Cracker!: The Best Dog in Vietnam

  “That Bien Hoa?” he asked, disappointed.

  Several times today Cracker had heard that word “Benwa.”

  “We’ve been temporarily reassigned” was all Sarge said. “This used to be a temporary FSB, but they’re using it now for the 271st Airborne. We’ll be supporting their ground infantry. There’s been a lot of contact here lately.”

  Rick wasn’t going to ask what the heck an “FSB” was. But he wished somebody else would. Finally, he whispered to Twenty-Twenty, “What’s FSB?”

  Twenty-Twenty whispered back, “Fire support base. Temporary camp they set up that sometimes becomes permanent.”

  When Rick’s truck arrived at camp, he was even more disappointed. Even Cody seemed less than his usual jovial self. Camp was basically a flat, muddy plain with a bunch of ugly buildings and about ten thousand packed sandbags lying against them. Literally about ten thousand. Rick already knew exactly who was going to fill the sandbags around their hootch.

  The trucks moved through the gates and stopped in front of a big, empty space. The dogs and handlers got off while Sarge talked to a major who’d approached the convoy. Rick liked watching the sarge kowtow to somebody else. Then Sarge walked over to where the men waited. He swept his hand toward the empty space. “Meet your new home, gentlemen!”

  Rick and Twenty-Twenty glanced at each other. Finally, Cody asked, “Where are the barracks, Sergeant?”

  The old-timers burst out laughing. “Man, oh, man,” said one. “You gotta love new guys. Hey! Hey! If anyone is looking for the Holiday Inn, it’s right over there.” Then he and his buddies laughed again and walked off.

  “We’re going to build barracks,” said Sarge. “That is, if we get the materials. In the meantime, we’ll use the tents.”

  Rick asked, “Sarge, does that mean there are no dog kennels, either?”

  “Ditto on the kennels, except for now we’ll use the crates.”

  Rick watched Sarge look the platoon over. Naturally, Sarge’s eyes stopped on him. “Lanski, you can start filling sandbags.”

  “Cody, you and Mason set up the tents.”

  Rick didn’t listen to the rest. This was just great. His very first assignment in the Vietnam War was filling stinkin’ sandbags. One of the old guys took pity on him and handed him a shovel so he wouldn’t have to use his e-tool—the entrenching tool the men all carried. Rick stuck his shovel into the ground and lifted a load of dirt. All right, that wasn’t so bad. The second one wasn’t bad either. But by the time he’d finished just a few bags, his palms had already grown raw. He looked around the firebase at all the sandbags. On the upside, there were worse assignments—a couple of guys had been assigned to clean out the latrines.

  Once in a while someone would walk by and he’d hear them say, “New guys.” Blisters bubbled on his palms. Technically, these weren’t sandbags, they were dirtbags, and right now the dirt was actually mud.

  As Rick filled the bags, someone else piled them around their tents and the dog crates, but you could pile them only so high. A mortar attack from above could kill them. Someone had lined the crates up together, and Rick could see rain slanting into the crates. Rick wasn’t supposed to, but he and some of the other guys also assigned to filling sandbags let their dogs off leash while they worked.

  Rick spied an old-timer walking by and called out, “Say, man!”

  The guy stopped. “Yeah?”

  “Are there any extra tarps around? Our dogs are gonna get soaked while they’re trying to sleep tonight.” That is, if night ever came. The time change made Rick’s head groggy. He squinted at the bright sky.

  “Whatcha got to trade?”

  “Aw, come on, we’re all in the same army.”

  The guy shook his head and said what Rick knew he was going to say: “New guy.”

  Cody walked over. “I got a watch,” he said.

  Rick looked at Cody with surprise. That watch was his pride and joy.

  The old-timer leaned over to study the watch. He tried to appear nonchalant, but Rick could see his eyes lighting up. Cody pulled it off his wrist. “It’s solid gold,” Cody told him. “My grandfather won it playing poker.”

  The old-timer said, “I seen better.”

  Rick knew a little about bargaining. Even with prices stuck to the items in the hardware store, sometimes people tried to negotiate. Now he looked nonchalant and said, “Forget it, we’ll find someone else to trade with.”

