Striking A Blow For Freedom

[Ben_Rumson]

Over in the 1968 Nam, our First Sgt made a swap and got a beautiful German Shepard. The dog wasn’t any good in the field but was still good as a watch dog. Trouble was Top had callously swapped the nearby Scout Dog platoon for him with our sand bags we had filled but had not yet stacked around all of our hooches... of course his hooch had more than the required amount of sand bags around it ...Needless to say that act among other stunts he had pulled didn’t endear that old alcoholic lifer of 29 years into our mostly twenty year olds hearts any farther...He liked to walk around the compound with the big dog on its leash and intimidate the troops with him if he could... But there was one amongst us that despised that dog from the get go, and consequences be darned, first chance he got, he whole heartedly lashed out at the dog...in the process, struck a blow for freedom and the American way that none of us really could have done.....It was our insane Monkey mascot, Jocko!!...10 or 12lbs of pure Dee rompin’ stompin’ monkey hood!.... Jocko was always kept on a 20 ft chain, with leash around his neck... One eve we were out smokin’ & jokin’ sipping suds atop a bunker a certain group of us hung out on after hours, and along comes Top ambling by, nursing prolly at least his third sundowner... He and his “watch dog” were soon shown to be oblivious of any threat from above, .... Jocko flung himself down from about eight feet off the top the bunker to land cowboy style on the dogs’ back ...envision junior cowboy kids at the Rodeo trying to hang on and ride an accelerating goat or sheep... Jocko’s arms were locked around the dogs’ neck... he was working out on the dogs’ head & ears and anything else he could sink his evil little teeth into... It was impossible to stifle the laughter at the hilarious sight of watching what the half drunk First Sgt. was in the middle of...It was a mad minute of monkey mayhem!.. Top was cussing and yelling and yanking on a leash that literally disappeared into a swirling cloud of dust... It looked cartoonish ...The snarling dog spinning circles, lunging and snapping,....old Jocko hangin’on for dear life, insanely chewing away on the dog’s head ......Too bad Jocko wasn’t wearing a bandana and waving a hat to complete the picture!... No way was Top reaching into that howling growling circus of mayhem to break up the fight ... Finally, the guy that claimed to own the insane little devil broke up the party and yarded Jocko back up by the chain atop the bunker......Tops’ dog was always known thereafter as Bronc...........and Jocko...Well, he finally went totally and permanently insane, hating and attacking everyone. Unfortunately he broke into the foot locker of the guy that claimed to be his owner, and after eating the labels off of the canned goods stashed in there, he ate the C-4 the guy was using to cook said canned goods with...

Cunningly, Jocko was traded for a Parrot to some Grunts who thought they could tame him ...Last I heard he’d attacked some Vietnamese and was awarded another medal of some kind ...

[olyinaz]

Great story.

Oly

[44magHunter]

I'd a shot that Jako a long time ago. I couldn't watch a shepherd (real dog) suffer......

[jnyork]

Great story. Thanks.

[Washita]

I musta missed something: what was it that the dog did to deserve that kind of treatment? Sounded to me like you guys shoulda gone after the 1st Sgt, not the dog.

[jeepnik]

Ahh, shepards, even working dogs ain't so tuff. Over in Spain we had a female bloodhound, Jennifer. One afternoon, the sky cops came through the firehouse with a dope dog. Well ole Jennifer, I think she was about two by then, spied the dope dog invading "her" firehouse, and the chase was on.

The bunk room was a series of four rooms with swinging doors from an office area and though each of the rooms and also out into the truck stalls. Jennifer was sleeping on the couch next to the ping pong table when things began. She let out a blood curddling bloodhound bay and took off after the dope dog. In shear terror, the dope dog broke free from it's handler. Thru the swinging doors they went, from office to bunkroom to bunkroom and finally after the last room out into the truck stalls. Dope dog running dragging it's lead screaming like it a scalded cat. Out of the truck stalls and onto the flightline. Jennifer finally quit chasing the poor bedraggled shepard half way down the flightline. Then she just strolled back into the firehouse and jumped up on "her" couch.

Needless to say, the poor skycop was beside himself. He spit and sputtered and finally called for reinforcements to try and arrest a bunch of hysterical fireguys. They finally found the dope dog a few days later hiding behind an old unused quonset hut. The dog was pretty much ruined.

Skycops tried to force us to get rid of Jennifer, but after we insisted they get rid of Sarge, their shop dog, they backed down. Oh, and the skycops never did bring another dope dog into the firehouse again, as long as I was there.