Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
ject. He knew holes had been dug all over Vietnam to no avail. He had already witnessed the
tensions between anthropologists and military personnel about whether he and his dogs were
capable of finding human remains, or whether Matt simply had canine versions of Clever
Hans. There was an argument on the military base in Hawaii over whether they would have
to kennel and quarantine his search dogs for six months because of rabies regulations if they
left the base, but the base had no reasonable kennels. The dogs ended up staying in a tiny ret-
rofitted closet. Once Matt got to Vietnam, the vermin- and spider-infested hotel in Ho Chi
Minh City didn't improve his mood. He didn't mind tough conditions and carrying a fifty-
pound backpack, but he was forty-one. Not as old as his female shepherd in human years but
no longer a young man.
Matt also wondered whether he was setting up his own dogs to fail. He knew that Panzer
could find the dead and the buried: She'd done it for years in the Northeast United States.
But the oldest buried remains she'd found were a decade old, not going back nearly four dec-
ades, as they would be in Vietnam. The temperatures and conditions were not only unfamil-
iar, they were grueling. Panzer could work in snow and ice, but mangrove swamps and rice
paddies with 100 percent humidity and heat indexes above one hundred were new territory.
Matt talked to Andy Rebmann. Andy considers Matt the equivalent of an adopted son,
and Matt adores and respects Andy. They both have an ability to argue. They argued about
whether Panzer was too old to go. Gunner, Matt's middle-aged Swiss mountain search dog,
had gotten cancer and had a leg amputated after Matt committed to going to Vietnam.
Matt couldn't back out; he'd promised two dogs. So he rushed to the pound and found
a six-month-old German shepherd. The adolescent shepherd had been labeled aggressive.
He wasn't; he had drive. Matt called him Maximus and trained him hard over the next six
months—but the one thing he couldn't do was make Max age faster.
So Matt was left with a one-year-old dog and a nine-year-old dog—positioned at the ex-
treme ends of the age spectrum for search dogs. One unproved, just certified, and the other
old and soft enough to tire quickly or even die. A bunch of skeptical anthropologists in
Hawaii and Vietnam were keeping track. Not a warm and fuzzy atmosphere.
“I tried to explain. We're not here to replace you. We're just another tool. We need good
investigative tactics. We're only a small portion of a team,” Matt said. He was secretly worried
that his two “tools” might not be operational.
Captain David Phillips's fixed-wing fighter jet had been shot down on July 3, 1966, in
a thicket of mangrove trees on the southern tip of Vietnam. A witness told authorities that
he had recovered Phillips's remains and buried them. Others had reburied him. he jet, if
there had been pieces left, had been entirely repurposed. It was acidic soil. Bones would dis-
appear—if they had been there in the first place.
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