  The old-timer scratched his cheek. “I’ll tell you what. I’m gonna do you a favor ’cause you’re new.”

  “We’ll also want some steaks for dinner tonight,” Rick said. “That watch is worth a lot of money.”

  “I’ll talk to Mike,” the old-timer said.

  “Who’s Mike?”

  “You don’t know Mike? Mike’s the most important guy in camp. You gotta know Mike. He’s just a spec four, but he’s more important than a general as far as you’re concerned. A general don’t care if your dogs get wet, and a general ain’t gonna get you no tarp or no steak. We call Mike our ’procurement specialist.’”

  So later that day the dogs had their tarp stretched out on poles over their crates, Mike had the only thing of value Cody had ever owned, and the guys and their dogs ate steak for dinner. Cody was just about the most popular guy in Vietnam that night.

  Rain poured for several days. After a while you accepted it, just like it was regular air. You walked through it like it was nothing. The dogs weren’t as effective in rain because it washed away the smells, but Cody got called out on a mission anyway, to take a chopper to a drier area.

  Rick spent most of the first four days filling sandbags, or mudbags. He gloved his hands to protect the blisters and attacked the mud and felt the opposite of the relaxation he felt in the shop at home, working with his dad’s tools. He felt frustrated out here.

  Since Cody had already gotten chosen to go out on a mission, it didn’t seem fair that Rick was still filling these dang bags. What kind of high-tech helicopter war was this, anyway?

  Then on the fifth day the skies cleared. During formation Sarge yelled out at him, “Hanski, you got a search and destroy.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Now, mister.”

  The crazy thing was that even though Rick had been wanting his chance to whip the world, he now realized that it was a lot safer filling sandbags. Still, he couldn’t wait to show off Cracker. As was customary with new handlers, one of the “short” handlers would accompany him. “Short” meant a soldier who had only a short time left in country, so they were called “short” or “short-timers.” By tradition, short-timers worked mostly in the rear, which meant jobs as far from combat as possible. They’d also already turned in their dogs so that the dogs could learn to work and bond with new handlers. Some handlers thought giving up their dogs was one of the hardest parts of their jobs. Rick didn’t like to think about it.

  The mission was to make contact in an area where a reconnaissance team had said Charlie might be hiding. Rick heard that the team had reported some fresh bark scraped from a tree. Didn’t sound like much of a lead to him, and probably didn’t sound like much of a lead to anybody because the brass was sending out only a couple of small platoons.

  Rick waited at the makeshift kennels while the short-timer sat with his former dog—a pure black German shepherd—talking to him. At one point the short-timer leaned his head into his dog’s coat. Rick turned away; it seemed like a private moment. He patted Cracker’s head. “We got a long way to go before I’m short.”

  Finally, the other handler left his dog, and they walked to the helicopter pad. They had just one cigarette between them, so they shared it.

  “I guess you had a good dog?”

  “He’s the best dog in Vietnam. Name’s Mack. He was one of the first dogs in country.”

  “Yeah, I noticed he’s got white on his chin.”

  “Another handler is taking over, and then they’ll probably retire Mack.”

  “You goi
ng to take him home eventually?”

  “They won’t let me.”

  “What happens when they retire a dog?”

  The man looked into the distance and shook his head. “I dunno what’s going to happen to him.”

  Then the pilots began arriving, and Rick, the short-timer, and Cracker hopped on a Huey. The short-timer sat with his legs hanging out the doorway—all the doors were taken off the choppers for faster loading and unloading. Rick had liked the chopper during training, but now in the back of his mind he couldn’t shake the thought that this could be his last ride. There were five birds altogether, so this wasn’t a big mission. He looked at Cracker, her face full of joy as the wind blew back her ears.

  Cracker loved being on the helicopter. The wind pounding her face filled her with life. She was ready for anything.

  The choppers landed ten minutes later, and the men leaped off. Rick counted about forty men. Everyone looked pretty relaxed. The commanding officer told Rick to head due east. Rick began walking point with Cracker and the other handler.

