Major Mike Murphy (retd) pays tribute to tracker dogs, soldiers ahead of Albany Vietnam Veterans’ Day service

Major Mike Murphy (retired) could very well owe his life to a tracker dog — and he wants Australians to know about the critical role they played in the Vietnam War.

The Albany veteran has spoken to the media for the first time about his experiences as the leader of a tracker platoon ahead of a Vietnam Veterans’ Day service in Albany on Sunday.

Maj. Murphy left Townsville for South Vietnam at age 23 as an infantry platoon commander with the 4th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment.

On arrival in Phuoc Tuy Province, his platoon of about 24 were met by their two tracker dogs, labradors Marcian and Milo.

The platoon provided two six-man combat tracker teams with each dog leading the men through the jungle, stopping to give a silent flick of the ear to indicate the enemy was nearby.

Unknown to his team at the time, they ended up doing the last combat track of the Vietnam War, Maj. Murphy said.

“It was following up two enemies that were fleeing,” he said.

“They were moving very fast and our dog was moving equally fast behind them.

“A tracker dog goes out the front on about a 20-foot lead and he sniffs the air as well as the ground for the scent that is left by whoever it is that he is tracking.

“When the scent gets so strong that the dog can tell that he is in fact getting very close to the enemy, then he gives a point, which is a warning to us that contact is imminent.

“The handler tries to reel his leash in and then the other guys in the team move up with the handler ready to put fire into the area where the enemy are.”

As commander of the platoon, Maj. Murphy said he urged the handler to keep going and wait for the dog to give a second point.

“The dog, instead of keeping going like his normal training had told him to, he moved his body across the front of his handler and blocked his handler from going any further forward,” he said.

“When he tried to push the dog forward again, the dog stood up on his hind legs and put his paws against the handler’s chest and pushed him backwards.

“What the dog was doing was telling us we were very, very close to the enemy but perhaps the advantage didn’t lay with us and we could have been in a lot of trouble.”

It was then Maj. Murphy realised they were at the end of their gun support range and heeded the dog’s warning to pull back.

“A couple of weeks after that, our battalion was involved in that very area in (Australia’s) last big battle of the Vietnam War which was Nui Le, where we engaged with an entire Vietnamese regiment of 3000 strong,” he said.

“I think the two fellas that we had been chasing were going to join up with those guys. So, had we continued on, we might have had a very hard day indeed.

“Many other Australian soldiers felt exactly the same ... they are absolutely certain that had they not had their dog with them and the dog had not acted the way that it did, they may have been casualties.”

The 4th Battalion was the last convoy out of Nui Dat in November 1971.

It had been the main base for Australian soldiers since 1966.

Over a decade, about 60,000 Australians served in the defence of South Vietnam, with more than 3000 Australians wounded and 521 killed in the conflict.

This included three Albany men — Pte Ron Bell, Sapper Alan Duncuf and Pte John McQuat.

On Sunday, Albany will mark the 50th anniversary of the withdrawal of Australian combat troops from Vietnam with a service atop Mt Adelaide at the South-East Asian Memorial.

Maj. Murphy will deliver the keynote address, paying tribute to some of the relatively unknown stories of bravery he experienced in the tracker platoon and honouring the service dogs that didn’t come home.

“We had to leave them there, and that caused quite a lot of distress among handlers that had formed a very, very close bond with the dogs,” he said.

“And also other soldiers — of which I am one — that may well owe my life to a dog.

“A dog was a soldier. He was another member of the platoon. And the dogs did everything that we did.

“They were winched in and out of helicopters, they rode in the back of armoured vehicles.

“If you had put a green shirt on him, he’d have been a soldier.

“And he was treated as a soldier.

“He wasn’t a pet, he was a working dog that had a job to do, as we all had jobs to do.”

Because of quarantine laws, Marcian and Milo were taken to Saigon to live with British Embassy staff for the rest of their lives.

Maj. Murphy said Vietnam Veterans’ Day was an important occasion to honour those who didn’t make it back to Australia.

“I think it is necessary that we do not forget that a lot of other blokes just like me didn’t come home,” he said.

“I was lucky. I came home and I’ve had a relatively good life after that, but a lot of fellas haven’t.

“They served, and they served selflessly, and did everything that their country asked of them.

“And even some that came home physically fit found that they were wounded elsewhere and they were damaged elsewhere and that affected their life, and this shouldn’t be forgotten — wars take a huge toll.”

Maj. Murphy went on to be a career soldier, serving for nearly 26 years, including as an SAS operations officer and commanding officer for the 11/28th Battalion in Albany, Bunbury and Katanning after he moved to Albany in 1988.

“It’s a great life for any young man, I don’t understand why any young man these days wouldn’t want to join the service,” he said.

“To be in your 20s and stand on the deck of a destroyer or a patrol boat that is yours, or to have a job where you get into the cockpit of an F18 or an F35 to go to work — why wouldn’t any young man want to do that?”

The Albany Vietnam Veterans’ Day service will begin with a concert by the City of Albany Band from 1.20pm before the main service at 2pm.

A public function will be held after the service at Albany RSL headquarters.

If weather is inclement the service will be moved to the Albany RSL, with announcements to be made on radio and via social media.