Posted on 08/09/2015 5:29:21 AM PDT by csvset
In a darkened Iraqi suburb, Christmas Eve, 2006, a team of Navy SEALs moved quietly into position outside the home of a man known for training suicide bombers.
The operation that night wasn’t unlike hundreds of others carried out by Naval Special Warfare Development Group during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it’s one Jimmy Hatch won’t ever forget.
He’d later learn that no amount of alcohol could erase the memory.
It was chilly, not quite cold enough to see your breath. As the operators prepared to raid the home, a husky man popped his head out of an adjacent building and must have noticed the SEALs setting up. He bolted in the opposite direction.
Hatch, one of the unit’s senior enlisted members at the time, yelled for him to stop. The man ignored the order and a subsequent warning, and seconds later, Hatch released his grip on the leash in his left hand.
His dog, Spike, charged.
No hesitation. No fear. That’s what Hatch had come to expect from the Belgian Malinois, a pack animal that rolled with some of America’s most elite fighters – an unofficial member of the secretive unit known as DEVGRU. How many times had Spike alerted Hatch and his teammates to a hidden danger? A gunman hiding under a bed? Explosives stashed behind a closed door?
No doubt, the dog had saved lives.
The man stopped when he saw Spike coming. The dog leaped and clamped his powerful jaw on the man’s left bicep – a direct strike, just like in training. But this guy wasn’t going down easy; he started biting back, sinking his teeth into Spike’s shoulder. A moment later, the man wrapped him up and dived forward, crushing the dog under his chest.
Hatch started shooting the man in the back. Wounded but still alive, he rolled over. Spike climbed slowly back to his feet, then hobbled once more toward the enemy
No quit in that dog, Hatch thought. But he was looking rough
“Hey man, I think he broke his leg,” Hatch remembers saying to a SEAL next to him as both men stood nearby, guns pointed at the man on the ground
“No Jimmy,” the teammate responded. “He’s really hurt.”.
Spike was coughing blood
While his teammates tended to the injured suspect, Hatch scooped up the dog, slung him over his shoulder, then sprinted toward the building where they’d set up a field command center.
Maybe Hatch had let himself get too close. On the morning he was scheduled to meet Spike back in Virginia Beach a couple of years earlier – his first official day as a military dog handler – Hatch stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought a handful of Slim Jims, hoping to make a good first impression..
Maybe he had treated him too much like a pet. The dog was practically a member of his family. His wife loved him as much as he did.
As Hatch ran through the street that night, he could feel Spike taking labored breaths on his shoulder. Then, as he neared the command post, he felt no breathing at all.
The dog went limp.
By the time he reached medical, it was too late. He laid the dog on a table, and a Navy corpsman went through the motions of checking for a heartbeat.
Hatch knew Spike was dead.
He had fired the shot that killed him.
n combat, dogs are what military types call “a force multiplier.”
“A dog can help turn the tide of a battle,” said Hatch, 48, who retired from the Navy in 2011 as a senior chief petty officer with a slew of honors, including four Bronze Stars with Valor and a Purple Heart.
Sometime after 9/11, he’d helped persuade special operations commanders to add attack dogs to the force for the first time in decades, rekindling a SEAL tradition dating back to Vietnam. Back then, dogs were considered little more than military equipment. Many were euthanized as the war wound down – cheaper than shipping them home. Today, military dogs are routinely awarded medals for their actions in combat, and for good reason, Hatch said:
“A dog can do things in close proximity to the enemy that literally means the difference between life and death for his human teammates.”
He’s seen dogs get hit with guns and bricks. He’s watched dogs being held under water and kicked in the ribs. He’s seen them charge toward gunfire and attack men with explosives rigged to their chests. But he’s never seen one give up.
“They’re very loyal to their pack,” Hatch said.
Like the human warriors they serve with, many dogs have a hard time adjusting once their high-octane military careers come to an end.
“They’re like me,” Hatch said. “Unsuited for society.”
Only there’s no retirement plan or veterans health coverage for dogs of war. That’s something Hatch hopes to address.
But first he needed to take care of himself.
During his half-dozen deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Hatch says dogs saved his life more times than he can remember, including on the night he was wounded.
Years passed before he realized it, but Hatch is counting on them to help save him one more time – this time from a less visible enemy.
Rock bottom came about a year later: Hatch sat in his backyard in Norfolk, drunk on booze and high on painkillers, ready to kill himself.
His wife was pleading with him to put the gun away, but all Hatch could hear were his inner demons, telling him he didn’t have a reason to live.
His military career had ended abruptly after his injury, a process he refers to as “stepping off the speeding train.” He endured dozens of surgeries in the months that followed, giving him plenty of time to think. In his head, a highlight reel of his darkest moments played on repeat:
The faces of traumatized children. A line of black body bags in Afghanistan. That moment when he screamed, putting his teammates in danger
. The life draining from dogs he’d led into combat.
The dogs. That part came with its own special brand of torment. They hadn’t signed up to fight a war. It had been his responsibility to get them home alive, but he failed them.
“The dog bought us time to react. He died, basically, so one of us didn’t.” - Jimmy Hatch, on Remco's death during a SEAL mission
Hatch had come to hate himself.
His wife and police eventually talked him back to reality that day. They got him checked into the naval hospital in Portsmouth – the beginning of his long recovery: “The war after the war,” Hatch says.
Over the months that followed, “a chain of heroes” got him the help he needed. Former teammates sat at his bedside as he detoxed. The same men he’d fought alongside pressed him to check into an out-of-state psychiatric hospital, where he began to forgive himself and see the world with new clarity.
“Before I got help, I felt worse than useless,” Hatch said. “It was the meds and the damage to my body – all of that sort of swirls together and conspires against you.”
