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Maxwell AFB, AL The Air Force Enlisted Heritage Research Institute (located on Maxwell AFB, Alabama), offers a unique glimpse at the enlisted contributions to the development of air power. This facility hosts thousands of visitors each year from around the country and the world. It is the only USAF museum totally dedicated to the enlisted men and women. They redesigned their memorial circle located in the front of the facility. The initial dedication and unveiling (of the dog memorial) occurred on November 9, 2002. Since the Memorial had not been completed, only the first plaques were unveiled. The cost of the plaques were funded by the handlers. Handlers paid a small fee to have the names of their dogs engraved. Several bases raised enough funds to list all of their assigned dogs. As one handler told me. "we brought our dogs home". Former dog handlers Bill Wiggington, David F. Adams, and Bill Cummings spoke for the handlers. TSgt Paul Cook coordinated the memorial and the ceremony.
David F. Adams spoke most eloquently of the special bond shared between the dogs and their handlers. "CMSgt Hamel, TSgt Cook, Honored
Guest, and fellow veterans,
It is an honor for me to speak to you today on
behalf my veteran brothers in an attempt to bring to life for you an
experience we shared with one another some 30 years ago, the experience of
serving our nation in time of war. To stand in harms way teamed with a dog
in whom we placed more trust and confidence than our own knowledge and
instinct for survival. Each of us know what it was to walk the outer
perimeter of an Air Base at night, or at the point position on a patrol
through a jungle, to be the first contact with enemy protecting the lives
and mission of the units we were assigned to.
War, is without a doubt, the most horrific of
human experiences. It is an endeavor filled with a dichotomy of fear and
courage, of anger and love. Like a Charles Dickens novel, it brings forth
the best of humanity and the worst of human kind. It is a time of
experiencing of all of these emotions simultaneously.
A time when men and women are confronted with fear and combat it with
courage, are called on in a time of anger and aggression, and respond out of
love, love of family, of nation, and of comrades that compel each individual
to press forward amid death and destruction, and it was love that motivated
the dogs we have gathered here together to honor this day.
I would like you to
open your imagination and follow me back and live for a brief moment what we
lived during a war in a small corner of the world called Vietnam. You are 20
years old and find yourself half way around the world in an environment
totally foreign to you. You have been together with the dog you have been
assigned to for five days at best and don’t yet know one another. The
vehicle carrying the men and their dogs to post comes to a stop as the
driver calls your name telling you this is your assigned position. Climbing
off the truck and lifting your dog to the ground you attempt to look down a
single-track dirt road with a perimeter fence and dense jungle a few feet to
the left and dense and lush under brush and jungle a few feet to your right.
You change you dog’s collar from chock chain to leather signaling the dog it
is time to go to work. As you peer down that pathway cut through the jungle
in to a seemingly endless darkness filled with unknowns, you recall the six
o’clock news you watched throughout your high school years filled with the
stories coming out of Vietnam of battles, air strikes, and body counts. The
times you played war as a child, trying to relive the experience of your
father, has become reality and your mother can no longer rescue you by
calling you home for supper. You ask yourself, “what lies ahead of me this
night, is this the night my base is hit. Will they come across my post?”
Then the true fear that underlies it all, “will I have the courage to carry
out my duty, to make the stand I must to protect my base, the men working
along the flight line keeping the F-4 Phantoms flying, and the planes
themselves. You reach for that something, that security
blanket you carried as a child and your hand slides down the silky coat of
the dog sitting at your side and you find comfort in his breathing and
warmth. He looks up at you with his golden brown eyes asking, “well, what
are we waiting for?” Your courage is gained from that dog who has walked
that same post many times before you arrived and the two of you step off and
begin your tour of duty. Throughout the night you talk to your dog, not to
give him confidence as you learned to do in dog school, but rather to draw
confidence from him. At the end of your shift you return to the kennels
putting your new partner and best friend in his run, getting him fresh
water, close the kennel door looking into his tiered eyes and under your
breath, “thanks Rex. Thanks for getting me through this one.”
With each night that passes it becomes easier,
and you and the dog become inseparable partners. A partner you share your
loneliness with, your dreams, your love for the bride-to-be, or the wife you
left behind who is waiting your return. He is a partner who’s personality
you come to know and love as it were your own, and it humors you and
continues to give you that security and courage you found that first night.
Your memories will be filled with moments when he
detected an intruder attempting to enter the munitions storage area that you
would otherwise not have seen, or when he helped you apprehend an
unauthorized person trying to run through your post. There are memories that
will forever put a smile on your face, like the time you sat down on the
embankment of a bomb revetment to eat your box lunch. With one piece of the
bread and slice of bologna resting on the palm of your hand, you searched
the box to get the packet of mustard and turning to put it on the half of
sandwich found it is gone. You looked to see where it fell on the ground,
but was nowhere to be seen. Even though you felt nothing, you know where it
went and look in the eyes of your dog only to be greeted by the most
incredibly innocent look and an expression that says, “What?” However, underling those memories, was the knowledge
that your partner was not going to be returning home as you were. That when
that seemingly endless war ended your friend would either make one last trip
to the vet’s table, or be turned over to the military units of that
Southeast Asian country just as equipment was turned over, but to a culture
that did not have any appreciation or love for a dog that you did, and so
deep inside your painful hope was for the former option over the latter. As we take this moment to pay a long over due
tribute to these forgotten heroes we left behind nearly 30 years ago we need
to understand what motivated them to protect us and ensure we returned to
our loved ones and nation unharmed, even though they were never to share in
that same fait. The motivation was not the training, nor a spirit of
aggressiveness. It was love, total unconditional love for us that caused
them to comfort us and lead us down that dark post on our first night of
duty. It was unconditional love that caused them to charge in to a certain
death to protect their partner if the post was attacked. It was what the
Bible calls the greatest commandment, love that made these dogs the heroes
they are. So, as you view this memorial to their devotion and memory, and
look at the pictures of them that are on display, look deep in to their eyes
and see a dog not casting an image of terror, but rather see the
unconditional love that drives that dog to protect his partner at its own
peril.
Thank you and may God bless each of you for being
here today to honor this part of His creation."
The actual pedestal is not in place but the plate with the U-Tapao names did arrive and they had a mockup in place with the names of other dogs from bases in Vietnam and Thailand. Photo of the title plaque to be placed on the memorial.
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