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WW2 Dispatch
  • 15 hours ago
Japanese infiltrators had mastered the Pacific night—until Marine war dogs began detecting danger without giving away the Marines’ position. On Bougainville, Dobermans Andy and Caesar helped spot hidden machine guns, carry messages through jungle, and silently wake Marines before enemy infiltrators could strike. Their greatest weapon wasn’t their bite; it was the warning that kept surprise on the Marines’ side.

From Guadalcanal and Bougainville to Guam and Peleliu, this WW2 military history documentary follows the dogs, handlers, and night battles that changed how Marines guarded their lines. Discover how silent alerts disrupted ambushes, why Japanese forces began targeting the dogs, and what the animals endured in combat. A narrated World War II story for viewers interested in Pacific War history, Marine Raiders, military dogs, wartime tactics, and true accounts of courage—also suited to calm historical listening and background viewing.

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Transcript
00:00November 1st, 1943. Cape Torokina, on the west coast of Bougainville.
00:06A column of marine raiders is pushing inland up a narrow jungle path the maps call the Mission Trail.
00:12And at the very front of that column, 20 to 30 yards ahead of the first rifleman, there is no
00:18rifleman at all.
00:20There is a Doberman Pinscher named Andy, working off the leash.
00:24Behind him walk his two handlers, Private First Class Robert Lansley of Syracuse, New York, and Private First Class Jack
00:31Mahoney.
00:33Behind them, a company of about 250 marines is trusting its life to a dog that, not long before, belonged
00:40to a man in Norristown, Pennsylvania.
00:43The trail is mud. The rainforest closes over it like a roof.
00:49Somewhere ahead are Japanese soldiers who have had time to choose their ground.
00:54Men who know that the first American to walk into their sights will never see them.
00:59Andy stops. He doesn't bark. He doesn't growl.
01:03He simply freezes, and his head turns toward a patch of jungle that looks exactly like every other patch of
01:09jungle.
01:11The raiders drop.
01:13Lansley reads that head the way a gunner reads a compass.
01:16And there, where the dog is pointing, is a Japanese machine gunner about to open fire.
01:23Before the day is over, Andy will do it three times.
01:26Keep one detail from that scene in mind.
01:29The dog didn't bark.
01:31That silence is going to matter far more in this story than anything a Doberman could do with its teeth.
01:37Now here's the question this video is going to answer.
01:40By the end of 1943, the Japanese infantryman had a reputation in the Pacific that no marine took lightly.
01:47He owned the dark.
01:48He could crawl to within yards of a foxhole without a sound.
01:53He called out in English.
01:55He cut telephone wire, rolled grenades into sleeping positions, and was gone before dawn.
02:01An American training bulletin summed him up in six plain words.
02:06The Japanese is a night fighter.
02:08And yet, on Bougainville, something strange began to show up in the marines' own accounts.
02:14Where the dogs lay at night, the infiltrators did not get through.
02:19Positions without a dog were penetrated.
02:21Positions with one were not.
02:24Not fewer of them.
02:26None.
02:28So why would the most practiced night fighters in the Pacific dread an animal that never made a sound?
02:34It wasn't the bite.
02:36The real answer is stranger than that.
02:38And it has to do with what the infiltrator was actually hunting when he crawled toward an American line in
02:44the dark.
02:45If you want to see how the U.S. Marines took the night back, one foxhole at a time, tap
02:50like and subscribe.
02:52It helps this story reach more people.
02:55Andy was not alone.
02:57That morning, sailors on the transport George Clymer had lowered 24 dogs over the side into landing craft.
03:04Most were Dobermans.
03:06A few were German Shepherds.
03:08And with them went 55 Marine handlers.
03:11They were the 1st Marine War Dog Platoon, under Lieutenant Clyde Henderson.
03:15And they came ashore about an hour behind the first wave.
03:19No unit like it had ever gone into combat with the Marine Corps.
03:23One of them was a big German shepherd named Caesar.
03:25His two handlers, Private First Class Rufus Mayo and Private First Class John Kleeman, split up that afternoon.
03:34Kleeman stayed at the command post.
03:36Mayo went forward with Lieutenant Francis Cunningham's company to a roadblock 1,500 yards up the Piva Trail, the tip
03:44of the beachhead, the most exposed ground the Raiders held.
03:48Cunningham had a radio.
03:50In that jungle, it was close to useless.
03:52The signal could not punch through the rainforest.
03:55So late on the first day, Mayo fixed a message to Caesar's caller and sent him back down the trail.
04:01Caesar covered the distance in minutes, far faster than any runner on two legs, and found Kleeman waiting.
04:08It was the first message the Marine Corps had ever sent in combat by dog.
04:12Picture that roadblock as darkness came on.
04:15A company of Marines strung out in the mud, cut off by jungle, with an enemy close enough to hear,
04:20and 12 hours of night ahead.
04:22It was exactly the kind of position the Japanese had spent a year learning to crack.
04:28Because the Marines had been here before.
04:30Fifteen months earlier, on Guadalcanal, they had learned what the dark meant on a Japanese island.
04:36They had lost sleep, lost nerve, and lost men to an enemy who seemed to know precisely how a tired
04:42American would react to a sound in the night.
04:46And long before anyone thought of dogs, the Marines had tried one defense against all of it.
04:52A single word.
04:54On a ridge on Guadalcanal, the Japanese had shown them exactly what they could do with that word.
05:00September 12, 1942.
05:02A grassy ridge south of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal.
05:06Lieutenant Colonel Merritt Edson's raiders and parachutists are dug in along its spine,
05:11and the Knight is about to show them exactly what kind of enemy they are fighting.
