By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent 

While watching the April 21st 60 Minutes segment on Special Ops dogs, I wasn't at all surprised to see that they ran the above photo of a U.S. Army handler with the 10th Special Forces Group and his MWD jumping off the ramp of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter into the Gulf of Mexico on March 1, 2011.

It's now been two years since we ran that photo as the opener to my FP photo essay "War Dog," after which the piece and the image went viral. At the time, people incorrectly assumed that I had taken the photo. I hadn't, of course. But the man who did was Tech. Sgt. Manuel J. Martinez, a career military photographer with the Air Force. I spoke with Martinez this week to find out what was going on behind the lens that day and to get the story of what's likely the most widely recognizable -- and most often used -- war-dog image of modern day.

As a combat photographer with flying status, Martinez, originally from a small town in New Mexico, has had a wild range of assignments -- from covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to riding along on search and rescue missions in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It was during the Katrina mission that Martinez shot a photo of a little boy being hoisted in the arms of Tech. Sgt. Lem Torres up into a helicopter from the roof of his flooded home. For Martinez, the experience was life altering. It was, he said, the first photo he took that really mattered.

He had no idea that some six years later, while cramped in the back of a CH-47 Chinook watching Special Ops teams run through routine water-training exercises, he would be taking what would become his most famous photo. They loaded the helicopter again and again, picking up SOC teams and dropping them the roughly seven feet from the helicopter into the water. Even if it was something of a rote mission, the guys, Martinez remembers, were having fun. "Everybody was all excited, all hyped. It was the Gulf of Mexico...it was beautiful."

But when Martinez saw on one of their pick-ups that they were loading a dog into the helicopter, he thought, "Holy crap. I have to get ready for it."

The dog team was the last of the teams to take their jump that day. And when it was their turn to go, the other men, already in the water, were cheering them on -- men who are also captured in this image. As many times as I've looked at this photo, it was something I'd never noticed before. But Martinez pointed them out to me, directing my eyes over the phone. If you look at the dog's muzzle, you can see them -- small and faint in a thin, vertical line, like gray shadows in the pink water. You can even see that the man who appears closest in the frame has his arm raised in triumphant encouragement.

In the end, Martinez says, the moment was fleeting. The dog team jumped out of sight and the helicopter returned to base.

Perhaps the most incredible thing that Martinez revealed during our conversation was the answer to a question I've had since the very first time I saw this photo, and one I've heard debated ever since. Did this dog jump willingly or did he have a little...help?

According to Martinez, the dog "did hop out" on his own steam.

From his vantage point in the Chinook, Martinez could see that the handler had his hand on the dog's harness, coaxing the dog, who hesitated, even if only slightly, at the edge of the ramp. "Ultimately," Martinez said, "it was the dog's effort."

When handler and dog jumped down into the water, they jumped together.

Rebecca Frankel is away from her FP desk, working on a book about dogs and war.

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent 

In the early 1970s, pilots taxiing their planes on the east ramp of Bien Hoa Air Base may have been ferried to their final destination by a dog named Bubbles.

The odd mix of golden lab and dachshund, whose 40-pound body reminded at least one airman of a Heinz 57 bottle, belonged to Staff Sgt. John E. Molnar, whose job it was to marshal in aircraft along the flight line marked by a yellow stripe. Bubbles, having watched Molnar do the job and apparently not afraid of the large planes, began to mimic his routine and took to walking ahead of them. "Once in awhile we put a headphone set and sunglasses on him and it really cracks up the pilots," Molnar told Stars and Stripes in 1971.

The job did come with certain hazards -- Bubbles had a close call with the "prop blasts of a C130 and was blown 15 feet through the air." Another time he "was almost sucked into the turbine of a commercial 707."

But that didn't stop Bubbles from taking the occasional nap on the runway. So at home was this dog among the planes and pilots that he often refused to budge. The pilots who had had grown fond of their assistant and mascot knew how to get him to "move in a hurry" -- revving up a nearby engine was all it took.

Tip of the hat to Tom who spied this gem earlier this week in Stars and Stripes's most excellent daily feature, Archive Photo of the Day. 

Rebecca Frankel is away from her FP desk, working on a book about dogs and war.

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Tacked up against a chain-link wall inside FOB Barioli in Helmand Province Afghanistan, is a large plywood sign. Its white paint is buckled and peeling, but you can't miss the message: "We Find What You Fear." Above that large lettering is a monstrous black paw, spray-painted across its middle in scarlet red: "K-9."

FOB Barioli is just one of the many intense backdrops of Glory Hounds, a new feature documentary that follows four U.S. Military Working Dog teams during their combat tours in Afghanistan. Glory Hounds, which premieres tonight at 8pm EST on Animal Planet, offers an in-depth and poignant look at a dog's role in modern war.

The film revolves around the mostly discreet and separate narratives of each handler and his dog -- Lance Corporal Kent Ferrell and Zora, Corporal Drew Nyman and Emily, Staff Sergeant Len Anderson and Azza, and Lance Corporal Durward Shaw and Falko. After introducing each dog team, the film bounces back and forth between their in-country experiences. The majority of these narratives unravel through the action of the moment -- out on patrols, during traffic searches, and while they kick back on base. (Full disclosure, I've written about some of the handlers and dogs featured in this film in my forthcoming book.)

Very little time is wasted in Glory Hounds setting up the premise of military dogs, their history in combat, or their introductory training. Instead John Dorsey and Andrew Stephan, the documentary's creators and directors, wisely focused their film, and subsequently their cameras, on the relationship between the handler and his dog and the dangerous job they do together.

