Medal of Heroism (Czech Republic)

Transcription

>> The dog has served man for centuries. His progress and use change with the times but always he has shown adaptability to specific tasks. In the military field his tactical value has been recognized for a long time by the armies of other nations but it was not until the present conflict our own Armed Forces began to train and employ dogs for duty with combat units. Under the guidance of the Corps, the canines received basic and specialized training which toughens and prepares them for definite assignments under fire. Dogs of many breeds rally to the colors. The hunting dog is relieved of his other duties for the duration and begins the grim manhunt after the common enemy. A dog's natural instincts make cover and concealment easy lessons. Kill or be killed is instinctive. He's fast and elusive, intelligent and willing. His loyalty and devotion to his job are commonplace. He asks for no reward. A pat on the back, any little acknowledgment by his master is sufficient. The procedure is for the using branches to supply the men with whom the dogs they will bring back to their outfits. All dogs are specially picked for size. Each is trained to do a single job. And remember, they are not pets or mascots. They are soldiers, war dogs. A century and attack dogs have already proved their worth for interior guard duty. Now you'll meet their brothers in the tactical service. >> Doug Swanson: How is everybody doing today? Good afternoon. Welcome to the William G. McGowan Theater located in the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. I'm Doug Swanson. I hope you'll be able to join us tomorrow on Friday, November 14, for a special noon program. Admiral James G. Stavridis will discuss his book, "The Accidental Admiral: A Sailor Takes Command at NATO." He will share his insights about NATO, operations, and the personalities of many people such as President Obama, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Also at noon but on Thursday, November 20, Kevin Gover, Director of the National Museum of the American Indian, and Susan Harjo will discuss their book as well as the Smithsonian's new exhibit "Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations" and describe the historical process of treaty making with native nations and how those treaties and relations -- how they've been tested in historical and modern times. To find out more about these and other programs as well as our exhibits, please take one of our monthly event calendars which you'll find in the theater lobby or visit our website at archives.gov./calendar. Our topic for today is a different type of Veterans Day program but important nonetheless. Author Rebecca Frankel will tell us about her book "War Dogs: Tales of Canine Heroism, History, and Love." Rebecca Frankel has been writing about war dogs since 2010 in her Friday column called "Rebecca's War Dog of the Week." As Senior Editor of Special Projects at "Foreign Policy Magazine," her photo essay is -- her work appeared in the Atlantic and "National Geographic," as well as other publications. She has been a commentator on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer and MSNBC among others. In 2011 she was named one of the 12 women in "Foreign Policy" to follow on Twitter by "Daily Muse." So please join me in welcoming Rebecca Frankel to the National Archives. >> Rebecca Frankel: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. I'm sorry we had to stop that movie for a minute. I kind of just relaxed and was ready to watch it for the rest of the afternoon. I appreciate everyone coming out in the middle of the day. This is a topic I could talk about endlessly and I actually might. When I give these talks, I'm going to be showing a bunch of photos. I thought it would be appropriate to take a stroll through war dog history because it is a very deep and rich and wonderful place to be. If I had been able to just write a history of war dogs, it would have been 10 times as big of a book. Again, thanks for having me. I do work for "Foreign Policy Magazine." I have been working there since 2008. One of the first jobs that I had was to become editor to Tom Ricks' blog, writing about defense and he was "The Washington Post's" Iraq War correspondent. So I was a little bit intimidated by him. He's kind of a no BS kind of guy. He's very serious, a very good journalist. So when we first started to talk and get to know each other, our exchanges were a bit brief. I worked with him every day. I don't know why exactly, but he told me he had these two dogs. And once we started talking about dogs, then it was very easy to talk to Tom about anything. And Tom is sort of -- he's a serious guy, a little bit of an intimidating presence if any of you here know him. And when I saw these pictures of his dogs, I was really surprised because I expected them to sort of match him in some way but they are very tiny, very little dogs. He started to send me photos of his dogs. One day I was looking at photos. At the magazine we look at photos from Associate Press. You see them on the front page of the "New York Times," "The Washington Post," FP's website. I came across this photo. It surprised me because it was very different than the images I had been looking at on a regular basis. Certainly very different than all the combat zone images. Everyone looks very, very happy. They look very relaxed. And you can see those two dogs, they're bomb-sniffing dogs. They were with the Marines. Even this dog right here looks like he's grinning. To me, sort of seeing the sometimes very sad photos of people either losing limbs or dealing with injuries or even just on foot patrol, they're distant and removed. But this sort of was some way to relate.It seems more familiar. I think it's because of the dog. So I showed the photo to Tom. And Tom, of course, loved it. He said, "Why don't you see if there are any more of these." I said, yeah, ok, sure.I hadn't really come across them before but once I started to dig, I found a lot of photos. So that's how "Rebecca's War Dog of the Week" started, the title that Tom generously bestowed to me. He calls me his chief canine correspondent. It is a job I take seriously and one that I really love. So in May 2011, the news that Osama bin Laden had been taken out by the team of U.S. Navy Seals. There was this little line in the