05:16Edson already knows the Japanese are listening to his radios.
05:19So his officers have stopped using their names.
05:22Captain Lou Walt has become Silent Lou.
05:25Edson himself is Red Mike.
05:28When a Marine on the net needs to know who is really on the other end, he asks a question
05:32only a Marine should be able to answer.
05:34What name do you identify with?
05:36Silent.
05:38And then a different voice breaks in.
05:40In perfect English.
05:42It is the enemy.
05:43And he wants the Marines to know he is there.
05:46Edson described that trick himself in notes the War Department printed for the entire army about a year later.
05:52In Robert Leckie's History of the Campaign, it happens that very night on the ridge.
05:58Edson's lesson was blunt.
06:03That night, the Japanese came at the ridge again and again.
06:10In Leckie's account, a voice in the dark, too precise, too careful, called out,
06:16Gas attack!
06:18There was no gas.
06:20Only smoke.
06:21And the panic that one word was meant to start.
06:24Now look closely at what the Japanese were really doing on that ridge, because it is the key to everything
06:31that follows.
06:32They weren't only trying to kill Marines.
06:35They were attacking the Marines' senses.
06:38His eyes, which could see nothing past a few yards.
06:42His ears, which turned every rustle into an enemy.
06:47His trust in his own language.
06:50His nerves, worn down night after night.
06:54Edson's notes describe one method precisely.
06:57A Japanese soldier would lie in the dark and work the bolt of his rifle back and forth.
07:02Click.
07:03Clack.
07:05A jumpy Marine would fire at the sound, and the moment he did, automatic fire came at him from another
07:11direction.
07:12The noise was bait.
07:14The real enemy was somewhere else, waiting for a muzzle flash.
07:19An earlier bulletin from Glottal Canal in New Guinea described the same idea on a larger scale.
07:25A big, noisy group drew the Americans' attention, while a small group slipped through behind it, cutting wire and brush,
07:33until it was firing into the Marines from the rear.
07:35The bulletin warned that fire from behind was apt to be so demoralizing that troops would break.
07:42So what could the Marines do?
07:44Everything they tried was human.
07:47Passwords.
07:48Nicknames changed every day.
07:50Hold your fire until you see a target.
07:52One bulletin suggested stringing tin cans on the wire, so a man crawling through would rattle them.
07:58And every one of those defenses still depended on a tired American hearing correctly, seeing correctly, and keeping his nerve
08:07at three in the morning.
08:09Remember that list.
08:10Every item on it could be beaten by a man patient enough and quiet enough.
08:16That was the whole art of the infiltrator.
08:18Now jump forward a year, to New Caledonia.
08:21In the weeks before the 2nd Raider Regiment sailed for Bougainville on October 30, 1943.
08:28The Raiders had a reputation of their own, and when a platoon of dog handlers turned up, plenty of them
08:33laughed.
08:35Dogs.
08:36In the hardest outfit in the Corps.
08:39Lieutenant Colonel Alan Shapley had just taken over from Evans Carlson, and he asked Lieutenant Henderson for a demonstration.
08:47The test was the one that mattered.
08:49Patrols led by dogs, sent down trails where Marines lay waiting to ambush them.
08:55Shapley watched, and he came away especially impressed by the messenger dogs.
09:00He asked for the whole platoon to be attached to his regiment, and he had only a few weeks to
09:05work them in before the ship sailed.
09:07Think about what a dog brought to that list of human defenses.
09:12A dog doesn't wait for the password.
09:14It doesn't care whether a voice in the dark speaks perfect English.
09:18A rifle bolt clicking in the brush can't trick it into shooting, because it isn't going to shoot.
09:23It reads the air for a man's scent, and hears sounds no Marine can hear.
09:28Every trick the infiltrator had perfected was designed to fool a human being.
09:33The dog wasn't one.
09:35That's the first layer of our answer, but only the first, because it raises a harder question.
09:41If the dog could find the infiltrator, why not bark and wake the whole line?
09:46Back to Bougainville.
09:48On the night of November 5th, at 10 o'clock, and again at 11.30, Japanese troops struck Company E
09:54at the PIVA roadblock.
09:55The Marine record notes that some of them were able to filter through the lines.
09:59Four days into the campaign, the old method still worked against men.
10:03And in that same first week, at Cunningham's position on the same trail,
10:08one infiltrator got close enough to throw a grenade into the foxhole where Rufus Mayo lay beside Caesar.
10:14By every rule of jungle war at night, Mayo should have died in that hole.
10:19Why he didn't is the first real clue to our question.
10:23To understand what happened in that foxhole, go back one day, to the morning of November 2nd.
10:29That morning, the Marines ran a field telephone line up the trail to the PIVA roadblock.
10:34And for a few hours, Cunningham's company didn't need a dog to talk to the rear.
10:40Caesar was put on sentry duty instead.
10:43Then, the line went dead.
10:45The Japanese had found the wire in the jungle and cut it.
10:49Notice how fast that happened.
10:52Cutting American wire was one of the oldest moves in the infiltrator's book.
10:56And it worked on the first day.
10:58So Caesar went back to work, running messages between Cunningham's position and Shapley's command post.
11:04He made the round trip eight times that day.
11:07And here is the detail I want you to hold on to.
11:11On those runs, Japanese snipers were shooting at him.
11:15Not at the Marines on the trail.
11:17At the black and gray shape moving fast through the undergrowth.
11:21It took the Japanese less than two days to work it out.
