Saving Private Sarbi

by Sandra Lee

  ‘Plans were prepared to retrieve her, should the situation allow,’ a defence spokesman later confirmed.

  *

  Sergeant D had been teamed with a new dog, Tana. He was a dopey Lab, easily influenced by moods.

  ‘You have to be the alpha dog, show him you’re not worried or upset. With him, you can’t get angry because he won’t do anything,’ D says now.

  Tana is motivated by a hunt drive, not a retrieval drive. When he first deployed with his handler to Afghanistan in 2010, Tana caught five chickens during the deployment, including a couple of sickly birds. Hardly challenging. ‘The Afghan soldiers had to pay the locals and then left the chickens for them,’ he says.

  Sergeant D suspects his expectations might be too high.

  ‘The dogs have to be on the ball all the time. Tana can work well and he does work well, but he needs a lot of work to get him to the standard and a lot of work to keep him at the standard. I measure all dogs against Sarbi.’

  Tana was no Sarbi.

  Sergeant D still held a candle for his single-minded Newfie–Lab cross a year after she went MIA. Harder heads had given up on her, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

  Sergeant D was on a promotion course at the School of Military Engineering in October 2009 when he took a phone call from his old boss, Corporal Murray Young.

  It was around midday Sydney time; 0700 hours in Tarin Kot where Young was then deployed with Rafi, who had already notched up a stint in the Solomon Islands and was proving as adroit at bomb detection as his sister.

  ‘Mate, we think we’ve got Sarbi,’ Young said. ‘Have you got a picture you can email over?’

  Sergeant D was ecstatic. Murray wouldn’t be taking the mickey. He had a vested interest in getting Sarbi back. D emailed a photograph of Sarbi to Camp Russell and waited for confirmation.

  The early intelligence was right. The ever-resourceful pooch had used her canine charms and made a new home amid the Afghan people.

  Mullah Hamdullah had had Sarbi since the ambush thirteen months earlier. She had made the best of her new surroundings, even though her Afghan existence could not have been more removed from the intense relationship she had with Sergeant D.

  But for some unknown reason, Sarbi had worn thin her welcome. Afghan elders told Martine van Bijlert that Ham-dullah had engaged a local malek to help him do a deal. A malek is a member of the community, viewed by many as a man of integrity and with a reputation for dealing with government officials. He was from a different tribe to Ham-dullah and was not Taliban, says van Bijlert. The malek also served another function—NATO forces wouldn’t arrest him as an enemy combatant.

  Hamdullah dispatched the malek to Anaconda to propose a deal. Hamdullah would sell the dog for a fee. The princely sum of US$10,000 was rumoured. ‘I don’t think it’s a fixed price tag. Again, it could be one of the different details,’ says van Bijlert, who had been told about the doggie drama by locals.

  The US soldiers told the malek the US army required proof of life to ensure the dog was Sarbi, the lost Australian explosive detection dog. The Americans have more than 300 of their own bomb-sniffing, tracker and sentry dogs in Afghanistan. Many of the soldiers regard them as more reliable— and loving—than metal detectors.

  US Special Forces don’t mess around. They refused to exchange money until they saw the dog. Establishing proof of life was standard operating procedure in ransom and hostage situations, even a canine version.

  The malek dutifully returned with a photograph of Sarbi on his mobile phone, and the Americans recognised her beautiful black face and white blaze. She looked pretty healthy, too. She hadn’t gone hungry during her time in Khas Uruzgan, unlike the unkempt, half-starved mutts native to Afghanistan. Still, no deal. The US soldier told the malek to bring the dog.

  The malek made good on his end of the deal and returned to Anaconda with Sarbi. A US Special Forces soldier known as John noted she was in good condition—even though she hadn’t been washed in a year. Sarbi was eager to please. Her ears pricked up, her front paws danced on the ground in excitement and her tongue hung at a lopsided angle from her mouth, anticipating contact. She flicked her snout up and tossed her head to the side as if to say, throw the ball.

  John took the dog’s demeanour as a sign of encouragement.

  He gave Sarbi some commands in English, albeit with an American accent.