article that there had been a dog on the mission. And this dog's name was Cairo. Everyone thought this is incredible. There was a dog with the U.S. Navy seals. I thought, well, yeah, of course there would have been a dog. But it occurred to me that, you know, this is not a very widely tried subject, at least it wasn't in 2011. And then someone asked me if I wanted to write a book and I said, yeah, sure, I'll write a book about dogs. That's how my war dog adventure began. Once I started looking into the history of war dogs, it goes back pretty far. Even much further than it does in the United States. But the United States didn't officially bring dogs into their military until World War II. That doesn't mean dogs weren't on the battlefields along with U.S. soldiers. This is a photograph from the Civil War. It's a confederate soldier. I don't know the story behind this photo. It's part of the Library of Congress's archive. But there is a dog in the photo. For whatever reason, the soldier felt this dog belonged with him. There's lots of stories that if you look back far enough in "Harper's Weekly" or an article in the "Iowa Daily Register" from 1862, I think, that talks about a dog's name -- a dog named Doc. Doc was a stray dog adopted by the regimen. He went on all of their missions. He wasn't trained to do anything, wasn't trained to chase down bullets like you saw the dogs that were being trained in World War II, even as bullets are being fired at them, trained not to be afraid and to continue on. But dogs sort of did this naturally. So Doc, for example, sustained a wound to the chest and his front legs but he continued on, stayed with his regimen. So they honored him. Lots of dogs made it into early newspapers this way. We fast forward a few decades to World War I. This is a German dog. The United States did not bring dogs to this war. They came late to the fight. Germany, France, Russia, Britain, were already there fighting. But the Germans have always used dogs. They've used them to great advantage. The dogs of World War I are particularly amazing for the jobs that they did but also for how many lives they saved. I think overall there was something like 75,000 dogs that were on the battlefields of World War I, which is a huge number. So you can see here that these three dogs, there's a little Red Cross symbol on the harnesses that they're wearing. They used dogs in this way. They were Red Cross dogs or what they called sanitary dogs. These dogs were trained to go out into a battlefield after a battle had been fought. They did this under the cover of night because they could move silently. Dogs also see better than humans in darkness and they're much better at navigating sort of the trenches and the sort of bombs that were left behind after a battle. They were trained to go to the men who were lying either dead or wounded and distinguish between the two and then take some sort of signal, either they would rip off with their teeth a little part of their uniform or they would pull their helmets off. They would take that little piece back to their handlers and then lead their handlers into the battlefield to the wounded men to be rescued or brought to safety. Here they are again. This is during a training exercise. And here they are again on the battlefield. So this is Major Richardson. His name was Edwin Hautenville Richardson. He was a very famous dog trainer at the turn of the century. He went all over the world to train the very wealthiest dogs. The Sultan of Turkey invited him to bring his guard dog to train them to keep intruders from infiltrating his palace. He was actually a very remarkable man in how he understood dogs and how he understood how to use dogs. He was very progressive. He was 100 years, perhaps, ahead of his time in terms of how he was training dogs and related to dogs. He was sort of maybe one of the first animal rights activists. He believed dogs were beings that deserved to be treated with respect and dignity and he believed any person handling a dog should be patient, kind, tolerant, and should always train the dog to associate joy or happiness with their exercises. It was never about correcting them or punishing them but it was about rewarding them, which the U.S. military use that system today but it took them many, many years. It wasn't until the 1980s that that attitude started to slowly seep into how they trained dogs. As an English citizen, he believed that they should be using dogs in the fight. He had seen the Germans train dogs. He knew Russians were doing it. He had seen the French messenger dogs. He petitioned the British Royal Army to bring dogs. They said no. They said no. They said no until almost the last year of battle when finally they said yes. And once they said yes, they wanted as many dogs as they could have. Of course, it takes a while to get a dog up to snuff. What his dogs are so famous at doing, as were some of the French and the German, messenger dogs -- these are Red Cross dogs. But what he trained them to do was to carry messages. They would wear a metal cylinder on their collar. They were trained to run certain paths, sometimes at great lengths, up to 20 miles occasionally. They were trained to forge a path between command and to the frontlines. They were so well trained that they couldn't be swayed. There's a story of one dog who was unfortunately shot in the face. He sustained such a serious injury his jaw was almost detached but he continued his mission. He didn't stop until he got to the end. It's sort of hard sometimes I think to hear those stories because there's suffering involved, but it speaks to the attitude of the dog and sort of their commitment to doing a task and sort of how devoted they are to the humans that they connect to and that they bond with, something that I believe very strongly now that I've been able to go and watch dogs train. The dogs that are training now or that were training last year to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan, to me it always seemed that the stronger the bond between the handler and the dog, the better the team performed. And this is something that he knew 100 years ago. And even now in some situations there are trainers as military servicemen and women who work with dogs who say don't be too affectionate with your dog. Don't get too close to your dog. This is a functional relationship. We're