Army & Navy – OPERATIONS: Devil Dogs

In a deadly green valley on Guam, a Marine in mottled battle dress worked slowly forward, Garand at the ready. Ahead of him crept another mottled figure: a brown and black Doberman pinscher with ears acock. Now and again the dog stopped; the Marine hand-signaled to it and the dog moved on. Then suddenly the Doberman stiffened. The Marine raised his rifle and the valley echoed with shots. From a tree ahead a Jap sniper tumbled and lay still.

In the Pacific, as they had in Italy, U.S. dogs of war were proving themselves. On Bougainville, where the dogs got their first combat test, many a Marine took a dim view of them. Said one: “The damned things would get loose and they would go around biting hell out of everybody.” But by the time the Marines got to Guam, dogs as well as handlers were veterans; the Marines were more used to them.

The Meaner the Better. Guam’s fighting kennel has about 60 dogs, mostly Dobermans, some German shepherds, a few other breeds. Their skill at ferreting out snipers terrified the Japs there from the beginning. One dog chased four Japs into a cave, where they committed suicide with grenades rather than fight it out. All the animals are trained to attack and kill on signal. Said a sergeant handler: “They are mean dogs and we make them meaner.”

Some are trained as messengers, taught to trust only two handlers. They will carry messages from one of these men to the other over all kinds of terrain, against all kinds of odds, avoiding anyone else, attacking anyone, Jap or American, who tries to stop them. On a test through heavy jungle one dog covered 1,600 yds. in four-and-a-half minutes. It took a Marine runner eleven minutes to cover the same ground. If necessary a dog can carry 150 rounds of ammunition in a saddle pack.

At night, while star shells, flares, bomb flashes flicker across the Guam sky, faint barks can be heard from distant outposts. The dogs are standing watch with sentries, ready to give warning if the Japs try to work into the Marines’ lines.

Three dogs have been killed on Guam, one wounded; one is missing. Luckiest dog was Tippy, who was guarding a foxhole when a mortar shell hit. One Marine was killed. Tippy was blown six feet into the air but suffered only a stiffened rear end.