Dorsey and Stephan kept the filmmaking formula pretty simple. As Dorsey explained during an interview earlier this week, "We [and our crew] just tried our best to have our cameras pointed in the right direction when these guys do the heroic stuff they do every day. We tried our best to do justice to the guys that were cool enough to let us ride shotgun."

Glory Hounds's crew worked out of Afghanistan for roughly 10 weeks time during the summer of 2012, embedding with these four dog teams and their units, following them from Camp Leatherneck to Kandahar Air Field to smaller outposts like Barioli. This transpired during the height of the fighting season, when these areas are at their most dangerous and the summer heat is at its hottest.

Through a mix of footage taken from helmet-mounted cameras worn by the handlers and from their embedded crew members (one soundman and one cameraman went out with every patrol), Glory Hounds reveals many rarely, if ever, captured moments of dog teams hunting IEDs outside the wire. The result is a riveting mix of high-pressure scenes -- from heavy firefights to finding a locked box possibly full of explosives, possibly triggered to blow. And Glory Hounds doesn't shy away from the gruesome realities of war -- the IED explosions or the resulting injuries -- leaving them on (almost) full display. And in that way, the two-hour film leans more Restrepo-esque than viewers might expect from an Animal Planet feature. Kudos to Dorsey and Stephan, Animal Planet, and the military for not scrubbing out the grit. The film is still plenty heartwarming; its more intense war scenes are rounded out by the quieter, softer moments captured in the film, but steers clear from being too cloying. The audience watches these young men call home to speak to their families or putting together a makeshift cake from MRE packs for a fellow handler's 21st birthday.

Read on

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Tanja, a Belgian Malanois, was up until her retirement from service this week, the longest serving military working dog in the Department of Defense. With a 12-year career behind her, she's deployed five times. They were impressive tours of duty that included uncovering IEDs and even stopping vehicles from making off with  "extremely valuable" stolen classified documents.

Tanja, a patrol and detection dog with the 366th Security Forces Squadron was stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. Her most recent handler, Tech. Sgt. Roseann Kelly, says that despite Tanja's age, the dog was still "kicking butt." During base patrol Tanja noticed a suspicious individual and alerted others to him. When they got close, Kelly says, "he decided to leave instead of deal with her."

Still, the tough exterior didn't mean she was above a little extra comfort. Tanja wasn't handling the cold weather like she used to so Kelly, who is adopting her partner, made sure the dog wore sweaters to keep warm even though the other handlers teased them. "I didn't care," Kelly insists, "because she liked it."

Rebecca Frankel's book about military working dogs will be published by Atria Books in August 2013.

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Two career MWDs, both at the ripe old age of eight, recently traded in their military leashes for the comforts of civilian life. Brit, a German shepherd, was formerly a "patrol narcotics detection dog for a military police unit at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington." Bubba (pictured), a chocolate lab with one tour in Iraq and one in Afghanistan behind him, was a bomb-sniffing dog for the Army.

Bubba's last tour in Afghanistan was apparently cut short when the 80-pound dog took a bad tumble, falling through a canvas roof. But his new owners, the Van Fleets, report that Bubba's wounded leg doesn't keep him from enjoying his new home or from taking measures to keep his new family safe. The couple, who lives in Trumansburg, NY, say that Bubba "will case the perimeter" of their home whenever he's outside and "insists on inspecting whatever object in one's hands."

Brit on the other hand, is continuing to offer his services to those in the military but in a rather different capacity. Along with his new owners, the Russells of Fayetteville, NC, Brit is making the rounds at the Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg as a therapy dog, having taken therapy-training classes in order to assist wounded veterans. He's only made a handful of visits so far, but his presence already seems to be making an impact.

"The boy is a traffic stop," [his owner, Russell, who accompanies Brit on these visits] says. "Everyone stops to say hello or give him a hug."... On several occasions, those soldiers have broken down in tears while hugging Brit and have thanked him for the service of military working dogs overseas...."They tell me 'When the dogs come, it makes our day.'"

Canine news of interest: The practical use of the canine nose seems without limits. This week I came across three very interesting articles about sniffer dogs being used to detect some pretty unexpected...things. In Britain dogs are helping authorities uncover counterfeit condoms, and in California dogs are being employed to track down fox droppings in an effort to preserve the endangered San Joaquin kit fox. They're also using dogs to sniff out fox dens in Queensland, Australia, though in this case it's to cull the population, not save it. Who knew?

Rebecca Frankel, on leave from her FP desk, is currently writing a book about military working dogs, to be published by Atria Books in August 2013.

I was talking about the 1943 American/British/Canadian campaign in Sicily the other day, which got me sidetracked into talking about the film Patton, which is how most Americans today know anything about that fight. Two little-known facts: The film was produced by Frank McCarthy, who had been an aide to George Marshall during World War II.

And, it was written by one Francis Ford Coppola. Given that much of the film takes place in Sicily, does that make it a kind of prequel to the Godfather series?

It does my heart good to see a story like this: When he was six years old, at sea with his mother in a wooden boat, Orlando Morel was rescued by the Coast Guard.

Now he is graduating from the Coast Guard academy, and scheduled to serve on a cutter in Florida. He is described by someone at the academy as "a phenomenal cadet."

A fake cop tried to pull over a real one in California!

(HT to Mongo)

bryan champ/Flickr