  Pant, pant, pant, wag, wag, wag. Sarbi’s body shook side to side from head to tail, wobbling with pure joy. This was a language she could understand.

  The soldier tossed a tennis ball. Sarbi responded in an instant. Her reaction was proof positive of her pedigree and provenance. She was the Aussie’s MIA EDD—the missing-in-action explosive detection dog.

  ‘Good girl,’ John said, giving the canine warrior a pat.

  He clipped a leash to her collar, handed the malek a small amount of money—not the promised $10,000 jackpot— and walked back inside the base with the dog. Coalition soldiers have access to discretionary sums of money for payment to locals, to settle grievances and right wrongs in accordance with accepted cultural practice.

  ‘Hamdullah was not happy with how it turned out,’ van Bijlert says now. ‘The malek still owed him for getting the dog back cheaply.’

  She believes the Taliban leader was killed in a coalition airstrike in 2010.

  The Special Forces boys put Sarbi on a US Army CH-47 Chinook helo as soon as possible and she was flown to Camp Russell in Tarin Kot.

  Corporal Young recognised Sarbi as soon as she leapt out of the chopper. This was home. Sarbi raced over the rocky airfield. Young nudged a tennis ball to her with his foot and Sarbi took it straight away. ‘It’s a game we used to play over and over during training,’ he said. ‘It’s amazing, just incredible to have her back.’

  Sarbi was a little greyer around the muzzle and she had gotten fat. Her extra bulk had nothing to do with the winter coat she was growing in, in preparation for another season in sub-zero temperatures. The mongrel usually weighed in at 27 kilograms but came home a very healthy 32 kilograms.

  ‘Either they were feeding her very well or she was getting into their food stores,’ Sergeant D says with a laugh. ‘I’m thinking probably the second.’

  Sarbi was sent to the United States Veterinary Corps in Kandahar to have her microchip scanned for verification and she received a full medical check-up. The American vets look after all the dogs in Afghanistan and boast one of the most sophisticated animal clinics in the country. They conducted doggie blood drives and stored all six canine blood types for emergencies in a high-tech operating theatre. ‘When you know some of these dogs are saving others’ lives you place a very high priority on caring for them,’ said one US Army vet. ‘And when you hear a story first hand about how the dog on your exam table saved others’ lives by finding explosives planted on a vehicle or beneath it, it really validates [the dog’s] importance in the war effort.’

  The microchip in Sarbi’s shoulder positively identified her as EDD 436, a member of the Australian Army, Royal Australian Engineers, School of Military Engineering, Explosive Detection Dog Section.

  The American vets gave Sarbi the all clear. The greatest fear was that she’d contracted rabies, a common disease in Afghanistan, but she hadn’t. Her pads were fine. No sign of coughs or worms or parasites, any of which would prevent her ultimate return to Australia.

  Sarbi had defied the odds.

  ‘I was over the moon,’ Sergeant D recalls.

  Sarbi received a hero’s welcome at Camp Russell.

  The black mutt got her first bath in a year. She was soaped up and got a good scrubbing while posing for the cameras. She lapped up the attention. Her shining coat now had the look and touch of black velvet. She was a prima donna dog. A box of tennis balls was brought out and Sarbi, true to form, was back in business, thundering across the rocky ground to fetch.

  It was as if she’d never gone missing.

  Chapter 20

  MUTT MORALE


  Sarbi was a high-octane shot of morale for the men and women at Camp Russell, a welcome distraction from the ever-present spectre of death and destruction beyond the wire. They could use a boost.

  Five days before Sarbi returned to her army family, a fellow explosive detection dog, Nova, was killed. The two-year-old black and white mongrel died from injuries sustained in a car crash during a training exercise with her handler inside the base.

  Nova had been adopted from an animal shelter on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. The staff spotted the intelligent dog’s obsession with balls and thought she would make a great bomb-sniffing hound for the army. Nova passed the initial trial and was shipped to Sydney for the EDD training course. Fully qualified, she joined the Townsville-based 3CER with her handler Sapper Rueben Griggs.