11:24If the dog was the new telephone line, the dog was the new thing to cut.
11:30Now the night.
11:31Rufus Mayo is asleep in a foxhole on the Piva Trail, with Caesar beside him.
11:37Somewhere in the dark, a Japanese soldier is crawling toward that hole.
11:41He has done everything right.
11:43He is moving slowly.
11:45He isn't making a sound the Marines on that line can hear.
11:49He knows that men who have been awake and soaked for days sleep hard.
11:53And that a single grenade into a sleeping position is worth more than an entire charge.
12:00Caesar wakes Mayo.
12:01Not with a bark.
12:03A war dog like Caesar was trained not to give himself away.
12:06And that one piece of training is the hinge this whole story turns on.
12:12The infiltrator in the dark has no idea anything has changed.
12:15As far as he knows, the foxhole in front of him is still full of sleeping Americans.
12:21It isn't.
12:23Mayo is awake.
12:24And when the grenade comes over the edge of the hole,
12:27he gets hold of it and throws it back out.
12:30It explodes among the men who threw it.
12:33Stop and think about what just happened.
12:35Because this is the second layer of the answer.
12:38Every trick the Japanese had used on Guadalcanal worked by making the American react.
12:44The clicking bolt was bait for a nervous rifleman.
12:47The voice in English was bait for a man who trusted his own language.
12:52The infiltrator needed the Marine to give something away.
12:56A shot.
12:57A flash.
12:58A word.
12:59A moment of panic.
13:01A dog that barks gives something away too.
13:04It tells the infiltrator he has been found.
13:06It tells him exactly where the foxhole is.
13:10He can hold still, wait, or throw his grenade before the Marine is fully awake.
13:17A dog that alerts in silence gives away nothing.
13:21The infiltrator keeps crawling toward an enemy he believes is asleep.
13:25And the Marine he is crawling toward is lying there, wide awake, with a weapon in his hand.
13:33The man who thought he was the ambush has become the target.
13:37And he will be the last to know.
13:40Near dawn, the Japanese tried again.
13:43This time, Caesar broke out of the foxhole and went at them.
13:47Mayo called him back.
13:48And Caesar obeyed.
13:49As he turned, Japanese rifle fire hit him in the left shoulder and the hip.
13:55Mayo dragged him out of the line of fire and packed his wounds with sulfa powder.
13:59Later, a surgeon found one of the bullets lodged close to Caesar's heart.
14:03So close that taking it out was judged too dangerous.
14:07They left it in.
14:09Within about three weeks, Caesar was back on duty, carrying that bullet with him.
14:14So now look at the score from the Japanese side.
14:16One grenade, thrown by a man who had done everything right, came back at him.
14:22One position that should have been asleep was awake.
14:25And the only casualty on the American side of that hole was the animal that had made the difference.
14:31Which is precisely the one the Japanese had been trying to kill all along.
14:36The Marines noticed something, too.
14:38Accounts of the platoon on Bougainville say that positions where the dogs stood guard were not infiltrated at night,
14:44while positions without a dog were, with serious results.
14:48Before long, men were digging their foxholes as close to the dogs as they could get.
14:53Hard men did that.
14:56Raiders, the same men who had laughed at the dogs in New Caledonia a few weeks before.
15:01But a foxhole at night was only half the war.
15:04In daylight, on the trails, the Japanese had a different weapon.
15:08And it was the one they were most proud of.
15:11Not the lone man crawling in the dark, but the prepared ambush.
15:16Machine guns sighted on both sides of a trail, waiting for an American column to walk into the crossfire.
15:23On November 14th, Andy led a column straight toward exactly that.
15:28What he did next would show the Japanese that a dog didn't only warn the Marines.
15:33It could turn the whole ambush inside out.
15:36November 14th, 1943.
15:38Two weeks into the campaign, a Marine column is moving up the PIVA trail,
15:43with four light tanks grinding along behind it.
15:46Out in front, as usual, is Andy.
15:49By now the Raiders know how this works.
15:51Andy ranges ahead, nose working, ears up.
15:56Lansley and Mahoney watch his head, not the jungle.
15:59The column watches the handlers.
16:02Andy stops.
16:03This time he isn't pointing at one rifleman in a tree.
16:07Ahead, set in on both sides of the trail,
16:10are two Japanese machine gun nests,
16:12sighted so that their fire crosses.
16:15It's the textbook Japanese ambush,
16:17the kind that had chewed up American columns on Guadalcanal.
16:21Let the patrol walk in, then open up from both flanks at once,
16:25so there is nowhere to go to ground that isn't in someone's sights.
16:29And because a dog has stopped in the mud,
16:31the column never walks in.
16:33What happens next is worth slowing down for.
16:37Bob Lansley does something that should sound familiar.
16:39He fires a burst from his Thompson submachine gun into the jungle,
16:43on purpose, to make the Japanese gunners shoot back
16:46and give away exactly where they are.
16:49Think back to Edson's notes from Guadalcanal.
16:52That was the Japanese trick.
16:54Make a noise, draw the American's fire,
16:56and kill him by the flash.
16:59Now it's a Marine using noise as bait,
17:02and he can do it for one reason.
17:05He already knows where the enemy is,
17:07and the enemy doesn't know he knows.
17:11The guns answer.
17:12Lansley runs from tree to tree toward them
17:15while Mahoney covers him.
17:16He throws two grenades into the dugouts,
17:19and the ambush is over.
17:21It was the most heroic thing I've ever seen,
17:24Mahoney said afterward.
17:26So here is the third layer of our answer.
17:29An ambush runs on one thing.