taking care of the dog and they're providing us with a service. But I think the handlers that do the best with the dogs and that I certainly trusted the most were ones who sort of I guess took up Richardson's legacy and operated on the same beliefs that he employed then. There he is again with his bloodhounds. What he and his wife -- sort of partners in their dog training endeavors. They had kennels at their house. All their family, their children had dogs of their own. He used to train -- before the Royal Air Force or Royal military decided to take on dogs, he would train his dogs at home. They lived sort in Scotland. They lived near the sea. All the neighborhood children would take part in the training exercises and pretend to be the wounded men and women in the fields. Here we are with one of the British messenger dogs. You can see there's his metal cylinder. The dogs also used to carry these baskets on either shoulder. They would sort of spread out like wings. They would carry carrier pigeons which were also used in World War I. Of course, as it happens, the dogs are in the same trenches and on the same battlefields that our men and women are fighting. They're exposed to same dangers. This is a Russian dog team. The dog is wearing a gas mask and so is the handler, though a dog sort of had a better tolerance for gas which is in some ways why they were so effective at delivering messages. It didn't affect them as greatly. More messenger dogs. This dog sustained injuries on all four paws. You can see he's wearing bandages. He was also gassed. I think his name is Lucky, ironically. But he made it through safe and sound. The story behind this dog I think is he was back in action as soon as the bandages came off. So dogs also were taken in as pets and mascots. This sort of I think speaks to the therapeutic, cathartic, and companionship element, of course, that dogs bring along which is why for so many centuries they have been mascot dogs and kept as pets and sort of morale boosters. This dog is getting a ride on a motor bike. I don't know if you can see him, but there's a little dog sitting on top of that cannon. So these are Australian mascots. There is a Cockapoo and a little Terrier there. Apparently they were very good friends. There we have a bulldog sitting next to his master. So now we have sort of moved into World War II. The U.S., again, was sort of slow to this call so it wasn't actually the military that started the wave of bringing dogs officially into the military in 1942 but it was all on the movements and efforts of one woman. Her name was Arlene, a New York socialite, very big in the dog breeding, dog society, dog kennels of her social class. As soon as the bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor, she called a reporter who covered war but apparently was a very big dog lover. She said we have to get dogs into this war. We were one of the only countries who didn't do it in World War I and we shouldn't fight another war without them. So they approached the military. The military said, ok, we'll set up the dogs for defense but you have to provide all the dogs. So then they appealed to the civilian population. And just as families were sending their sons off to war, they also sent their dogs. So what we have here is dogs weighing in for service. You can see how different all the breeds are. It looks like we have a Saint Bernard and then some tiny dogs. I love this photo. I think in part it speaks to there may be a war dog within any dog no matter how big or small. And in World War II it took a little while to figure out what breeds they were. But in the end they opted for the bigger, stronger, and typically more aggressive breeds. In the video we saw a poodle. But mostly it was Dobermans, Shepherds. They used Terriers. I'm trying to think what other breeds. They also kept extremely good records, which is very interesting. If you look at different wars, the records are a little bit more spotty. But because the dogs were being brought in by civilians, they kept very good track of them because they had every intention of returning them to the families once the war was over. Here we have a service record for Rex.They kept track of his breed but also his temperament. Does he run away? Is he gun-shy? Is he storm shy? You can see, no. So I think Rex was an excellent candidate. And then at the end they noted that he has a gentle disposition and is very intelligent. And here we have another dog. One of my favorite stories that I came across about this sort of civilian -- donation of civilians giving up their dogs for service was that one woman wrote a letter to the dogs for defense apparently after she submitted her dog's number to be considered for service. She had decided she changed her mind. She said thank you, but you can't have my dog. And the reason that she gave was because her husband, her brother, her brother-in-law, and I think two brother-in-laws actually had all gone off to war. She said the dog at the house was their only protection and that she relied on the dog to take care of her children. And she said that the future generation deserves as much protection as we can have. So thank you very much, I'm going to keep my dog. These some Marines. They're lowering a Doberman down from the ship. You can kind of see the harness. Here we have a Doberman keeping watch for his handler while he takes a nap in the foxhole. I read lots of different stories about how -- our journalist that covered the war so well from the frontlines wrote a story, a few actually, about different dogs. One of them was once they came to a new mission -- once the other men in the unit sort of realized how good the dogs were at what they did, they would fight to dig their foxholes quick enough to see who could dig a foxhole for the dogs so the dog would sleep near them. But they were very good. So you can see this soldier has no problem taking a nap because he feels safe knowing his dog is keeping watch for him. This is one of the funnier pictures which I thought was cute. You can see this one dog is, I don't know, I guess cat calling the female dog in the poster. This is a dog who was shot and wounded. Unfortunately I think the caption that came along said he did not make it. But the men who watch these dogs get injured, even though it wasn't necessarily a mandate that their lives should be protected or