Chapter 12: 1945, A Marine, a dog and Hell

Dick Miller was a scout/sniper in the United States Marine Corps when he was identified by command to take part in the Marine’s dog training school at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He was just what the Marines needed for this program. Dick was young, strong, mean and cocky. He was also proficient with a rifle and had some experience with reconnaissance by scouting ahead of his platoon.

2 The program had begun in 1942 and employed a large number of Doberman Pinschers and German Shepherds as scout and messenger dogs. It had proved invaluable to Marines in the Battle of Guam where 25 dogs and three handlers had lost their lives scouting ahead of the units which they were assigned to protect. Indeed, they had saved many young marines from being ambushed or walking into hidden mines.

3 Dick was assigned a German Shepherd named Sandy to train with. Sandy was a male dog of about two years of age when he met his new handler. He weighed about eighty pounds, and he was all muscle.

4 At first, Sandy was chained to a post beside Dick; but it didn’t take long for the canine to figure out what he was expected to do. “Watch,” Dick commanded. Sandy took a few steps forward and crouched down ready to spring forward at his handler’s command.

5 Another marine approached the two, and Sandy went wild. He was snarling, barking and straining at his chain. “You old peckerhead,” Dick smiled and knelt down and gave Sandy a pat on the head.

6 Next, he placed Sandy on a leash, and the same exercise was repeated. Eventually, Sandy didn’t need a chain or leash. He was Dick’s dog now and would almost instinctively respond to whatever his handler wanted him to do.

7 One day, after Dick had returned Sandy to his kennel, he walked over to watch one of his buddies who had been assigned to the messenger dog program. “Watch this,” Sam smiled. Then he knelt down next to his dog and attached a message collar to the animal. He stood back up and said, “Report!”

8 The dog took off across the field and stopped in front of another Marine about one hundred yards away. “That’s not bad,” Dick smiled. “Oh, that’s nothing,” Sam replied. “Some of these dogs will carry messages for miles!”

9 The next morning, Dick and Sandy learned that they would be going to the Pacific. They were to be part of the United States Marines’ efforts centered on the Japanese controlled island of Iwo Jima.

10 Although B-29 Superfortress and B-24 Liberator bombers had been pounding the island since December, the Marine’s role in Operation Detachment didn’t really get started until February. The guns of the big battleships signaled the beginning of the invasion.

11 Within a few hours, thousands of Marines had stormed ashore under withering enemy fire. By the end of that first day, the Americans had already suffered over 2,400 casualties.

12 Nevertheless, the ground campaign to dislodge the Japanese from the island had just begun. Mount Suribachi, the central feature of the island, was riddled with caves and defensive positions and waiting Japanese soldiers.

13 It was a perfect hell. There were mangled bodies everywhere. The marines had to fight for every inch of ground. The volcanic soil and terrain of the island prevented digging in and offered few opportunities for cover.

14 After the tanks arrived, they had some cover; but the enemy was merciless. Even so, the tenacious Marines eventually reached the base of Mount Suribachi, and a small platoon quickly ascended the mountain and planted an American flag at its summit.

15 “We need our dog teams to scout ahead of our ground troops,” one officer requested. “These sneaky little slant-eyed bastards keep ambushing us and hitting us from places we thought we’d already cleared,” he reported.

16 Thus, Dick and Sandy (along with the other members of the War Dog Platoon) came ashore to support the units that were already in place. Sandy quickly went to work sniffing out enemy hiding places, mine emplacements and traps.

17 A bullet whizzed by Dick’s head and Sandy crouched down suddenly. Dick pulled the pin on one of his grenades and tossed it into the hole just ahead of them. The explosion sent something high into the air that landed right beside him. It was the head of a Japanese soldier!

18 By the end of the conflict, of the approximate 21,000 Japanese defenders, only about one thousand men were taken as prisoners. The Allies suffered about 25,000 casualties. Even so, Allied deaths were about one third of the enemy’s losses.

19 Eight of those who had been killed, however, were dog handlers. Nevertheless, Dick and Sandy had survived the carnage.

20 Dick did not know it then; but, as his time in the Pacific was drawing to a close, his cousin was walking into a different kind of hell in Germany. Hoyt Miller walked into what would later be referred to as a concentration camp and saw bodies stacked up like cordwood. The smell was beyond horrible, and it would stay with him for the rest of his life.

21 “The commander wants pictures of everything to prove to future generations that this really happened,” he heard a lieutenant say to a young man with a camera. Hoyt slowly turned to his buddy and said, “You let me ever hear anyone say that this didn’t happen, and I’ll punch him in the damn nose!”

22 In the meantime, after Iwo Jima was secured, Dick and Sandy returned to Camp Lejeune. Dick had a brother in the Navy, cousins in the Army and a friend in the Seabees. He wondered what stories they would have to tell when they got home.

23 Within a few months, the war was over. Dick and Sandy were finally discharged from the United States Marine Corps. Like so many of the over five hundred dogs who returned to the United States after the war, Sandy went home with Dick. He was Dick’s dog now.