17:31Whoever sees first, wins.
17:34For two years, in the jungle,
17:37that had nearly always been the Japanese soldier,
17:40hidden, patient, motionless,
17:44waiting for a man who had to keep moving.
17:47The dog changed which side saw first.
17:50Once the column knew where the guns were,
17:52the men behind those guns stopped being an ambush.
17:55They became the target.
17:57Dug in, fixed,
17:59unable to move without being seen.
18:01And the record shows how complete that turnaround was.
18:06Cyril O'Brien,
18:07a Marine who served in the Pacific,
18:09wrote after the war that no patrol led by a dog on Bougainville was ambushed.
18:15Not one.
18:17The Japanese were not slow to react.
18:19Remember Caesar running the trail with snipers shooting at him?
18:23That wasn't an accident,
18:24and it didn't stop with Caesar.
18:27Another messenger dog,
18:28a German shepherd named Jack,
18:30was hit along with his handler at a roadblock.
18:33Jack kept going anyway,
18:35wounded,
18:35all the way to headquarters with the message,
18:37and help was sent to the company that had sent him.
18:41You can see the Japanese move now,
18:43the way you see a chess opponent's plan from his last three moves.
18:47Kill the dog first.
18:49Kill the dog,
18:50and the patrol goes back to being blind.
18:53Kill the dog,
18:54and the foxhole goes back to being asleep.
18:56But look at the trap hidden inside that plan.
18:59To shoot a dog,
19:01an infiltrator has to shoot.
19:03The moment he fires,
19:05he has done the one thing his whole craft was built to avoid.
19:09He has shown the Marines exactly where he is.
19:13The dog forced the hidden man to give himself away,
19:17either by being found,
19:18or by revealing himself to stop it.
19:21The first Marine war dog platoon
19:23stayed on Bougainville until January 23rd,
19:261944,
19:27almost 12 weeks.
19:30Here's the number that tells you what those weeks were like
19:32for the men holding the line with them.
19:35The platoon had gone ashore with 24 dogs and 55 handlers.
19:40When the accounting was done,
19:42of everyone who served there with the platoon,
19:45four did not come home.
19:47Two dogs,
19:49and two Marines.
19:51Twelve weeks in the jungle,
19:53against one of the best night-fighting armies in the world,
19:56and four lost.
19:59Hold that number,
20:01because the next island was going to look very different.
20:04The commanding officer of the 2nd Raider Regiment
20:07put his verdict in writing.
20:09The war dog platoon,
20:10he reported,
20:11had been an unqualified success,
20:14and the Marine Corps acted on it.
20:16More platoons were already training back in North Carolina.
20:20By the summer of 1944,
20:22two more of them were sailing west.
20:24The 2nd and the 3rd war dog platoons,
20:2760 dogs in all,
20:29attached to the 3rd Marine Division
20:31and headed for an island
20:32that had been American territory before the war
20:34and had been in Japanese hands
20:36since December of 1941.
20:39Guam.
20:40On Guam,
20:41the Japanese would stop treating the dogs as a nuisance
20:44and start hunting them.
20:45And the first dog they killed there,
20:47a Doberman,
20:48would end up standing in bronze
20:50above the graves of all the others.
20:52July 21st, 1944.
20:55The beaches at Asan and Agat
20:57on the west coast of Guam.
20:59Marines are coming ashore on American soil,
21:02and with the assault troops come the dogs.
21:05On the 3rd Marine Division's beaches alone,
21:08there are 60 of them,
21:09with 90 handlers,
21:1110 non-commissioned assistants,
21:132 corpsmen just for the dogs,
21:15and 3 kennelmen.
21:16They are spread out across the regiments
21:18so that almost every part of the line
21:20has a dog somewhere on it.
21:22Responsible for every one of those animals
21:24is a veterinarian.
21:261st Lieutenant William Putney
21:28is 24 years old.
21:30He went to veterinary school to treat animals,
21:32and he is now commanding Marines in combat
21:35on a Japanese-held island
21:37with 24 dogs and 36 handlers under him
21:40at division headquarters.
21:42Here is the first thing Putney
21:44and his men discovered on Guam,
21:46and it tells you how much had changed
21:48since Bougainville.
21:49The Japanese weren't surprised
21:51by the dogs anymore.
21:52They knew what a Doberman on the line meant,
21:54and from the opening days,
21:56machine gun fire, rifle fire,
21:58and mortars were killing and wounding the dogs.
22:01The Japanese had made their move.
22:03Now it was the dogs' turn.
22:05On the second day of the battle,
22:07a Doberman named Kurt
22:09was working out in front of a Marine unit
22:11with his handler,
22:12Private First Class Alan Jacobson.
22:14Kurt alerted.
22:16Ahead of them, waiting,
22:18was a large Japanese force
22:20that the Marines behind
22:21had no idea was there.
22:23Then the Japanese reacted
22:25the way they had learned to react.
22:26They went for the dog.
22:29Grenades and mortar rounds
22:30came down on Kurt's position.
22:32Kurt was badly wounded.
22:34So was Jacobson,
22:35who, by the account
22:37that has come down from his platoon,
22:39refused to be treated
22:40until his dog
22:41had been evacuated first.
22:43Kurt died that night.
22:44He was the first war dog
22:46killed on Guam.
22:48Tradition among the handlers
22:49holds that his warning
22:51saved some 250 Marines.
22:54Now look at this
22:54from the side of the Japanese soldier
22:56who threw that grenade.
22:58Because it is the fourth layer
22:59of our answer.
23:00And it is the one
23:02that must have been hardest
23:03for him to accept.