preserved over others, they did it instinctively. There was one story that I came across. The dog's name was Caesar. And Caesar during -- they were ambushed. Caesar got shot. He was wounded. His handler couldn't find him. It turned out the dog just returned to their camp. He needed to be carried to the medic. So the handler was tending to the dog. He was so upset that he wasn't paying attention to what was going on and he reached down to try to lift the dog and turned around and realized that all the men behind him had taken off their shirts and pulled together a kit so they could carry the dog to be treated at the hospital. Even though Caesar had taken a bullet to the chest, he survived. And within a couple of weeks on leave he was back doing his job. So again, here we see that they are mascots. They are very cute. This is a baby. They started them -- I just saw this picture. I think the --I think he was already in training at the beginning. So this dog's name is Pepi. He didn't go AWOL but was missing for a few days. I think he sustained a wound to one of his ears but made it back to his handler. I think he was ok. I don't know if you can make this out quite yet, but the dog right there in the bottom left-hand corner is Chips, the dog from World War II. Then over there on the top left of the photo is General Eisenhower. Chips bit him. Although Eisenhower apparently didn't take offense to it. But Chips has a kind of great story. He belonged to the Wren family from Pleasantville, New York. He was known for having a feisty personality. He chased away the garbage men. He frightened the postman. He also used to walk their little girl, Gail, 8 years old, to school every day and slept by her desk which was odd because I didn't see a reason why -- but if he was so ferocious on Gail's behalf, I have to imagine the teachers maybe weren't being kind but were possibly too afraid to shoo him out of the classroom. So when this call came to donate dogs for service, the Wren family thought maybe Chips wasn't quite right for the life in the suburbs, that maybe we would do well in war. They sent him off. And he did, he became famous right away. He was one of the first dogs to go into I think Italy. On the first mission he overpowered some Italian gunners even while taking a bullet to one of his shoulders. And he was awarded a medal, which unfortunately was later taken away because the military decided they were not giving medals to animals. But he did become famous. He made lots of headlines throughout his career. He made it to the war. He came back home. "The New York Times" did a piece about him. They interviewed the family and they said that unfortunately Chips wasn't quite the same when he came home. Mr. Wren said he didn't wag his tail quite as much anymore and instead of being fearless in the face of crowds he shied away from them, which I think, of course, speaks to something I can talk about later if anyone has any questions, but they do diagnose dogs now with canine PTSD. They have special medication for it. They have special therapy for it. And I think it would be silly for anyone to assume that dogs can experience the same trauma, the same heat, the same chaos, all the things that are not like home and all the things that wound our soldiers, men and women who are stationed overseas in combat zones, dogs sometimes are affected by it in the same way. Sometimes it depends on the individual dog's temperament. Sometimes it just depends on their experience. We are now in Vietnam. The one wonderful thing about World War II, I think it sort of speaks to the celebration and the championing of soldiers and the military's role there in general that the dogs were welcomed back home as heroes. I think within the first three months or something like 15,000 applications to adopt these dogs because they were so heralded, so well regarded, even though they had families to return to people just love them and wanted to adopt them. And most of them were able -- when they came back from war, they had to sort of train the fight out of them a little bit so that they could return to home, whether there were other animals, young children, so they weren't a risk to anyone. But most of them were able to make that transition fairly easily. And then we sort of move ahead to Vietnam. Unfortunately what happened, as happens again and again, hopefully not this time around but when the United States winds down its wars and winds down the troops, its wartime readiness capacity, we have shelved the lessons we learned with our dog. So each war we have had to relearn them and build from scratch which is unfortunate. So the dogs of Vietnam, they did start all over again. They had to figure out which breeds they wanted to use, how they would be useful. But, again, once they were sort of on the ground and being utilized with handlers, especially in Vietnam because they sort of were unprepared for the tactics, they weren't familiar with the train, they weren't familiar with the environments. Certainly that caught them by surprise but also the tactics. They had snipers in trees. There were mines, booby traps. But once they had a dog, usually the scout dogs became the most useful. The patrol started to have fewer and fewer casualties. So here you can see that the dogs leading even through the water. One of the handlers that I interviewed, Ron, he deployed to Vietnam with his dog Stormy in 1966. He was a Marine. Stormy wasn't a very big dog. He thought she was too friendly for war, but she was really good at alerting. So he used to walk her out on missions. The way he would use the dog, because they had to move quietly, if she saw something or sensed danger, she couldn't bark. She was trained to alert on human scent, on the scent of guns or explosives, mines. And so when they would walk silently sometimes at night, he would be holding her leash and she would be pulling at the end. As long as the leash was taught and Stormy was moving forward, then it was safe to continue. But as soon as he felt the leash go slack, it meant something had upset her. And the way he described it to me was wherever Stormy was looking, he would just lock his sights between the middle of her ears and usually that's dead on where the danger was. So it was a snipers, they would fire. They would use Stormy's ears or the direction she was pointing in as their target. She never let