  She was a popular and successful addition to the task force in Afghanistan. Her face was almost albino-white, topped with a black nose and translucent pink ears held aloft like wimples. The mutt had had a tough start in life and came to the army with a stumpy tail, the result of either a mishap at birth or accident along the way. Griggs carried a big red plastic bowl on operations and she rarely left his side. When riding in the back of the MAC troop transport truck she stood up, paws perched on Griggs’s lap, while peering over the heads of soldiers, her nose in the wind and dust.

  A month before Nova died, she starred in Operation Baz Panje, one of the largest air mobile missions in Uruzgan. The operation aimed to route the Taliban from the Mirabad Valley, where they had operated unchallenged for seven years. By then, the lightweight dog was battle-hardened. She had recently survived an IED blast while riding in the back of a Bushmaster with Griggs. Fellow engineer Sapper Tristen Westkamp from 3CER suffered a fractured jaw and cuts to his face and mouth. ‘There was no noise, just the desert coming up to meet me,’ Westkamp said. ‘Afterwards we were dragged out by our Doggie, Sapper Rueben Griggs, who was in the back with his dog Nova. When I woke up I thought “What a rush”. Now I have a lot of faith in the Bushmaster. Anything else and I would be dead.’

  The regimental medical officer at Camp Russell put Nova down when it was determined she would not survive the injuries suffered in the accident. The soldiers were heartbroken. EDD 472 Nova was the fourth member of the Doggies killed in Afghanistan. The soldiers held a ceremony at the base and formed a guard of honour when her coffin was carried up the back of a RAAF Hercules for her return to Australia.

  No wonder Sarbi lightened the load. She became the unofficial mascot in charge of morale as she padded around the sprawling forward operating base on her daily rounds. Soldiers hammed it up with her and Sarbi played along. She seemed to divine that her extra-curricular duties now included mood management and being extra cute. She roamed their offices and supervised soldiers at work. The cooks treated her with raw chicken necks and photographed her gnawing away as if she’d never been fed—a typical Labrador response to food.

  Sarbi went through the mandatory Return To Australia Psychological Screening—known as an RTAPS debrief— in which she sprawled on a chaise longue, Freud-style, while a soldier took notes of what she had been through.

  If only she could talk!

  The question everyone wanted answered was how Sarbi had survived in such dramatically changed circumstances?

  One can imagine her constantly in peril, sniffing out the explosives and weapons she had been trained to detect, staring patiently at her dangerous finds. She’d be wondering why her new ‘handlers’ weren’t calling her off and telling her ‘good girl, Sarbi, attagirl’ and tossing her a tennis ball, like Sergeant D used to. Did her temporary owners even have a ball for her?

  What did the local Afghans make of the intelligent dog whose nose never stopped working? Did they ask her to do tasks for which she was never trained? Did they take her on missions with them? Had they tried to turn her against her comrades, her Australian Army family? Did she growl at their foreign dress, like she did when on patrol with her handler Sergeant D? Did she get on with the children? Where did she sleep? Was she moved from quala to quala by Hamdullah to keep her hidden from coalition forces? What mangy mutts did she play with?

  The missing months prompted journalist Misha Schubert to speculate humorously that Sarbi had been on a top-secret undercover mission all along. ‘You can see it now: Sabi (sic) swathed in the cornflower blue of an Afghan burqa, the only clue to her real identity a glimpse of paw beneath its crimped hem.’

  There was no denying Sarbi’s appeal. Her story reached the highest political office.

  Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd flew into Camp Russell on 10 November 2009 with the Chief of the Australian Defence Force, Angus Houston, and the Minister for Defence, Senator John Faulkner. Travelling with them under a cone of silence was a small, hand picked media contingent including Katharine Murphy from The Age and veteran political reporter Malcolm Farr from the Daily Telegraph.

  That night the dignitaries were guests of honour at an Australian-themed barbeque in Poppy’s Bar, where the commanding officer handed out achievement awards to his troop and the prime minister presented the soldiers with a new coffee machine. Murphy thought the huge roll-out was for the prime minister but the Diggers assured her it was for the food. When VIPs come to town, the quality of the tucker improves markedly and while there’s no beer, they make do with a substitute the Diggers dubbed ‘Near Beer’.

  With the presentation night under way, the commander called out each soldier’s name. Each shuffled through the applauding group to the front of the recreation room, where they were handed a certificate in recognition of their performance.