  Cracker didn’t like the other guy walking so close to them. A couple of times she growled at him, but then she felt the harness jerk and heard Rick snap, “No!” So she put up with the other man. She kept looking back at Rick to see if she was going to be let off leash, but Rick never gave any indication. The whole day they walked—and walked and walked and walked—through light brush. She didn’t smell anything special, except the body odor of the guy walking next to Rick. Then she smelled gunpowder and pricked up her ears. The smell kind of twirled around in the air with the wind. She looked back at Rick, and he said, “Search.” She walked more and then heard the whistle of the wind passing over string. She sat down.

  “Whatcha got, girl? She’s got something,” said Rick. He didn’t move forward—he’d learned his lesson well back in Georgia. He, the other handler, and Cracker fell back while one of the men checked out and then fired at the booby trap, setting it off. Cracker didn’t even flinch at the explosion. Man, she was a great dog.

  Rick found he loved walking point. This is what he’d been trained for. He thought again about saving that boy’s life. He could save lives today, and he felt one hundred percent certain that Cracker wouldn’t let him get killed. She found seven other booby traps that day. He’d heard the record was more than one hundred, but he didn’t believe it. Rick thought it had been a pretty low-key day, but when they went back to the camp several guys from the mission nodded at him. Respect. It felt good. He snuck Cracker some extra food that night.

  Cracker spent the night alone in her crate. She didn’t understand why some nights she had to sleep by herself in the crate and some nights she slept outside with Rick. She liked to sleep with Rick, though she still vaguely remembered her bed with Willie. That bed was pretty comfortable. She did miss that a little. And the concrete they used to walk on was easier on the feet than these bumpy trails. On the other hand, she’d felt something out there in the bush today, something new that she hadn’t felt even in that other place where they’d searched through the bushes. She felt like she was herself. That was strange, because “herself” really loved lying in a soft bed. But out there, searching for something she knew was important to Rick, and somehow also important to her, she was herself. She didn’t feel ecstatic, like she did when Rick was petting and praising her, and she didn’t feel excited, like when he was just about to feed her. She felt like she was herself and that she was a part of everything around her. It was something new. She liked it. And when she was finished for the day, she felt like she was Somebody Important. She knew Rick felt important too. They were important together.

  When Rick returned, Twenty-Twenty and Cody were off on missions. He saw them less and less. They’d both pulled a couple of longer missions right away, and just as they got back, Rick pulled his second mission. It seemed that the handlers worked more independently than most guys. One of the short timers had said you usually didn’t even know the men you were working with.

  Rick’s second mission was a night ambush near base. He went out with a platoon of twenty-four men. He and Cracker cleared the area first, meaning he walked through the area in an orderly fashion searching for booby traps or enemy mines. Cracker didn’t alert a single time, and one of the guys grumbled that she “isn’t finding anything.” But Rick knew that she didn’t alert because there was nothing to alert for. That night the platoon set up claymore mines around the perimeter of their nighttime defensive position. If any enemy soldiers approached in the night, they would be instantaneous BKs, if they were lucky. If they weren’t lucky, they would be dead.

  Ambushes were often set up in graveyards because they were above the water table. That way, you didn’t have to lie in the wet all night as the water from nearby swamps or rice paddies rose with the tides. So there they were, sitting over bones, waiting for a fight. While it was still light, the men pretended to set up for the night. When darkness fell, they moved about one hundred yards away, to trick the V.C.

  Rick was standing up when machine-gun fire broke the silence. He hit the dirt, then lifted his head and saw most of the guys laughing at him. A couple of other new guys had also hit the dirt. Then an old-timer told him, “That was an M-16.” And as Rick replayed the sound in his head, he realized it was an M-16, meaning it was shot by a friendly. Charlie used AK-47s. The sergeant in basic training had shot one off for the guys, so Rick knew the difference. He felt like an idiot. Well, at least some of the other guys had done the same thing.

  After they moved camp, Rick lay still in the darkness, listening for the other guys but not hearing them. These guys were pros.

