A dedication ceremony at Motts Military Museum in Groveport will include several local veterans who were dog handlers. Tom King of Hamilton Township and Ed Reeves of Grove City are among the handlers who still feel deeply emotional about their dogs, most of whom were left behind when the men returned home.

Whenever Ed Reeves has looked at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, he has focused on the panels containing the names of those who died on Sept. 12, 1970 and Feb. 14, 1971.

It was on those days, Reeves said, that were it not for his dog, Prince, “My name would be on that wall.”

Instead, nearly 50 years later, the Grove City resident today will be looking at a different wall. He will be among those on hand at Motts Military Museum in Groveport for the dedication of the Vietnam War Dog Team Memorial.

On its three black-granite panels are inscribed 4,244 names and “serial numbers” (each war dog was tattooed inside an ear) of dogs that served during the war, as well as the 300 dog handlers who died there.

The panels surround a life-sized bronze sculpture modeled after Reeves and Prince.

Reeves and Hamilton Township resident Tom King were among the approximately 10,000 men who served as dog handlers in Vietnam. They went through intense training with their dogs, then often were under fire together.

Through that, deep ties were forged. Inscribed on the center panel of the memorial at Motts are the words, “The Unbreakable Bond.”

Decades later, both Reeves and King still struggle to control their emotions when discussing their combat buddies.

“We went through a lot together,” said King, 73, his voice cracking at the memory of his dog, Fritz. “The only things that held me together were my letters from home and playing with Fritz.”

Adding to the emotion is the fact that while Reeves and King both finished their tours and came home, their dogs stayed behind.

After working with new handlers, most Vietnam war dogs either were euthanized or given to the South Vietnamese Army. Only about 200 returned to the United States.

“Our group formed because there was a lot of guilt from the dog handlers that survived (the war),” said Ernie Ayala, vice president of the Vietnam Dog Handlers Association. “The dogs saved our lives, and that’s what they get. They stayed there and we got to go home.”

Reeves, 69, spent years investigating the fate of his dog, Prince. He has been a volunteer at Motts Military Museum since 2012, and his efforts helped prompt the Motts family to organize the memorial.

“From talking to Ed and finding out more about what the dogs did, I thought, `Something has to be done. People have to know about this,’” said Lori Motts Byrd, the museum’s assistant director.

Serving together

Dogs have been used for military purposes since ancient times, but it wasn’t until World War II that the U.S. government authorized specialized training for dogs to serve as scouts and sentries, among other duties.

The U.S. War Dogs Association estimates that 4,900 dogs (mostly German Shepherds, like Prince and Fritz) served during the Vietnam War, but incomplete records were kept in the war’s early years.

The government asked citizens to donate dogs for the program.

In 1966, King was a military policeman stationed at Lockbourne Air Force Base (now Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base) when he was “volunteered” by a commanding officer to become a dog handler.

Fritz trained with King as a sentry dog — dogs that generally were not used in combat, but to guard perimeters of bases against enemy infiltration.

King and Fritz arrived in Vietnam in January 1967. Though there was often gunfire and shelling heard near their base (at Tuy Hoa), King said he and Fritz never faced mortal danger together.

“He loved working and loved when I took him to swim in the South China Sea,” King said.

King went home in January 1968, leaving Fritz behind.

Reeves had grown up a dog-lover, so unlike King, he readily volunteered to be a dog handler after he was drafted in 1969.

Prince was trained as a scout dog, used to go out on patrol and detect people as well as mines and booby traps.

On Sept. 12, 1970 — the first day “in country” for the duo — Prince alerted Reeves’ unit of activity nearby, “which allowed us to get the jump on them rather than them on us,” Reeves said.

After he narrowly survived the resultant firefight, Reeves said he looked at Prince and said, “It’s going to be a long year.”

Indeed, on Valentine’s Day 1971, Prince and Reeves were scouting a trail for a platoon when Reeves saw the dog go around a small tree that was lying across the trail.

He called Prince back, and the dog again went around it. Reeves looked for signs of a mine, and finding none, started to step over the tree.

“Prince came up underneath me and his nose stopped dead on the ground,” Reeves said. “Luckily, I pulled my foot back.”

They searched the spot more closely and found a small mound of dirt, which turned out to be hiding an unexploded American mortar shell rigged up as a mine.

Like King, when Reeves went home (in July 1971), Prince stayed.

A dog’s fate

After Reeves came home, “I followed the news and wondered every day, `What’s he (Prince) doing? Is he still alive?’” he said, pausing to control his emotions.

“Then the stories came out about how the dogs were treated over there.”

About half of the dogs that served in Vietnam were euthanized by the military, some because they were deemed too aggressive but others simply because they were considered, “excess military baggage.”

The Vietnam War Dogs Association was founded in 1998, about the time that the Internet was making research much easier.

In the mid-2000s, a group organizing to build a war dog monument came upon a vast trove of military-dog records at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

Reeves and King were able to get their dogs’ records.

In 2009, King found out that Fritz had been euthanized, and he also found the family in Ogden, Utah that had donated Fritz.

Starting in 2006, Reeves embarked on a long journey, first tracking down the Minnesota family that had donated Prince, and then discovering that Prince had been one of the few that had returned to the United States.

It turned out Prince worked for four years detecting drugs for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection in San Diego. Reeves connected with Jerry Stackowitz, the customs handler who worked with Prince, and also found Jensen’s Kennels, where Prince had lived.

He spoke with one of the kennel’s owners, who told him Prince had retired in 1978 at age 10 and lived to the ripe old age of 15.

That thrilled Reeves.

“The only thing that would have made me happier is if I got to take him home with me,” he said.

Fitting tribute

Reeves wrote a book about his search to find Prince, which was self-published in 2016.

That was when Byrd decided to start raising funds for a memorial. A $50,000 grant from the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission was instrumental, Byrd said, as well as several sizable private donations.

The total cost was $110,000. The three panels were designed and constructed by Columbus Art Memorial, and the sculpture was created by noted Zanesville sculptor Alan Cottrell.

King said he was looking forward to today’s dedication and to seeing Fritz’s name and serial number carved into the wall.

“It means everything to me,” King said. “I can’t thank Lori and Ed enough for what they’ve done. I think it’s therapeutic.”

Having spent about a dozen years researching, writing and then watching the memorial take shape, Reeves has more complicated feelings about it.

“I’m happy, and I’m sad, because that’s the end of my story, there’s nothing else I can do,” he said.

There is one more thing. Last year, Reeves and Stackowitz met in San Diego and visited Jensen’s Kennels.

They saw the area where the kennel owners buried their dogs, a patch of dirt near a large pine tree. The animals are not marked with individual headstones, but Reeves was deeply moved, anyway.

Previously, Reeves said he had told his family that he wanted to be cremated and his ashes scattered on two nature trails that he frequents.

“I looked at that big pine tree and I got to walk on the ground, somewhere that he (Prince) was buried,” Reeves said, “and I told my wife and kids, `Now you’ve got a third place you can put my ashes.’”

kgordon@dispatch.com

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