  ‘Private X,’ the commander hollered.

  X moved to the front. Salute.

  ‘Thank you, Sir.’

  The exercise was repeated with military efficiency for ‘Private Y.’ Salute.

  ‘Thank you, Sir.’ Handshake.

  ‘Private Z.’

  No movement.

  ‘Private Z.’

  Silence.

  ‘Private Z,’ the CO called, this time louder.

  ‘Redraw,’ a Digger up the back wisecracked.

  ‘I will crack the jokes around here,’ the CO retorted, to howls of laughter.

  Says Farr, ‘It was my favourite moment of the trip.’

  The amiable event underscored the gravity of the meeting the next morning. Prime Minister Rudd and his cohorts were to meet with United States Army General Stanley McChrystal, the go-to man for fighting the Taliban and anti-coalition militia. It was a crucial time for the war. The outlook was depressing, as McChrystal had written in his recent appraisal to the president. ‘Inadequate resources will likely result in failure. While the situation is serious, success is still achievable.’ The general’s singular mission was to fulfil President Obama’s mantra of ‘disrupt, dismantle and defeat’ the enemy in Afghanistan.

  EDD Sarbi had been doing just that as part of the Australian war effort.

  Rudd had been briefed on the shaggy dog story and was taken by Sarbi’s extraordinary tale. Why not introduce the four-legged top dog of war to her two-legged counterpart?

  Rudd had it all worked out. After breakfast with the SAS troopers he led the general outside the mess tent to where Sarbi was sitting quietly beside her handler. McChrystal appeared slightly confused about meeting a dog, says Murphy. But, being part diplomat, part warrior, he played his role for international relations and knelt down to pet Sarbi. She accepted the attention with aplomb and greeted the stranger with a sniff and a lick. ‘She showed no signs of stress,’ wrote Katharine Murphy in The Age.

  Rudd couldn’t contain himself. Grinning widely, he hailed Sarbi as a ‘loyal daughter of Australia’ and said her return sent a significant message about the nation’s contribution to the war in Afghanistan. ‘[It] may seem quite small, but in fact the symbolism is quite strong, and the symbolism of it is us out there doing a job. Sarbi is back home in one piece and she’s a genuinely nice pooch, as well.’

  Cameras moved in tight f
or their close-ups of Sarbi flanked by the prime minister and general. Shutters clicked and whirred. Farr and Murphy, seasoned journalists with decades of political reporting between them, understood the value of the story.

  ‘There we were at this strategic moment of great import for the Americans who were at a key decision-making point with their policy on Afghanistan,’ Murphy says now. ‘It was a global moment of importance and we thought, “It will be all about the dog”.’

  She was right. They were on a winner.

  The Australian newspapers fell in love with the hero hound and the public took her to heart. Sarbi’s story went global. The pawparazzi was on her tail. The BBC in the United Kingdom focused on Sarbi’s gritty canine survival. So did the Canadian national broadcaster and agencies across Europe and Asia. An EDD Sarbi fan page was established on Facebook and soon had more than 1000 friends, who left messages of support and adoration for the mutt. Sarbi received fan mail by the bagloads from people who had mistaken her wonder-dog status for an ability to read! A child from Charlotte in North Carolina sent a heartfelt postcard wishing Sarbi well. ‘You are very brave and deserve to spend your life in safety. We read your story on the Internet. Love Brandon + Wishbone + Toby.’

  Sarbi had become an instant part of the cultural conversation. She showed up on the social network website Twitter, as a member of a fictional panel for the ABC television current affairs show Q&A. Her fellow guests were Simone de Beauvoir, Winston Churchill, Hadrian and Leo Tolstoy. ‘Churchill is drunk but in the morning Sarbi will still be a dog,’ some wit tweeted.

  At a well-attended press conference the following day, a journalist questioned the army’s humanity in sending dogs to war. Later a Canberra commentator, with tongue firmly in cheek, asked if was appropriate that female dogs such as Sarbi were on the frontlines in combat. Another queried sardonically if Sarbi should be hailed a hero after, effectively, going absent without leave for thirteen months.