  Rick had done his work for the day and didn’t have to take a watch. The world seemed peaceful, the breeze almost cool. This was war? He let himself drift off, Cracker pressed up against his legs. They weren’t allowed to sleep on their ponchos that night because ponchos made a rustling noise and also reflected light. So he kept his poncho rolled up in his rucksack. Some guys didn’t even bother to bring their ponchos. Cracker stood up and pulled lightly on her leash. Rick knew she wanted it off, but he felt too new to all this to take the chance.

  Except for one almost-cool breeze Rick felt, the temperature didn’t seem to drop at all during the night. But the clouds began to clear and the stars shone through. He slept well.

  When morning came, the sky was completely clear for the first time since he got to Vietnam. Far in the distant plains Rick could see a huge, green cone with remnants of red cloud hovering at the tip. Above it the sky was blue. It was a lone mountain, rising above the plains and rice paddies. He’d heard of it: Nui Ba Den—Black Virgin Mountain—named for a woman whose fiancé had died.

  Uppy took off his boots and peeled away long strips of skin off his feet.

  “Aw, man, can’t you do that in private?”

  Uppy laughed. “Immersion foot. Wait’ll you get it. It’s from wearing damp boots all the time.”

  “I ain’t getting no immersion foot,” Rick said.

  “How you gonna stop it?”

  “Willpower,” Rick said. Both men laughed. Rick could tell that Uppy was laughing with him. Uppy nodded toward a new guy who was taking out five pairs of neatly rolled socks, several pairs of boxers, and an extra shirt from his overloaded bag. The new guy picked out different clothes to put on, then stopped to swat wildly at some mosquitoes—Rick had already noticed that old-timers just waved them away or even ignored them. And he already knew that he’d rather stink and be filthy than carry extra clothes on his back. And then Rick knew he wasn’t a new guy anymore.

  Cracker stood up and shook herself off. She could hear the choppers in the distance. In a moment she saw everybody else getting up too.

  Rick picked up his bag and waited. The ambush was a bust. No snipers, no V.C., no nothing. He’d heard that was usually the way it went. You set up an ambush or humped the bushes for hours, or even for days, and nothing happened. Then, every so often, you made contact. Some guys had been in
country almost a year and had made contact only a handful of times. Other guys had had the bad luck to make contact a dozen times in three months. Rick wasn’t sure now whether he wanted to make contact or not. So far Vietnam just seemed like some kind of bizarro alternate universe where the leaves were as big as a man and where you never saw the enemy.

  He hopped on the Huey with Cracker and hung his legs out the door as they flew over the land. Cracker sat beside him, pressing against his arm.

  Thirteen

  ONE DAY CODY “REQUISITIONED” A POWER GENERATOR from a runway during a mission. The generator was just lying there unguarded, and Cody got a bunch of guys to help him carry it and throw it into a deuce-and-a-half. Nobody ever “stole” anything in Vietnam. Basically, if an item wasn’t nailed down, it was fair game. So you could requisition said item, and instead of Sarge being mad at you, you would rise in his estimation. So the 67th IPSD had traded the generator for material for kennels and barracks, which the handlers spent the next week building and surrounding with sandbags.

  Requisitioning was an important part of surviving in Vietnam. Mike was the base camp’s procurement specialist, and the 67th IPSD had appointed Twenty its personal procurement specialist-in country the guys often just shortened his name to “Twenty.” Twenty took the generator to Mike and not only got the building material, but also snagged a case of Coke. He was a better bargainer than Cody-Cody would give away his grandmother for a tiny jar of foot fungus cream. Another good thing about Twenty-Twenty was that his uncle just happened to be a well-decorated lieutenant colonel who just happened to be stationed in Saigon, who just happened to have dined at the White House, and who just happened to think the world of Twenty. Twenty’s uncle gave him a little extra bargaining power. Not a lot, because he couldn’t go crying to his uncle about any little thing. But the guys knew that if it was really important, Uncle was always there. Rick took the case of Coke back to Mike. Mike was actually wearing a paper crown. The man was power crazy. But no question, he was the king of the base. “Mikey. How about some shingles for the doghouse roofs?”