them down. He did tell me one story about how one commander came over to him and they said we wanted you to use your dog. He said, "Ok, what for?" He said, "We're trying to intimidate one of the Viet Congs they captured. He said, "I don't think my dog's right for that." Stormy was too friendly. She could become protective of him if there was a threat, but if no threat, it was likely she wouldn't bark on command or become aggressive on command. He used to have this tug of war game that he played with her. So he would growl at her; she would growl back. She was only playing. So he would growl at her and she would growl back. So he did that in front of this suspect who was on his knees, hands tied behind his back. He said he didn't let her get close enough to him because he was afraid she would lick his face, which might have frightened him but she would have only been playing. So the Viet Cong, of course, had their underground tunnels from villages to villages. Dogs were very good at sniffing them out. Here we are leading a patrol. This is Ron and Stormy. She's tiny for a German Shepherd but what's amazing --I find this with most of the handlers that I've interviewed -- is that usually there's always one dog whether it was their first dog or favorite dog but one dog they loved to talk about and for Ron that dog was Stormy. This is Steve and his dog Major. Steve had what was a pretty quiet tour. He had a couple of friends who had been wounded, but he, himself, hadn't experienced anything too terrible. On his very last day there with Major, he was asked if he would lead a mission. He thought, yeah, sure, ok. I'll go out. So he took Major out. They were walking. It was quite a large patrol of people. Major gave an alert. But it was in the middle of the day; he didn't see anyone so he decided it must have been a booby trap. So he was right. Major was right, there was a booby trap. It was one of these large pits that they would dig. And at the bottom they would stick these spears so if you walked into it, you were likely to fall and get wounded if not be killed. Unfortunately the pit was just sort of a distraction and around the pit there were these mines. So as they were sort of clearing the pit to see how deep and how wide it was, Steve stepped on a mine, exploded in front of him, and exploded in between his legs basically and disrupted an artery. So he had to be medevac'd out and Major went with him. He survived, as I was talking to him recently. And Major ended up being attached to another handler. The unfortunate thing about Vietnam is that most of them were left there in sort of the United States military's haste to leave the area and evacuate. They did not bring the dogs back. Sadder still is that most of these handlers did not know this at all. Of course they didn't know it in advance but certainly it took many, many years for them to find out what happened to their dogs after. Ron told me he wrote the Marine Corps for years and years because he wanted to adopt Stormy and bring her home. And he wasn't able to do that. And when he talks about it, Ron is an incredibly warm, friendly guy. He's very jovial. He can talk about the Vietnam War and you think it's about talking -- like talking about a good movie he saw. He doesn't register too much pain. He speaks of it with a lot of distance. I think many of the men and women that I talked to who are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan don't quite have that yet. But when he talks about Stormy being left behind, that changes. And here we have Nemo. You can see Nemo is missing his right eye. He got this injury in Vietnam. He and his handler Robert Thornburg were walking through on a patrol on one of the bases and they were ambushed. During the firefight Thornburg let him go. So he surged on to their attacker. In the interim, the handler was shot. And Nemo made his way back to him. When he did, he climbed on top of him and covered him with his body to protect him, which is kind of amazing because they don't train dogs to do that. And, in fact, when a handler is wounded in battle, the dogs that are super protective of them actually it can be a hindrance to them getting help. So when a dog climbs on top of a handler's body after being shot and he's ferociously protecting this person, the medics are trying to give help. It's a hindrance. What's remarkable is they're not trained to do this but instinctively understand something's wrong and put themselves between the threat and the person they're protecting. Both Nemo and his handler survived. And so this is a photograph from Iraq. The handler up there is an Air Force handler. His name is Shawn. The dog with him is Azlin. And they were one of the very first teams to go into Iraq in 2004. So when U.S. forces went into Iraq in 2003, we didn't send a very large contingent of forces. Again, like in Vietnam, the program had been scaled back. They didn't bring the dogs back. It wasn't discussed in the public. And certainly a lot of the advantages that they had learned in Vietnam, which could have been implied very usefully and interact because the single greatest hindrance or obstacle once they got there were IEDs or Improvised Explosive Devices. The United States did not even have the right kind of armor, protection for their convoys to deal with roadside bombs to deal with all the sort of small pressure late bombs or cell phone-activated bombs that were being used when they initially sort of went in. So what Shawn will tell you is they had to sort of learn this on their own. These dogs were not trained to sniff out roadside bombs, not trained to sort of -- they could sniff out explosives but they hadn't done foot patrols which is what they ended up being used for. So the 30 teams, Marine and Air Force teams, that landed there a year later didn't know what they were doing. On their very first night on base, in fact, Shawn was taking Azlin out for a walk. The dog was doing his business, running around, sniffing. He wasn't working. All of a sudden Shawn noticed that his sniffing got much more intense. And he thought, ok, now what could that be? He thought, well, they were in an area that had been occupied before. There had been some fighting. Maybe he was picking up residual odor. But, in fact, he wasn't. There was an IED. It was made of a can and had been laying around like a bit of trash. It was actually