© 1997 Don Armstrong
Scavenger and Long Knife Doorgunner
I remember a couple of dogs that we had in D troop.
Deros and Pepper were both great at cleaning out rats and ironically the guys that rented those dogs the most often were from the officers hootch.
You see, they lived like HOGs over there in officer country and the rats were the real low life types so they all fit in pretty well together.
Now I would never accuse the pilots of my unit of being PIGs.
We all well know at least a pig has some value when you take it to market and sell it.
But a HOG just lays around and wallows in the mud and more than a few of our pilots’ rooms looked that way.
Their latrine sure as hell smelled that way too.
Take it as first hand info from someone who had to burn their crap several times.
We would bring the dogs over to the hootches then just open the bay areas and say, "Get the rat!"
The dogs would tear through the place going all over everything.
Pepper would catch them and snap them once up in the air and then make four or five fast crunches along the length of the body as she crushed them.
Deros never did have the true finesse of the flip and crush down pat.
She would drop them and then crush them. They had a blast when we released them into that hell hole of a location known as the combination hooch / bunker / bar.
I don't know if those rats lived off of the dried puke or the fresh stuff because there was always plenty to go around.
For more fun and games we would get a pool going to bet on the rats that had been caught and kept in cages. We would take them out the airfield, let them loose and give them a running start for a few revetments and then release Pepper. She was real fast and the rat never made it much further.
The Dough Boys had "Fred" but he had no interest in killing rats so they would take Fred out of their hootch while we released Pepper and Deros inside.
All you heard was crashing and banging as the two dogs went chasing rats for the length of the building.
It sounded like a one sided fire fight in a declared free fire zone.
The Dough Boys at the other end scattered as rats came running out the door. Pepper and Deros were always pumped up after that one.
I still remember drinking with the dogs when we were at Bearcat.
Pepper loved Vodka and would lap it up from a bowl. The she would go out to a nearby field, sit and just put her head back and howl at the moon.
Deros would drink and run out the door to the bunker and then come in the other door.
After awhile Deros would run into the wall, then she would get up, go out the door and hit the bunker again, then run until she hit the other bunker entrance then come back through the door.
She slept on the floor next to my cot with one paw in the air holding herself in position.
The paw was spinning in circles.
The next day at a supposed formation we would all hand out Cokes to burp and fart in a semblance of feeling well.
We all felt better when we saw Pepper and Deros walking real slow and they just flopped down and slowly moaned.
Until that moment I never knew the true meaning of "Dog tired " and "As sick as a dog!"