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thedrifter
07-18-09, 07:31 AM
The four-legged platoon that helped win a war
MORNING READ: People laughed at the idea of family pets helping soldiers. Then the battle started.
By TOM BERG
The Orange County Register
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NEWPORT BEACH A bold experiment in warfare was launched 65 years ago this week.

Few knew of it, and most who did laughed at it.

Not Edmund Adamski. He'd trained a year for this– 50,000 Marines, soldiers and sailors preparing for the bloody beach invasion of Guam.

"You're scared, OK?" says Adamski, 85, of Schererville, Indiana. "You don't know what the heck to expect."

At dawn, he lowered a new secret weapon into a landing craft and climbed in with a 50-pound backpack. The Higgins boats pushed toward shore.

"Bullets were whizzing past us," says Ivan Hamilton, 91, of Newport Beach – Adamski's platoon sergeant. "Some of our landing craft were blown out of the water. I was just numb. You'd see all these dead bodies floating. The water was full of blood."

One month earlier, the U.S. had suffered 13,000 casualties in the invasion of Saipan. Everyone now understood what it would take to rid Guam of 27,000 entrenched Japanese who were willing to die before surrendering.

The landing craft ramps dropped; Adamski jumped into the water and released his cargo, which immediately began swimming.

The war dogs had just landed.

TRIAL AND ERROR

Dogs have fought in war since at least 600 B.C – including the American Civil War and World War 1. But the U.S. had no formal training program until the Doberman Pinscher Club of America offered to help the war effort in 1943.

"These were just people's pets," says filmmaker Harris Done, whose documentary, War Dogs of the Pacific, airs Aug. 5 on the Military Channel. "At the end of the war, they wanted their dogs back."

The general public started donating too – shepherds, sheepdogs, collies, schnauzers. So the Marines created a fledgling "war dog" platoon near Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

"It was trial and error," says Hamilton, one of the first officers. "We had nobody to go to for help. First we had to fire guns over the dogs to see if they were gun-shy. If so, we sent them back home."

Next, they assigned each dog a handler. And taught the dogs to silently warn of enemies waiting in ambush, of land mines and trip wires.

Adamski's dog, Big Boy, was "the ugliest Doberman you've ever seen," he says. "But I couldn't ask for a better animal."

They worked together. Played together. Ate together. Other units laughed or barked at them and called them "doggies." But an undeniable bond was growing.

And it was about to deepen – on the battlefield.

NEARLY ALL GONE

Filmmaker Harris Done knows a good story when he hears one.

The Orange County native has shot films for Steven Spielberg and Matt Damon. He's worked with actor Martin Sheen and war historian Stephen Ambrose.

So in 2000, when he met a Marine veterinarian who'd written an autobiography about the Marines' 2nd and 3rd War Dog Platoons, Done told him: "This should be a movie and I'd like to make it."

Done wrote a feature screenplay based on Capt. William Putney's book, "Always Faithful," but in 2003, Putney died.

"It motivated me to record as many of these guys as I could find," Done says. "I didn't want their stories to be lost."

He tracked down nine war-dog veterans for his documentary – tough men who nearly break down recalling their dogs from 60 years ago. All of the dogs and most of the men have since died, including Dale Fetzer, of Dallas, Texas, whose black lab, Skipper, was shot on Guam while protecting Fetzer.

"I laid there with my head on his chest, waiting for the heartbeat," Fetzer said. "And his heart stopped. I went crazy. I stood up there like a wild man shooting."

When it was over, he'd killed eight to 10 enemy soldiers.

"They shouldn't have killed my dog," he said.

Yet after the war, nearly all of the handlers would end up losing their dogs.

GOODBYE

The Marines declared Guam secure after three weeks of fighting. But some 8,000 Japanese soldiers lay hidden in the jungle. Waiting.

The once-scoffed war dogs were asked to find them.

"That's the worst fighting you can get into," says the former commanding officer Hamilton. "You can't see the enemy. You can't hear them. You can't smell them. But the dogs can."

At the front of nearly every mission stood a war dog and its handler.

"We were always at the point – the worst, the most dangerous position on patrol," recalls Adamski, who still has shrapnel in his chest from a grenade.

When Big Boy heard or smelled anything unusual, he'd silently alert Adamski.

"The hair on the back of his neck would stand up," he says. "That told me there was something out in front of us. He absolutely saved my life many times on patrol."

Dogs led more than 500 patrols on Guam and never once were ambushed. This success led the Marines and Army to send them to Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

By war's end, dog handlers held five Silver Stars, seven Bronze Stars and more than 40 Purple Hearts.

"They were some of the most respected of all the fighters," says Hamilton.

Then came the hard part. After the war, the dogs went to their homes and the handlers to theirs. But they never forgot.

"He was my companion," Adamski says, as if 65 years ago was yesterday. "I could talk to him. That dog would look at me and, even under fire, he could tell if I was scared or whatever. That dog knew how I felt."

He turns quiet, then the old Marine adds:

"There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of that dog."

Contact the writer: 714-796-6979 ortberg@ocregister.com

Ellie