Navy hunts free talkers
First arrests reported on West Coast as campaign starts
…
The Pittsburgh Press (March 3, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – In North Hollywood there is a man who sits every night and reads the papers about the war in Malaya, the war in the Indies, the war in the Philippines – and then puts the papers down and dreams about how many lives might have been saved, and even how the results might have been different, if they had used dogs.
Yes, dogs.
For this man is one of America’s premier dog trainers, he is right now training a bunch of sentry dogs for the American Army, and he knows about war, too, for he spent four years in the last one – on the other side.
His name is Carl Spitz. He is 47, and he has been training dogs most of his life. He is one of the leading trainers for the movies. He owns a huge dog-trailing school that covers the better part of 10 acres. He has five other trainers on his staff – more than any other dog school in the country.
As far back as 1930 Spitz tried to get the Army to let him train dogs for war use. But nothing came of it. Finally last summer they took him up. in a limited way. Spitz agreed to furnish the Army 50 trained sentry dogs – at no cost!
He has delivered six, has 12 more under training, and already has spent $1500 of his own money in the process. He doesn’t mind that, but what he does mind is that the Army is so busy now thinking about other things, he can’t get anybody to think any further about dogs.
Dropped by parachute
Spitz says Germany had 50,000 dogs in the last war, and that 7000 were killed. He says they’re being used in this war, too, for he’s read about it.
The most startling story he has heard out of this war is about a messenger dog dropped by parachute to a Finnish scouting party behind the Russian lines. He says a message was attached to the dog’s throat, and it made the 14 miles back home in 20 minutes.
Spitz says the Japanese are using dogs. He feels that in Malaya thousands of lives could have been saved if the British had used dogs. He expresses his feelings picturesquely.
“The Japanese slithered through the jungles,” he says, “in water up to here. We white people couldn’t do that. We don’t fight that way. We aren’t sneaky enough.
“The British weren’t trained in jungle fighting. They were always getting caught. But if, they’d had dogs, the Japanese couldn’t have surprised them. Dogs would have given warning.”
Spitz feels that the American Army needs at least 15,000 trained dogs. He says that if a program were set up for it, he could develop a schooling nucleus that could train that many dogs in a year.
He says he personally could turn out 18 super-dog-trainers every three months. (Of course, there are many other fine dog-trainers in the country who could do the same.) These men could then go out and set up dog-training schools at Army camps, and start the ball rolling in a big way.
So far, the dogs trained by Spitz for the Army have cost around $250 apiece. But if done on a large scale, he says the cost could be brought down to $60, including the dog.
He feels there should be two sentry dogs for every mile of the West Coast, which would mean 3000 trained dogs. The same for the East Coast, and the Gulf. And then countless dogs for war factories and Army warehouses and other key points. In addition to that, dogs for actual use at the battlefront.
Four types of training
He would provide four types of training:
- Sentry dogs, for guard duty.
- Scouting dogs, for smelling out enemy troops at the battlefront.
- Messenger dogs, for running front-line messages.
- Red Cross dogs, for locating wounded soldiers and carrying first aid to them.
So far the Army’s dog program is infinitesimal, and very much confused. There have been stories about the big dog program, and calls for patriots to donate their dogs to the Army. But the truth is, as far as Spitz knows, that the only dogs being trained are a few down at Fort MacArthur near here, and the few he has under way. Some of his Army dogs were donated by the public, but he went out and bought most of them himself.
Spitz’s relatives have been in the United States for generations, and it was always his ambition to get here. He finally made it in 1926. He is a citizen, and has only one distant relative still in Germany. His two brothers were killed in the last war, and he had seven first cousins (Americans) fighting against him. But that’s all water over the dam now.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the fantastic training these Army dogs go through.