IEDs outside the wire. Sergeant D checked her for injuries and illness every day. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
It’s a dog’s life: Sarbi uses her handler’s stomach as a pillow while having a snooze. The bond between the four-legged and two-legged soldiers is unbreakable. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
Sarbi meets Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and US General Stanley McChrystal at the SAS HQ in Camp Russell on 11 November 2009, the day her homecoming was announced. Defence Minister Senator John Faulkner and the Chief of the Defence Force Angus Houston look on. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
Sarbi trots across the flight line after hitching a ride back to Camp Holland from FOB Anaconda on a US Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter in October 2009. A US Special Forces soldier negotiated her return from the Taliban leader who ‘dognapped’ her after she went missing during a life-and-death battle on 2 September 2008.
(© Commonwealth of Australia)
When Sarbi returned to her fellow Diggers after MIA for thirteen months she was five kilograms heavier and a lot dirtier. Her first order of business was a bath, followed by a special meal before going on a doggie diet. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
The Australian soldiers knew for sure they had found Sarbi when she obsessively began chasing her beloved tennis balls across the rock-strewn base, a habit formed when she was a puppy growing up in Bowral with her first loving family. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
Sarbi enjoys Christmas with her Aussie mates in 2009 and received gift-wrapped presents under the tree, as well as a meaty bone from Santa. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
Calling doggie Doctor Freud! Soldiers ham it up with Sarbi and put her through Return to Australian Psychological Screening while she waits to get the all clear to return home. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
Sarbi was an instant pupstar at Camp Holland after she returned from her missing months in Afghanistan and received postcards from dog lovers around the world wishing her well, not to mention a safe and speedy homecoming. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
In May 2010 Sergeant D, then on his third deployment to Afghanistan, walks Sarbi to a waiting RAAF C-130 Hercules at Tarin Kot to begin the first leg of her long but final journey home to Australia. She spent another six months in Dubai to meet quarantine conditions before arriving home in December. (© Commonwealth of Australia)
On 5 April 2011 the RSPCA awarded Sarbi the prestigious Purple Cross for outstanding service to humans. It was her third medal for wartime activities. Sarbi follows in the hoofsteps of Murphy, a donkey who ferried injured soldiers to safety in World War One. (Courtesy Sandra Lee)
Artists Lyndell Brown and Charles Green painted Sarbi and Sargeant D in 2010 after photographing them in Afghanistan in 2007. Oil on linen and measuring 31cm by 31cm, the portrait has toured Australia and now hangs in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. (Courtesy Lyndell Brown and Charles Green)
Chapter 14
RIP MERLIN AND RAZZ
On 31 August 2007, four months after Sarbi and her handler arrived in Afghan
istan, the Australian contingent was rocked by its first fatality since the 2002 death of SAS Sergeant Andrew Russell in the neighbouring province of Helmand. There was a sense that luck had shone on the task force for the two years that the Australians had been back in Uruzgan and that it was bound to end, sooner or later, though it would be a foolish soldier who said it out loud. Why tempt fate in a war zone, especially in the height of the fighting season when the enemy was ratcheting up its use of IEDs, suicide bombers and roadside explosives? Prime Minister John Howard had recently warned ‘there is a distinct possibility of casualties, and that should be understood and prepared for by the Australian public’. For their part, the Aussie soldiers knew they were on borrowed time. Truth is, every soldier always is, but no one had seen this coming.
Sergeant D was inside the wire, working with Sarbi on continuation training, when he was summoned to the RTF headquarters mid afternoon.
The message was blunt.
Explosive detection dog Merlin had been killed on the outskirts of Tarin Kot, while on a routine mission providing force protection for a reconstruction team.
D felt his heart drop. He knew Merlin and his handler, 27-year-old Sapper Peter Lawlis, who hailed from Bredbo, a small country town in the Snowy Mountains south of Canberra, known for its history and beauty. ‘Mate, you’ve got no idea how many people used to stop at Bredbo and put their snow chains on thinking they were at Thredbo,’ he says with a laugh. He preferred to be called Pete but he didn’t mind that his army mates called him Lucy. ‘As in my last name is Lawlis and Lucy Lawless played Xena Warrior Princess.’
Lucy and Sergeant D were old mates. Lawlis, who enlisted in the army as a combat engineer on 11 November 1999, had done his handlers’ course at the SME in early 2004. He was appointed the school’s operational handler later that year when D and Murray Young were conducting an instructors’ course.
He had been chosen to take part in the Doggies’ coveted exchange program, Long Look in Aldershot, England, in 2005. Lawlis was despatched to the British Army’s 101 Military Working Dog Support Unit as its only dedicated ‘arms explosive search dog handler’ for several months in the middle of the year. The commanding officer of the unit, Major R.C. Pope, noted that the young Aussie was a likeable chap who ‘has a natural affinity with dogs and people’ and ‘fitted in very well with all ranks’.
Major Pope sent the CO of the SME a report filled with nothing but praise for Lawlis and the work he carried out in exercises and operations during his time in England. ‘Sapper Lawlis’s performance has been excellent,’ the major wrote that September, at the end of the exchange. ‘His drive and enthusiasm quickly gained him the respect from those he worked with and for, and his willingness and desire to learn was infectious. He has been an excellent ambassador for his country and his Service’.
Lawlis, like Sergeant D, was a professional. They shared the same accommodations on RTF2, and Merlin and Sarbi were kennel mates at Camp Holland. The black and white blue heeler cross graduated as a fully-fledged detection dog immediately after Sarbi and was designated EDD 437. Like Sarbi, his first operational role was at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. Merlin had also done a tour of duty in East Timor.
When D heard the sad news about Merlin, his thoughts turned to his mate.