23:05He did everything right.
23:07He found the dog.
23:08He killed it.
23:10And it made no difference
23:12at all.
23:13Because by the time
23:14Kurt was hit,
23:15Kurt's job was already done.
23:18A dog's warning
23:19takes about one second.
23:21The head turning,
23:22the body going still.
23:24After that second,
23:26the Marines know.
23:28And nothing you do to the dog
23:29can make them stop knowing.
23:32Killing a war dog
23:33after it has alerted
23:34is like cutting a telephone wire
23:36after the message
23:37has gone through.
23:38The Japanese could make
23:39the dogs pay.
23:40And they did,
23:42terribly,
23:42on Guam.
23:44What they could not do
23:45was get the surprise back.
23:48Putney took Kurt's death
23:49personally.
23:50The handlers wanted him
23:52buried properly,
23:53and Putney agreed with them.
23:55As he wrote years later,
23:57the dog was a Marine,
23:58by God,
23:59and he deserved to be
24:00buried in the cemetery
24:01with the rest of the Marines.
24:03So he was.
24:04The Marines began a cemetery
24:06for their dogs near Asan,
24:08by the beach where they had landed,
24:10beside the graves of the men.
24:12It would not stay small.
24:14Putney lost a dog of his own
24:16on Guam,
24:17one named Cappy,
24:18in the fight for Cabras Island,
24:20at the mouth of Apra Harbor.
24:22And the losses kept coming.
24:24Here's a number to set
24:25against Bougainville.
24:27There,
24:27two dogs had died
24:29in nearly 12 weeks.
24:30On Guam,
24:32in about three weeks of fighting,
24:3425 dogs were killed,
24:36and around 20 more
24:37were wounded.
24:39Let that sink in.
24:40On one island,
24:42close to half of all the dogs
24:44that landed with the 3rd Division
24:45were killed or wounded.
24:47That number tells you
24:48something about the Japanese.
24:49It tells you they now
24:51treated the dogs
24:52as a real threat.
24:53A target worth a grenade,
24:55a mortar round,
24:56a man's position given away.
24:59You do not spend that kind of effort
25:01on something you don't fear.
25:03And still,
25:04the dogs kept doing their work.
25:06One of them,
25:07a Doberman named Cookie,
25:08was on security duty one night
25:10when she alerted her handler
25:11to 10 Japanese soldiers
25:13moving toward the position.
25:15Six of them were killed.
25:18On another occasion,
25:19when an outpost had no other way
25:21to talk to the rear,
25:22Cookie carried its message
25:23to the Division command post.
25:26Notice that both of Cookie's jobs
25:28were about the same thing,
25:30making sure the night
25:31didn't cut the Marines off
25:32from what was happening around them.
25:35Because that was the real battlefield
25:36on Guam,
25:37not the beaches,
25:39the dark.
25:41And the darkest night
25:42of the whole campaign
25:44was still to come.
25:45On the night of July 25th,
25:47the Japanese commander on Guam
25:49threw his men
25:50into the largest counterattack
25:51of the battle,
25:52a wave of assaults
25:54through the rain and the dark
25:55against the Marine lines.
25:58One small group of those attackers
26:00slipped past the front entirely.
26:02A Japanese platoon
26:04was working its way
26:05through the night
26:05toward the one place on Guam
26:07where Marines could not fight back,
26:10the 3rd Division's hospital.
26:12Standing between them
26:13and the wounded
26:14were Putney,
26:15his handlers,
26:16and their dogs.
26:18To see what the dogs
26:18meant on that night,
26:19you have to see the night
26:21from the Japanese side first.
26:23By July 25th,
26:25the Japanese on Guam
26:26knew the beaches were lost.
26:28Their commander,
26:29General Takashina,
26:31chose the one weapon
26:32he had left,
26:33the one his army
26:33had always trusted most,
26:35a massive attack
26:37in the dark.
26:38Not a single charge,
26:40but a whole night of them,
26:42with small groups
26:43pushing through the gaps
26:44between Marine positions
26:45and into the rear,
26:46where the artillery was,
26:48and the headquarters,
26:49and the wounded.
26:50It was everything
26:51we have seen
26:52since Guadalcanal,
26:53done on the scale
26:54of an army.
26:56Darkness to hide the approach,
26:58infiltration
26:59to get behind the line,
27:01fire from the rear
27:02to make the line break.
27:04And the night
27:05was as bad
27:06as the Japanese
27:07could have wished.
27:08It rained hard.
27:10Visibility
27:10was almost nothing.
27:12On Orote Peninsula,
27:14in front of the
27:141st Provisional Marine Brigade,
27:16the attacks came screaming
27:18out of a mangrove swamp
27:19after midnight,
27:20again at about 1.30,
27:22and again around 3.
27:23Some of the attackers
27:24were reported
27:25to be drunk on sake.
27:27Officers charged
27:28Marine tanks
27:29with swords.
27:30Other attacks
27:31were cold
27:32and disciplined,
27:32and some Marines
27:33were bayoneted
27:34in their foxholes.
27:36Between midnight
27:37and 3 in the morning,
27:38American artillery
27:39threw 26,000 shells
27:41into that pocket,
27:43walking the fire
27:44closer and closer
27:45to the Marine's own line.
27:4726,000 shells
27:49in 3 hours.
27:50That's well over
27:51100 shells a minute,
27:53all night,
27:54into grounds
27:55smaller than
27:56many American towns.
27:58Now ask yourself
27:59what that number
27:59really means.