on their base. So Azlin alerted them to it which was very lucky for all the men staying there. So this is actually a different kind of a dog. I don't know if you can see her. She's the black lab down there. Her name is Bo. Bo is a therapy dog. In 2005, the Army partnered with an organization called America's Vet Dogs, which is a service dog foundation. They're part of the Seeing Eye Dog Foundation. They have this idea that dogs offer a lot of catharsis. They are used in therapy. This wave of using dogs in therapy started -- actually, Sigmund Freud used to bring his dog into the room with him and he would use the dog as a gauge. If the dog was seen to be sort of upset or ill at ease, it meant his patient wasn't relaxed. In the '70s, there were other psychiatrists who sort of noticed this relaxing effect that dogs would have on their patients when they started to bring them in and not very sort of official way but just as a presence. So the handler there, her name is Captain O'Hara, she and Bo received combat training in order to deploy, but their job was to be there as a therapy team. She started to notice that people would come up to them just to hug the dog, just to pet the dog. Bo actually became an exercise partner for one of the servicemen who went over there who had gained a lot of weight. He was a little depressed. Because so many people were giving Bo treats, Bo gained weight. So she suggested, well, Bo needs exercise. Maybe you could take her for runs. So Bo helped -- it's not exactly what you would think in terms of, you know, prescribing medication or all the other sort of tools that they used to deal with PTSD or to help combat PTSD, but this idea to bring dogs in was sort of revolutionary. She says she believes very much it made a difference. One of the things about Bo that she noticed after they had been there, they had a particularly long deployment. The Army tends to deploy for a little longer than the other service branches so they were there for 15 months which is a long time. She said by the end of their deployment, Bo, who have never really like a super social dog but very gentle; so if anyone came up to her, she was friendly but she wouldn't run and seek out attention. She said by the end of their tour there that Bo had had too much. She had sort of absorbed too much sadness. She started to turn away from people when they wanted to hug her or pet her. She said she was only really happy when she was free to be a dog. I think there's a lesson in there on many different levels. But certainly I heard stories from handler who's have told me that for whatever reason, other people that they were serving with would use the dog in sort of the same way. Shawn, photo we were just looking at, he had this role -- he was most often sort of partnered on missions with Marines. He had a rule about Azlin who was not always friendly that no one could pet her or try to play with him while they were working. If he was working, he had to be allowed to be in that mindset to focus and concentrate. But as soon as the missions were over, he said, you know, you guys can play with him, he's free. Shawn told me that they had a lot of bad days. What he said was that bad days meant that a lot of people had gotten killed. And he said after one very, very bad day, they were sitting around waiting to get picked up to go back to their base and he was with some Marines. They were all sitting quiet. They had lost a few people. He said he watched as one marine just broke down and cried and put his head on his dog's shoulder. Here's Bo again. This is a young Iraqi girl. Part of what the captain would do is bring Bo around the military hospitals. The military hospitals don't discriminate or distinguish between insurgents, soldiers, anyone who was wounded in war. They take care of them. This girl's parents had been killed in a firefight with U.S. soldiers. She had taken a really -- she sustained a very bad wound. She took a bullet to her abdomen and was in the hospital for months. Because the culture around dogs in Iraq is a little bit different,,dogs are not pets, they're sort of seen as not necessarily filthy but they're not brought into the home. They're not pets. Also, during the Iraq War guys had had -- dogs that would roam around in packs were very dangerous so she was very careful not to bring the dog near the Iraqi patients. She thought it might be disturbing to them. And this particular girl when she was in bed, she seemed very afraid of the dog. So the captain was really careful to not go into her room or near her bed. One day one of the nurses came up to her and said, you know, I think it would be really great if you could bring Bo over and visit this girl. She said, no, no, no. She seems really scared of the dog. And the nurse said, I don't think so. They had been giving her Play-Doh and noticed she was making these little statues of dogs. So she slowly started to bring the dog over to the girl's bed. And little by little she became less afraid and more comfortable to the point where she would laugh when the captain would do tricks with the dog, just to make her smile. As she healed and got better, by the time she was up and walking, she got to take Bo for walks. So it really helped her come out of her shell. I think it helped seeing her physical therapy she was getting because she wanted to be with the dog -- take Bo for walks, which was a story I liked very much. This dog's name is Tank. His handler was for many years kennel master. I have this photo in here. He has children and a family. So he was sort of on some level happy he didn't deploy but on another level felt it was the ultimate experience as a handler to be using a dog. So Tank was not the friendliest dog in the world. Jack was the only person who could handle him. He mauled a handler who probably was trying to do something with the dog that he shouldn't have been doing so badly that they were ready to put the dog down. And Jack had pleaded with them and said, please don't put him down. He's my dog. I'll take care of him. I'll be able to control him. So their story is interesting because all dogs are deployed from home station. It's a little different than human service members who will get assigned to a base for a few years and then get reassigned to a different base. Dogs live in the same kennel for most of their lives unless there's special