Surviving Vietnam War Thanks To 'Man's Best Friend' by U.S. Army Chuck Cannon
January 19, 2019
When Jerry Shirley left his home in DeRidder for the U.S. Army’s
basic training on April 1, 1968, he thought he was headed, like most
other draftees from Southwest Louisiana, to Fort Polk and a date
with its infamous Tigerland.
“I was wrong — sort of,” Shirley
said. “Fort Polk was full, so I ended up at Fort Benning, Georgia
for basic training. From there, I went to Fort McClellan, Alabama,
for MOS 11C — mortar man — training. I thought, ‘At least I don’t
have to go to Tigerland.’”
At least he thought.
Shirley said when he rode through the gate at Fort McClellan, their
first thing that greeted new arrivals was a sign that read, “Welcome
to Tigerland.”
“It turned out Fort McClellan also had a
Tigerland,” Shirley said. “The only difference was theirs had
mountains.”
About two weeks before graduating, Shirley said
the Soldiers in his advanced individual training unit heard rumors
they were headed back to Fort Benning for scout dog school.
“I thought, ‘Scout dog school? I don’t even like dogs,’” he said.
The rumors turned out to be correct and Shirley and his
classmates returned to Georgia to learn dog training and handling.
He said the first two weeks of school were spent in garrison, living
in barracks and learning about how to handle dogs. Then came the
“fun” part of school.
“We spent the next 10 weeks in pup
tents in the field training dogs,” he said. “We rappelled with our
dogs out of helicopters, down mountains and off the side of hills.
We’d make a sling out of a poncho and lower the dogs down.”
After finishing school, Shirley said it was off to Vietnam where he
spent about 10 days training with his assigned dog, before being
picked up by his unit, 34th Infantry Platoon (Scout Dog), 1st
Cavalry Division.

U.S. Army Jerry Shirley, with his
scout dog, Jack, in front of their unit, the 34th Infantry
Platoon (Scout Dog), 1st Cavalry Division, in Vietnam in
1969. (Photo courtesy of Jerry Shirley)
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Shirley said scout dogs and their handlers served an important —
and dangerous — role in Vietnam, one not lost on the North
Vietnamese Army.
“We learned we had a $1,000 bounty on our
heads — both the Soldier and the dog,” he said. “We walked point,
down trails. The dog was first, I was second. Most of the time units
would call for us to go out with them when they thought the were
about to get in some bad stuff.”
And as far as the training
with ponchos to let their dogs down easily, Shirley said that went
out the window in Vietnam.
“I never had to rappel with my dog
in Vietnam,” he said. “Most of the time we were inserted by
helicopter, and I’d just toss my dog out, then follow him.”
Once on the ground, Shirley said he would put his dog on a choke
chain.
“When we were ready to go on a mission, we’d put a
harness on them,” he said. “As we moved down the trail we’d say,
‘Search boy, search, find him, where is he?’”
Shirley said
his life depended on his dog, how Shirley could read him. He said he
had three dogs while in Vietnam — Ricky, a Black German Shepherd who
had heat stroke and had to be euthanized; Billy, who Shirley refused
to go to the field with because he was unreliable; and Jack.
“Jack was a good dog and could work off of his leash,” Shirley said.
“I knew how to read him; if he alerted I would let the unit know and
it would be up to them to check it out.”
Walking point can
be stressful, Shirley said, especially in jungle canopy or at night
when visibility was bad.
“When you’re on point, you don’t
know what’s out there,” he said. “It was hair-raising all the time.
Often the enemy was just minutes away. It was a scary thing the
whole time, especially when you were on point. You had to know and
trust your dog.”
As a result, Shirley said he kept what he
did in Vietnam to himself while over there.
“I didn’t let my
parents know what it was like over there,” he said. “My mom would
have worried herself sick if she had known what I was really doing.”
Shirley said when his dog alerted, the dog would normally sit,
start sniffing and perk his ears up.
“I’d go tell the unit I
was with which direction he alerted,” he said. “They would go check
it out. Once we were walking down a trail near Cambodia and the dog
alerted. A member of the unit came up behind me. There was a
footprint on the trail. He said it was about 5 minutes old.”
The unit set up that night and Shirley said he was in the middle of
the perimeter with the commander and the radio operator.
“I
remember hearing the scouts on the listening posts saying there’s
hundreds of them (enemy) out here going down the trail carrying
flashlights,” Shirley said. “Trip flares started going off and I
guess I was just blessed because nothing happened that night. I got
out the next day and that night the unit was wiped out.”
Once
his year in Vietnam was complete, Shirley said he returned home to
DeRidder.
“When I came home, my parents, brothers and
sisters-in-law and other family members met me at the airport,” he
said. “No one ever called me a baby killer or spit on me, so I can’t
relate to that. But there was no welcome home ceremony for anyone.”
Shirley said the biggest difference he sees in Vietnam-era
Soldiers and today’s Soldiers, who he’s in contact with as part of
the role-playing team at the Joint Readiness Training Center is the
training.
“Soldiers today are trained a lot different,” he
said “From day one, when I went to basic, it was ‘You’re going to
Vietnam and you’re going to kill.’ We’d do our training and they
told us, ‘If you don’t do it like this, when you get to Vietnam,
you’re going to get killed.’ Then the day I got back from Vietnam,
they expected you to be normal. It’s hard to be normal. There is a
lot more offered to vets now than there was back then.”
Shirley said not a day goes by that he doesn’t think about something
in Vietnam.
“It’s embedded there,” he said. “We rode on
helicopters a lot, and every time I see a helicopter, my first
thought is Vietnam. I’m sure today these guys don’t get away from it
either. Anytime you have an experience like that, it stays with you.
“I’ve seen things that no one should have to see. They’re
implanted in my mind, and they don’t go away. I pray a lot and ask
the Lord to help. I realize I’m home today because the Lord
protected me.”
Shirley said he sometimes wonders how he made
it out of Vietnam alive.
“I’ve wondered that for years,” he
said. “I wondered why. Our life expectancy as a Soldier who walked
point was not very long”.
He said he learned to appreciate
what the term “suck it up” means.
“Two feet sticking out of a
steel pot,” he said. “You can make yourself scarce if you want to.
That helped when you were in Vietnam.”
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