‘Is Lucy all right?’ he asked, concerned that Merlin’s handler had also been killed.
Lawlis was not hurt but, understandably, he was distraught. The sapper was Merlin’s first and only handler. He was assigned the mutt in 2006 when he was a ‘green dog and a bit of a ratbag’, Lawlis says now.
Merlin, who had been adopted from an RSPCA shelter in Queensland and was originally called Buster, could be a touch aggressive. Some of the boys in 3CER called him ‘Tipdog’, but he was a pussycat with his handler, who loved the scrappy hound with whom he had seen so much.
Shortly after Anzac Day the pair were on a vital asset-protection patrol, searching vehicles at the Wanow Bridge, the main passage in and out of Tarin Kot across the Tiri Rud, when a young Pakistani suicide bomber blew himself up.
‘I was on the north side of the check point walking south. He was about 40 or 50 metres away and I just thought he’d been let through,’ Lawlis recalls. ‘The suicide bomber walked up and popped himself. I saw him—then he was gone. It was an eye-opener for me.’
Lawlis had been lucky. He felt the blast but wasn’t hurt. A private from D Company, 1RAR wasn’t so fortunate. He was pulling piquet and manning a MAG 58 on a Bushmaster when he sighted the approaching man from about ten metres away. He swung his machine-gun on the bomber, a sixteen-year-old boy, who detonated himself before reaching the bridge, his intended target. The private sustained shrapnel wounds to his left arm and shoulder. His quick response in identifying the suicide bomber was later credited with saving lives. Two Afghan nationals were also wounded in the attack.
The next few days would be nerve-wracking for Lawlis.
He conducted vehicle searches at the Wanow bridge with Merlin. The electronic warfare experts were intercepting Taliban chatter over the radio, suggesting that insurgents would target a dog team with a vehicle-borne IED packed with high explosives.
‘I honestly thought every culvert, every rock that was out of place was going to kill me,’ Lawlis says now. ‘I was doing my best not to get blown up. I was super-duper hyper-vigilant. Don’t get me wrong, I trusted Merlin, I trusted the dogs but dogs can have an off day. You have got to rely on yourself. It was quite stressful.’
Lucy and Merlin had been through a lot since then.
Lawlis now had the heartbreaking task of getting Merlin’s lifeless body back to the Australian base. His dog was a fully-fledged, highly qualified and respected soldier; he would be afforded the same dignity in death as his human counterparts. Their departure caused a logistical problem. The patrol was effectively stranded without an EDD team to get it back to Camp Holland safely.
Sergeant D and Sarbi had a mission to complete. He donned his webbing, grabbed his pack and weapons and collected his dog from the kennels. Shortly after that he was on the ambulance convoy, blasting across the desert to fill the vacancy.
Sergeant D and Sarbi arrived in a burst of dust at the patrol near the Spinkechah defile, effectively a small bridge over the Tiri Rud. D took one look at Lawlis and could see the anguish etched on his face. He was racked with guilt.
‘The handler was apologetic, as if his dog’s death was his fault. Because of the bond, the handler was devastated and he was blaming himself,’ says Sergeant D.
The accident occurred around 1405 hours local time at the defile, which was a magnet for IEDs and enemy attention. Lawlis says it was always a point of ‘vigorous searching’. The defile was en route to a remote Dutch patrol base and not far from the Talani Boys’ School, where members of the RTF2 had done some incredible restoration work in a ten-hour backyard blitz that pleased the school principal no end.
The day had been a scorcher, around 50 degrees Celsius. Men were soaked through with sweat. Merlin and Lawlis worked solidly all morning.
‘Merlin was searching really well. He was on fire, super keen, and you could just tell he was having a good time. He was loving it,’ Pete says now.
Lawlis and Merlin searched 1500 metres on one side of the Spinkechah defile and fellow EDD handler Zeke Smith and FloJo searched 1500 metres on the other side. The two EDD teams were with a section of engineers, working with the forward reconnaissance boys from the Second/Fourteenth Light Horse Regiment, the cavalry who provided overwatch protection for the other RTF2 vehicles as they moved through the defile.
Merlin and Lawlis had just finished a long, vulnerable point search, which took 50 minutes. Despite working well, Merlin suffered heat exhaustion and had started to throw up. Lawlis decided to give his dog a break in the shade of one of the 2/14’s ASLAVs, an eight-wheeled, high-tech monster of a vehicle that resembled a tank and provided the only shelter from the sun in the area. He dropped down beside the vehicle and Merlin sat do
wn next to him, crawling under the ASLAV, out of the sun.
They’d been resting a while when Pete heard the gears engage and the vehicle unexpectedly roared to life. The sapper was almost run over but managed to jump out of the way. Merlin was trapped under two of the wheels.
‘Then he went under the another two,’ Lawlis recalls.
The handler was shocked but he could do nothing. The driver couldn’t see him due to the inherent blind spots and he couldn’t hear Lawlis’s shouting through the heavy metal doors and reinforced glass windows.
The truck crushed Merlin. Lawlis dropped to the ground screaming and scooped his dog up, cradling him in his arms.
‘It was a prick of a day,’ he says. ‘Merlin was alive for about five minutes. I was going to shoot him with my pistol but I didn’t have the guts.’
The ASLAVs moved off to provide security further up the route but Lawlis refused to go.
‘I wasn’t moving. They took up the overwatch on another ridge. We were covered because those guns could reach where we were,’ he says.
Lawlis cradled Merlin until he died. He was in shock.
Twenty minutes later a lance corporal took a body bag to Lawlis and he gently placed Merlin’s warm but lifeless body in it.
‘None of the boys were talking because they were all upset as well. It was a bit of a blur after that for me. One of the blokes put an Australian flag over Merlin’s body bag and then we were back in Tarin Kot.’