One of the lessons he learned from therapy: He needed to find purpose again.
“I don’t think I really knew the depth to which I identified with my vocation, or how much I missed it after I got hurt,” Hatch said.
Over the past few years, he’s kept himself busy. He’s pursued photography and skydiving, both passions of his. He’s volunteered to talk to service members and other groups about post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide. He’s regularly vented his opinions about war and society on a blog he maintains.
It all helped, but nothing seemed to replace the sense of purpose he felt rolling out on a mission with his crew. Then, last year, Hatch learned about a Norfolk police dog named Rooster with a breathing problem. The city had determined it wasn’t worth paying for a procedure to fix his esophagus
That’s ridiculous, Hatch thought. After all that dog had done for the city?
Then he got to thinking: Maybe he could help.
Hatch got to work.
He wrote a blog post about Rooster’s situation. He contacted friends and loved ones. He designed a logo using an old picture of him and Spike, then slapped it on a sweatshirt and started selling them online.
Soon, he’d raised $1,300 to pay for Rooster’s operation, and within a month, the bomb-sniffing patrol dog returned to work for the city.
Hatch had found his calling.
It led him down an unfamiliar path: Earlier this year Hatch filed paperwork with the IRS to start a nonprofit. Spike’s K9 Fund was born. Slogan: “Dogs saved me. My mission is to take care of them.”
Hatch knew nothing about running a charity, but he threw himself into the cause with the same reckless abandon that drove him during his two-decade career with the SEALs.
“Here’s the deal,” he said. “You can either second guess yourself and be miserable and try to drown it out with booze, like I was doing. Or you can try to do something to help.”
Get involved
Retired SEAL Jimmy Hatch started a nonprofit dedicated to helping military and police dogs. For more information, or to make a donation, visit www.spikesk9fund.org.
Spike’s K9 Fund will host a K9 Dog Patrol on Oct. 10 at Bennetts Creek Park in Suffolk. The event will include dog and parachute demonstrations, a dog walk, food, and vendors. Registration begins at 8 a.m.; Cost is $20, with proceeds going to the charity.
Hatch has two main goals: First, he wants to provide medical care and better equipment – gear that could save a dog’s life – for at least 10 percent of the estimated 23,000 civilian patrol dogs working in the U.S., because police departments often don’t have the resources to do it themselves.
Second, Hatch wants to open a kennel for retired military dogs. Sometimes those dogs are adopted by their handlers. But for those that have seen the harshest combat – like the dogs Hatch worked with – there’s no place for them. If a dog comes home with PTSD, there is no support group. No psychiatric hospital or therapy.
They get discarded.
Hatch can’t live with that, he said: “These dogs put their life on the line for all of us. They deserve to be treated well after they’re no longer able to work.”
Hatch estimates he needs to raise nearly $13 million to meet his goals. So far he’s collected about $20,000.
In its first six months, his charity has helped a couple dozen dogs with medical care and gear. He’s recruited volunteers who are helping with administration and fundraising. A local architect has donated time to design the kennel, and Hatch has already scouted properties in Virginia Beach.
That whirlwind of growth looks a little different from Hatch’s unique perspective: “It seems too slow. But I’m amazed by the support we’ve gotten from the community. It’s a beautiful thing.”
On a recent morning, Hatch donned a full-body bite suit and played "the bad guy" while an officer with Norfolk's K-9 unit barked commands at his patrol dog. Hatch volunteers regularly with area police departments, sharing lessons he learned from working with dogs in combat – but mostly it's an excuse to spend time with the animals.
Hatch is an intense guy. But when he's around dogs – including the four lumbering pets that bombard him each time he enters his front door – the man becomes childlike, the sort of dog lover who rolls on the ground, making pretend growling sounds.
"This is therapy for me, man," he said, moments after his session with the K-9 squad. "I like that I can help these guys out, but don't be mistaken: I do this for me."
Another lesson Hatch learned in counseling: The power of story. He’s come to realize that if he talks about what he’s been through, people will line up to help him. But that’s difficult, and not only because he's part of a brotherhood that places a premium on silence.
“Every time I tell these stories, I relive those moments,” Hatch said, choking up after recalling in vivid detail the night Spike died.
He hadn’t meant to shoot the dog. The angle didn’t make sense: The bullet must have hit a bone after entering the man’s back, then ricocheted before exiting. It blew through Spike’s chest, puncturing his lungs.
“Even then, he didn’t stop fighting,” Hatch said, then trailed off.
Hatch knew nothing about running a charity, but he threw himself into the cause with the same reckless abandon that drove him during his two-decade career with the SEALs.
Hatch bears the weight of that night “only every day,” he said. He carries Spike’s ashes in an amulet attached to his backpack, which he takes everywhere. The names Spike and Remco are tattooed on his left arm, along with a quote by the Chilean Nobel laureate, Pablo Neruda: “Through Blood and Darkness poetry is written. Poetry should be written.”
Hatch has begun to see the poetry in his own story, painful as it may be. If reliving those dark moments is what it takes to help dogs, well, “I guess that's what I have to do,” he said.
"I owe it to them."
Note that his career ended while searching for the POS Bergdahl.
Sounds like a good dog but when using working dogs one has to realize that they are disposable.
Not a easy fact for some to understand they are not pets.
Doggie ping.
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I mostly get what you are saying, especially the part about working dogs not being pets. The main disagreement I have is the “disposable” part. If properly engaged as part of team, as described in the article, they are not disposable because they have a specific function. If they are not there to do that function, the team is less than fully functional because of it.
I think the better term might be “interchangeable” to capture the unique function and skill of a well-trained working dog that is part of team that operates at a high level when all members are executing their function within the mission profile.
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