28:01You can't fire
28:0226,000 shells
28:04into the dark
28:05at random
28:06and help your own men.
28:08Artillery like that
28:09needs targets
28:10and timing
28:11and Marines
28:12who know where
28:12the enemy is coming from.
28:14A night attack
28:15built on surprise
28:16was being met
28:17wave after wave
28:19by men
28:20who were not surprised.
28:21Cyril O'Brien's
28:22account of the dogs
28:23on Guam
28:24says it plainly.
28:26During the counterattack
28:27of July 26th,
28:28the dogs in the line
28:30detected the enemy
28:30before the attack hit.
28:32At daylight,
28:34more than 400
28:35Japanese bodies
28:36lay in the driving rain
28:37in front of the brigade.
28:39But a night like that
28:40always leaks.
28:42Over on the 3rd Division's front,
28:44small groups of Japanese
28:45got through the line,
28:46just as they were meant to.
28:49One of them
28:49was a platoon,
28:50and it was moving
28:51through the dark
28:52toward the Division hospital.
28:54Here is where
28:55the young veterinarian
28:56from Part 5
28:57stops being a veterinarian.
29:00Lieutenant William Putney's
29:01handlers
29:02were defending ground
29:03near the Division headquarters
29:04when he spotted
29:05that Japanese platoon
29:06heading for the wounded.
29:08What he did next
29:09tells you exactly
29:10what he understood
29:11about his dogs.
29:13He ordered his handlers
29:14to tie their dogs
29:15to bushes.
29:16Then he put the men
29:17into a firing line,
29:19directly in the path
29:20of the enemy.
29:22Think about that order.
29:24Putney did not send
29:25the dogs at the Japanese.
29:27The dogs had already
29:28done what dogs were for.
29:30They had made sure
29:31that this attack,
29:32in this rain,
29:33on this night,
29:35was coming at Marines
29:36who knew it was coming.
29:39The rest of the job
29:40was for men with rifles.
29:42A Japanese machine gun
29:44opened fire on the handlers.
29:46Putney stood up in the open,
29:48fired at the gun,
29:49and silenced it,
29:50killing both gunners.
29:51He was wounded,
29:52and he kept pushing
29:53his men forward.
29:55When it was over,
29:57the Japanese platoon
29:57was gone.
29:58Every man in it,
30:00including the officer
30:01leading it.
30:02Down at the hospital,
30:03doctors,
30:04corpsmen,
30:05and wounded Marines
30:06themselves
30:06had taken up weapons
30:07to drive off the attackers
30:09who reached them.
30:11Now step back
30:12and see what Takashina's
30:13great night attack
30:14had actually become.
30:16It was supposed to be
30:18the infiltrator's masterpiece.
30:20Instead,
30:20along much of the line,
30:21it turned into the thing
30:23the Japanese
30:23had always avoided.
30:25A charge
30:26into prepared positions
30:27under artillery
30:28against Americans
30:29who were awake
30:30and waiting.
30:32The parts that did get through
30:34ran into handlers
30:35who had been warned
30:35and men in the rear
30:37who weren't caught asleep.
30:38That is the fifth layer
30:40of our answer.
30:41The dogs could not
30:42stop an army.
30:43What they did
30:44was take away
30:45the one condition
30:46every Japanese night attack
30:48depended on.
30:49Without surprise,
30:50the dark was no longer
30:51an advantage.
30:53It was just
30:54dark.
30:56The battle for Guam
30:57ended in August.
30:58The dogs and their handlers
31:00had gone out
31:00on hundreds of patrols
31:01as scouts and sentries,
31:03flushing out snipers,
31:05checking caves,
31:06and guarding marine positions
31:07through the night.
31:08And the cemetery
31:10by the beach at Asan
31:11now held 25 dogs.
31:13The handlers knew
31:14there was a price
31:15that never appeared
31:16on any casualty list.
31:19Two months later,
31:20on another island,
31:22a war dog platoon
31:23began keeping a record of it.
31:25A few lines a day
31:26about what happens
31:28to a dog
31:28when the night never ends.
31:31What they wrote down
31:32explains,
31:33better than anything else,
31:35what the infiltrators
31:36had really been fighting.
31:37September 16, 1944.
31:40Pelelu.
31:41One day after the landing.
31:43A marine war dog platoon
31:45is keeping a log,
31:46the way every unit does,
31:47and today's entry is short.
31:49Dogs becoming very nervous
31:51under heavy mortar fire.
31:54Pelelu was a different
31:55kind of island.
31:56No soft jungle floor
31:57to dig into,
31:58just sharp coral,
31:59a heat that reached
32:01into the hundreds,
32:02and Japanese defenders
32:03who had stopped
32:04making wasteful charges
32:05and settled into caves
32:06to wait.
32:07They shelled the marine perimeter
32:09day and night,
32:10and at night,
32:11they came out to infiltrate.
32:13The dogs worked
32:14through all of it.
32:15A dog with the 5th
32:16war dog platoon
32:17earned a letter of commendation
32:18for warning a marine patrol
32:20of a Japanese sniper.
32:21The entire platoon
32:23was thanked in writing
32:24by General Rupertus,
32:25commanding the 1st Marine Division.
32:27But read the log forward,
32:29a few days at a time,
32:31and watch what it records.
32:33September 19,
32:35Rusty, number 222,
32:37attacked his handler
32:38and had to be destroyed.
32:40September 20,
32:41the dog's feet are bruised
32:43and cut from the coral.
32:45September 21,
32:47Nemo and Bingo,
32:48who had been shell-shocked
32:49and wounded,
32:49became completely uncontrollable
32:51and had to be destroyed.