circumstances where they get transferred like Tank who got transferred to Jack's care because he was the only one who could manage him. Their story is interesting because they were together for 10 years. Part of what war dogs do -- Jack will tell you this. He's one of the best handlers that I came across. He's also the most humble. He will tell you that a dog's first job is to be a deterrent. So clearly this is very deterring behavior. I don't know that many people would willingly approach this dog. And he doesn't have to do anything. He doesn't have to release the dog. Just by being there he's seen as a threat. But these dogs are trained to bite. The military employs two kinds of dogs, dual purpose and single purposed. Tank is trained on either scent work, which means he can find explosives or drugs, and he's also trained on patrol work which means he has bite training and he is trained to protect his handler which means he's trained to take someone down and bite them. This was part of my research. I let myself get bit. Not by him. By a different dog who was a little nicer and smaller. But the way that they could -- you could see -- the video we were watching before, they were provoking the dog and then letting the dog bite their arm. So the way that they do this is they first wear very big, bulky protective suits. And the dogs learn to grip on to an area that gives them the most advantage. So if they're running after a suspect and they grab on to the back of their arm, they're running very fast. And maybe you've seen videos of this, it's incredible to watch. But when they're running and they run very fast and they sort of take a launching leap and grab on to something, that momentum is so strong it will bring someone down to the ground. A very well-trained dog, which most of these dogs are, will bite on the command of their handler. So no matter how frenzied they are or excited they get to bite, because sometimes for them -- I don't know, I felt like I was a chew toy or something. And when the dog saw me walking out in the suit, he got really excited. But it hurts. Let me tell you. Even with the bite suit on. This is a photo I love just because to me it shows how much love there is between a dog. But even the sort of toughest or most stoic Marine or Special Forces guy, I think that they have these moments with their dogs. There's lots of stories about dogs laying down their lives for humans, but there are, I assure you, plenty of stories that show the other end of things. Not to end on a sad note but a quick story. There was a marine who was stationed in Afghanistan. Nothing to do with fighting but there was a fire in the barracks they were living in. He managed to get himself out but he couldn't find his dog Tosca. Then he heard her bark. She was still inside the building and he ran back in to get her. Unfortunately neither of them made it out. But in addition to that sort of heroic act and act of just in extinctive love, I think, is that his best friend waited for 10 hours and sat in the veterinary station until the dog's body was cremated so he could bring her remains back on the same plane that they were bringing the handler's body back because he knew that they didn't want to be separated. And the family buried them together. So I think I will stop there. I think I'm running out of time. If anyone has questions, I'm happy to answer them. [Applause] >> You mentioned that in World War II so many dogs were brought back but in Vietnam, not as many. How about the Korean War? Was it more like the Vietnam experience where they weren't brought back or not? >> They didn't use many dogs in the Korean War. They used some. I think that they were brought back. The numbers weren't significant either way. >> This is more of a little story I want to tell you. You showed the picture of the Confederate soldier with the dog. I'm a Civil War re-enactor.There's story of a lot of regimens had dogs but the 11 Pennsylvania had a dog named Sallie who was basically a Pitbull. That dog served with the regimen through almost the entire war, marched with the regimen, answered the bugle calls in Gettysburg. She got separated from the regimen after the first day. And at the end of the battle they found her standing guard over the dead of the regimen. So there's one monument at Gettysburg, 11 Pennsylvania, that has a dog on it. She's on the monument. >> Rebecca Frankel: I'm going to have to see it. Thank you. >> She was killed right at the end of the war. She was wounded once and then killed at the end. They buried her. >> Rebecca Frankel: Thank you for sharing that. I didn't know about Sallie. Thank you. Any other questions? >> You can give us a little bit of information about Rin Tin Tin. >> Rebecca Frankel: I might be the wrong author. I don't know very much about Rin Tin Tin other than that there were many and he was probably one of the richest dogs maybe in history. I really don't know very much about him. >> Because I know that they found the dog in France during World War I. And that an American soldier brought the dog back to the United States, somehow got him into the movies. But then during World War II one of the future Rin Tin Tins was used as far as getting the American population to turn over their dogs to the military. >> Rebecca Frankel: Yeah. I'm not surprised. I think it was really hard to do, to give their dogs over. I'm sure I would have a very tough time with it. >> [Question Inaudible] >> Rebecca Frankel: No. The dogs are all trained and procured and purchased by the military. There's very specific breeders that they work with. Most are European. I think most of the dogs. The breeds that they used are primarily for the dual purpose dogs, Shepherds and Belgian Malinois. I think most of the dogs are coming out of the Czech Republic these days. One of my World War I stories I like very much is a lot of the men who were fighting in Europe for the British or the French, they weren't that far from home so even if it was a few days' journey, some of their home dogs would track them down and follow them because they had left and sort of had to shoo them away and try to get them to go back home again. I always liked that. >> My father had a dog that went to war from Pennsylvania. They were from Pittston. His name was Peanuts. I wondered how would I find out the information as to what happened to him. I saw in the earlier