32:53The same day,
32:55another platoon reports
32:56its dogs exhausted,
32:57their feet badly cut.
33:00September 26,
33:01dogs evacuated to the rear,
33:04wounded or suffering
33:05from concussion and deafness.
33:07On September 19,
33:09Private First Class
33:10Charles Linhart
33:11of the 5th War Dog Platoon
33:12was hit.
33:13His dog, Blitzkrieg,
33:15came through Peleliu,
33:16but not in good health.
33:18The Marines offered Linhart
33:20a new dog.
33:21He didn't want another one.
33:23He asked for a transfer
33:24to the 5th Marine's
33:25scouts and snipers instead.
33:28Now put that log
33:29next to everything we've seen,
33:30because this is where
33:32the whole answer comes together.
33:33What are those entries
33:35actually describing?
33:38Nervousness under constant fire,
33:40exhaustion,
33:41shell shock,
33:43a creature on watch so long
33:45under so much strain
33:46that it finally breaks.
33:48That is exactly
33:49what the Japanese night war
33:50was designed to do to a man.
33:53Go back to the bulletins
33:54from Guadalcanal.
33:55The noise was meant to draw fire
33:57and also to demoralize.
34:00Fire from behind
34:01was apt to make troops break.
34:03The clicking bolt,
34:04the voice in English,
34:06the shout of gas attack
34:08in the dark.
34:08None of it was really aimed
34:10at a Marine's body.
34:11It was aimed at his nerves,
34:13his attention,
34:14his ability to stay awake
34:16and think clearly
34:17for one more night
34:18and then another.
34:19That was the infiltrator's
34:21true target.
34:22Not a foxhole.
34:23The mind of the tired
34:25American inside it.
34:27And the dog
34:28took that target
34:29away from him.
34:30The dog stood the watch.
34:33The dog carried the strain
34:35the Japanese meant
34:36for the man.
34:37So completely
34:38that on Pelelu,
34:40it was the dogs that broke.
34:42Five months later,
34:43on Iwo Jima,
34:44a photographer caught the result
34:46in a single frame.
34:48The caption from February 1945
34:50reads,
34:51Private First Class Res P.
34:53Hester,
34:547th War Dog Platoon,
34:5625th Regiment,
34:57takes a nap
34:58while Butch,
34:59his war dog,
35:00stands guard.
35:01Look at what is in that picture.
35:03A Marine,
35:04asleep,
35:05on Iwo Jima,
35:07in a hole within reach
35:08of the Japanese,
35:09and his dog awake beside him.
35:12On that same island,
35:14a dog named Fritz
35:15picked up three Japanese
35:16infiltrators
35:17before they could throw
35:18their grenades.
35:19Another,
35:20named Carl,
35:21gave warning
35:22of a bonsai charge.
35:23So here,
35:24finally,
35:25is the full answer
35:26to our question.
35:28The Japanese infiltrator
35:30had spent the war
35:30mastering one thing,
35:32owning the night
35:33against a human being.
35:35Every trick he had
35:36was built
35:37to beat human eyes,
35:38human ears,
35:40human language,
35:41and human nerves.
35:43Then the Marines
35:43put an animal
35:44on the line
35:45that none of those tricks
35:46could touch.
35:47It didn't wait
35:48for a password.
35:49It didn't answer
35:50a voice in English.
35:52It didn't shoot
35:53at the clicking bolt.
35:54It found him first,
35:56and told the Marines
35:57in silence,
35:58so that the man
35:59crawling forward
36:00never knew
36:00he was the one
36:01being hunted.
36:02But the deepest reason
36:03he had to dread
36:04that dog
36:04was simpler.
36:06A Marine
36:07whose dog was on watch
36:08could sleep.
36:09The official Marine
36:10history of Guam
36:11put it in one line.
36:13The presence of dogs
36:14on the line
36:15could promise the Marines
36:16there a night's sleep.
36:18A night's sleep
36:19for men the Japanese
36:21had been trying
36:21for three years
36:22to keep awake,
36:24afraid,
36:24and firing at shadows.
36:27And a Marine
36:28who has slept
36:28is the most dangerous
36:29thing on the island
36:31at dawn.
36:32The infiltrator
36:33wasn't afraid
36:34of being bitten.
36:35He was losing
36:36the only battlefield
36:37where he had ever
36:38held the advantage.
36:39The dark
36:40was turning American.
36:42Now look at the cost,
36:44because there's
36:44one more part
36:45of this story.
36:46By the end of the war,
36:48the dogs
36:48who had guarded
36:49those lines
36:50had done their job,
36:51and the Marine Corps
36:52had a plan
36:53for what to do
36:53with the survivors.
36:55The decision
36:56was summed up
36:56in a single phrase,
36:58and the veterinarian
36:59who had stood
36:59in front of
37:00the 3rd Division
37:00Hospital on Guam
37:02refused to accept it.
37:03April 17, 1945.
37:06Northern Okinawa
37:09Caesar,
37:09the German shepherd
37:10who ran the Piva Trail
37:12eight times
37:12under sniper fire,
37:14who woke Rufus Mayo
37:15in time to throw
37:16a grenade back,
37:17and who carried
37:18a Japanese bullet
37:19next to his heart,
37:20had gone on
37:21from Bougainville
37:21to Guam,
37:22and from Guam
37:23to Okinawa.
37:25On that day,
37:26in the north
37:26of the island,
37:27he was killed
37:28in action.
37:29He had been at war
37:31for 17 and a half months.
37:33He had started it
37:34at the very first roadblock,
37:36on the very first day,
37:38carrying the first message
37:39the Marine Corps
37:40ever sent by dog.
37:43Four months later,
37:44the war was over,
37:45and the Corps
37:46had to decide
37:47what to do
37:47with the dogs
37:48that were left.
37:49Many of them
37:50had been trained
37:51to treat every stranger
37:52in the dark
37:53as an enemy.
37:55Headquarters doubted
37:56they could ever
37:56be made safe again,
37:57and the thinking
37:58was summed up
37:59in a phrase
37:59that the handlers
38:00would remember
38:01for the rest of their lives.
38:03There was no time
38:04for any other solution.
38:07William Putney disagreed.
38:09He was a veterinarian
38:10before he was anything else,
38:12and he had watched
38:13these animals
38:14for two years.
38:16He argued
38:16that most of them
38:17could be brought back,
38:18taught to live
38:19in a house again,
38:20to sleep at the foot
38:21of a child's bed
38:22instead of beside
38:23a foxhole.
38:25He set up a program
38:26to do it,
38:27one dog at a time,
38:28and the Marine Corps
38:29led him.
38:30It worked.
38:32Nearly every one
38:33of the dogs
38:33that went through it
38:34went home.
38:35Some went back
38:36to the families
38:37who had loaned them
38:38in 1942.
38:39Others went home
38:40with the Marines
38:41who had handled them.
38:43Only a handful
38:44were judged
38:44too dangerous
38:45to release.
38:47Charles Linhart,
38:48the handler
38:48wounded on Peleliu,
38:50came home
38:50and joined
38:51the Pennsylvania State Police.
38:54Then Blitzkrieg's
38:55pre-war owner
38:55tracked him down
38:56and gave him the dog.
38:59Homer Finley
39:00of Elmira, New York,
39:01who had enlisted at 17
39:02and landed with the dogs
39:04on Bougainville,
39:05found his old messenger dog,
39:07Jack,
39:08at Camp Lejeune
39:08at the end of the war.
39:10Somebody warned him
39:11to keep back,
39:12that the dog was vicious.
39:14Jack knew him at once.
39:16Finley called it
39:17the highlight
39:17of his time
39:18with the dogs.
39:19Putney stayed
39:20with them for years,
39:21serving as chief veterinarian
39:23and commander
39:23of the War Dog Training School,
39:25and then went into practice
39:26as a civilian veterinarian
39:28in Woodland Hills, California.
39:30Nobody gave him a medal
39:32for the night
39:32in front of
39:33the 3rd Division Hospital.
39:34Half a century later,
39:36a former commanding officer
39:37resubmitted the paperwork.
39:39At 75,
39:41William Putney
39:42received the Silver Star
39:43at the National Memorial Cemetery
39:45of the Pacific
39:46in Honolulu.
39:47But there was
39:48one more thing
39:49he wanted done.
39:50The graves by the beach
39:52at Asan
39:52had been neglected
39:53for decades.
39:55Putney raised money
39:56and lobbied
39:56for a proper memorial,
39:57and in June of 1994,
40:00Navy Seabees
40:01moved the dogs' remains
40:02and their markers
40:03to a new cemetery
40:04on the naval base
40:05on Guam.
40:06It was dedicated
40:07on July 21, 1994,
40:1050 years to the day
40:12after the dogs
40:13came ashore.
40:14Above the grave
40:14stands a bronze Doberman,
40:16sitting,
40:17alert,
40:18ears up,
40:19facing outward.
40:20The sculpture is called
40:22Always Faithful.
40:24It is modeled on Kurt,
40:25the first one to die there.
40:27William Putney died in 2003,
40:30at the age of 83.
40:32So come back to where
40:33this story started.
40:35November 1, 1943,
40:37the mission trail
40:38on Bougainville.
40:40A Doberman named Andy,
40:42freezing in the mud,
40:43with his head turned
40:44toward a patch of jungle
40:45that looked like
40:46every other patch of jungle.
40:48Remember that he didn't bark.
40:50That silence
40:51was the whole thing.
40:53For two years,
40:55the Japanese infiltrator
40:56had owned the night
40:57by beating the senses
40:59of tired American men.
41:01Their eyes,
41:02their ears,
41:02their language,
41:04their nerves.
41:05The dog took that
41:06away from him.
41:08It found him first.
41:10It warned the Marines
41:11without warning him.
41:13And it stood the watch
41:14so the man beside it
41:16could finally rest.
41:17That is why the infiltrators
41:19dreaded those dogs.
41:20Not their teeth.
41:22The dogs gave the night
41:24back to the Marines.
41:26And somewhere on Iwo Jima,
41:28in February of 1945,
41:30in a hole within reach
41:32of the enemy,
41:33Private First Class
41:34Rez Hester
41:35of the 25th Marines
41:37was asleep
41:38because his dog
41:39was awake.
41:41Thank you for watching
41:42this story to the end.
41:44If it meant something to you,
41:45please hit like.
41:46It genuinely helps
41:48the story of the U.S. Marines
41:49and their war dogs
41:50reach more people
41:51who have never heard it.
41:53Subscribe and turn on the bell
41:54so you don't miss the next one.
41:56And tell me in the comments
41:57where you're watching from.
41:59If your father,
42:00grandfather,
42:00or uncle served
42:02in the Second World War,
42:03write his name
42:04and the unit he served with.
42:06Maybe he was a Marine.
42:08Maybe he stood a night watch
42:09just like these.
42:11Every name in those comments
42:13keeps one more story
42:14alive.
42:15Thank you,

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