part of your program you said that they kept very good records. >> Rebecca Frankel: They do. What branch? >> My dad was in the Air Force but I'm not sure what branch Peanuts was in. He didn't serve with my dad. My dad was a young boy, the youngest of his family, and the dog belonged to him. He volunteered his dog to go. So I just wondered -- my dad is still living. I thought that would be a nice thing to find out for him. >> Rebecca Frankel: Yeah. The Marines in particular have really great archives, and so does the National Archives. The Library of Congress does as well. Afterwards I'm happy to get your e-mail and then I can send you my contacts at these different archives. >> Thank you. >> Rebecca Frankel: Sure. >> I've been reading some articles where the dogs are considered equipment and when their handlers are sent -- finish their tour or whatever, the dogs stay there and that, you know, do another tour without their current handler and goes on to a new handler. It's difficult for the original handler to adopt them. What have you learned about that in your research? >> Rebecca Frankel: That's actually absolutely not true. It's too bad, to put it delicately, that there are even some reputable publications publishing these stories. One in particular just came out in "USA Today" and the "National Journal" that was written by the same fellow who did a poor job fact checking before he wrote. The dogs are never -- they are not left behind. There's a few reasons for that. The first is that the United States military invests a tremendous amount of money and time and energy into training them. So even in the most sort of bare bones and cold kind of calculation, they're very important, sort of special. So the military has a lot at stake. None of these dogs would ever be sort of left behind. For that reason alone, of course, the handlers would never allow this to happen. So the way that it works is that all dogs are assigned to home station. And they deploy and return from that home station. But the dogs and their handlers always deploy as a team so whatever the mission is or wherever they're going, they go as a team and return as a team. I met a young man, Joshua Ashley -- or was, I should say. I spent two weeks at the pre-deployment training course run by the Marine Corps in Arizona. He deployed from Camp LeJeune, a Marine, with his dog Sirius. And another handler in the same unit deployed with his dog Zora. While they were in Afghanistan, they both went out on different missions. Unfortunately Zora was killed and Joshua actually was killed. So what happened is that Kent took over being Sirius' dog handler. And even though Joshua had been killed, the dog was returned with the same unit when they went back and he was looked after there. So this notion that dogs are treated or even looked at as equipment or even in some capacity written up in papers as equipment, I wrote a rebuttal article to that one. I interviewed the program manager for the Department of Defense. He sounded very tired and exhausted about talking about this. But the way he said that he went back through all of their manuals and searched in response to this. He wanted to go through and strike out any instance where dogs were even written of as equipment. And he said he couldn't find anything. So I think it comes from a couple of different places. I think unfortunately the stain of what happened in Vietnam kind of lives on a little bit. There's confusion between military working dogs and then the private companies that are out operating in combat zones that have they're called C.W.D.s or contract working dogs. And the Marines actually employed this dog because he's a Labrador, would have been one of those dogs that came from a contracting firm called K2 Solutions in South Carolina. There are other ones in the United States. They're just bomb-sniffing dogs. So in the mid 2000s, the dogs proved to be so useful that the military didn't have enough to send into combat. So they hired these other firms to train single purpose dogs, bomb-sniffing dogs and they employed them. The way it was explained to me a little bit is the contract working dogs, not military, they're a little bit like rent-a-cops. So you hire the handler and the dog. The military in their contracts, as far as I've been told, had specifications for the treatments of the dogs but their oversight into how those dogs are treated only extends so far. So I know there are some instances -- the military working dog community is surrounded by an incredibly devoted and passionate group of people. Some of them are former handlers, families of handlers, some of them are just dog activists and dog lovers so they're helping to get these contract working dogs who are still out there but not being used back to the United States. But it's very separate from the military dogs. In exchange, I still see things cropping up all over Facebook, on Twitter. I think it all comes from a very good place. People are concerned that these dogs are being treated well. But in terms of the military's treatment, it's not true. I'm happy to say it's not true. >> [Question Inaudible] >> Rebecca Frankel: It's a specialty. Like any other thing in the military, it used to be incredibly difficult because the jobs are so much fewer than there are now. Very, very high demand. When we were deployed in both Iraq and Afghanistan for dog handlers -- what was sort of a long laborious, very sort of tough process in order to get approved, they had to write these long essays and go before a board and take all of these exams. There's still some of that now but the older handlers, the guys who were first ones, look at the -- they're like, it's so easy; it's not what it was like when I was going through. So in the case of this photograph or in the case of the Marines and their what I call the supplemental dog surge program that they provided they paired the Labradors with infantrymen so they only had a little bit of training. Not that they're not dog handlers, but they didn't have the same extensive dog training school stuff. They paired them with infantrymen because the dogs were so gentle. They couldn't have paired them with a patrol dog or a dog that was aggressive or hard to handle. >> Thank you, Rebecca. >> Rebecca Frankel: Thank you so much. [Applause] >> There is a book signing one level up. We'll see you there in a few minutes.