By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com
Hugh Bell isn’t like most veterans. Most veterans look back on their military careers and recall spending the bulk of their time alongside other soldiers, two-legged ones who might have barked, but likely used words instead.
Bell, however, primarily served as a patrol dog handler and a K-9 supervisor, positions he took on as a military policeman with the U.S. Army. He says one of the most important things he learned in the service was the importance of mentorship, and what he cherishes the most is the brotherhood he forged, which, he says, included men and dogs alike.
“I’ve always been a dog person,” Bell says. “Ever since I had a cocker spaniel growing up.”
Bell, 53, grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, until his parents, John and Agnes, moved the family to Levittown. Bell was 7. He and his siblings, John, Karen and Theresa, attended Woodrow Wilson High School. Bell says he knew he wanted to join the military well before he graduated in 1976.
“My junior high school and high school years were during the Vietnam era,” he says. “My cousins were in Vietnam and my father was a WWII vet. That influenced me a lot. I just knew I was going to be on a path into the military.”
Bell set his sights on military police, specifically the K-9 program. He enlisted in August 1997, heading to Ft. McLellan, Ala., where he underwent both basic training and Advanced Individual Training (AIT). In October, he became a K-9 handler, joining the Sentry Dog Program at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. He learned basic obedience with the dogs, ran obstacle courses, learned how to use them to detect people, and how to attack and apprehend.
His first official assignment was in Alaska, where, as a sentry dog handler, he walked the interior and exterior of a fence line, guarding a Nike Hercules defense missile site.
“The assignment took a kid from the suburbs and put him into the wilderness,” Bell says. “We were 50 miles outside of Anchorage. It was my first experience seeing a bear and a moose walking around like a dog or a cat.”
Bell moved on to the (warmer) military police unit at Ft. Hamilton in Brooklyn, N.Y. He worked gate duty, and his job became, as it would remain, quite akin to that of a traditional county or local police officer. He issued parking tickets, enforced speed laws and patrolled barracks areas. In 1980, at the end of his three-year enlistment, he thought he’d logged enough experience to join his own local police, but couldn’t due to quotas based on gender and race.
To remain associated with the Army, he joined the Reserves, reporting to Ft. Totten in Queens, N.Y., the closest base with a military police unit. It was there that he met one of his mentors, Mickey Goldman, who helped Bell meet with a recruiter, reenlist and get back into active duty (“Something was missing,” Bell says. “Full-time military was missing”).
Apparently, something else was missing, too, for before he set out to Seneca Army Depot in the Finger Lakes to guard a Navy ammunitions storage unit, Bell literally married the girl next door, Barbara, whom he dated for a mere six months before making her his wife. Barbara, Bell says, followed him to virtually every subsequent military mission.
That included a return to Lackland, where Bell upgraded his K-9 education and learned more about using dogs as “regular police dogs,” getting them involved with tracking, building searches and traffic stops. His training ran until September 1982, at which time he went to Fishbaugh Army Depot in Germany, again doing walking patrols with dogs to guard an American weapons and ammo storage unit.
A Cold War veteran, Bell went back to Lackland to hone his skills as a patrol narcotics dog handler, then landed at Ft. Dix, N.J., where he served as a military police K-9 supervisor. Patrolling the massive fort just like a normal town, he oversaw other handlers and performed duties with the dogs regularly. He held his post for five years, working with the Philadelphia Police K-9 Academy, the Atlantic City Police K-9 Academy, the New Jersey State Police and the New Jersey State Corrections Department.
From Ft. Dix he went back overseas to Bremerhaben, Germany, serving as a certified U.S. Customs inspector at the nation’s border. In 1992 he went to Bad Kreuznach in Germany, fulfilling the same duties. His most intense assignment came in 1995, when he was temporarily sent to Bosnia for Operation Joint Endeavor. Landing at Eagle Base Camp in Tuzla, he worked as a bomb dog handler, detecting explosives and sweeping areas newly occupied by U.S. troops. Bell never came across an actual mine, but danger loomed, as he’d heard of multiple soldiers being wounded or killed doing the same tasks during his same mission.
“It was scary work,” he says.
Bell’s final assignment was at Ft. Hood, Texas, where he oversaw 20 K-9 teams as a K-9 supervisor. He retired in 1998 as a Staff Sergeant, and moved back to Levittown with Barbara. Since then, the couple has relocated to Fairless Hills, and Bell has worked as a security guard with numerous regional facilities.
As a hobby, he’s trained dogs with PetSmart and the Lower Bucks Dog Training Club. A mid-’90s hip injury cut into some of his activities, but he remains an active member of the Guardians of the National Cemetery in Washington Crossing, The Disabled American Veterans of Levittown Chapter 117, and the American Legion of Yardley Post 317. He says that these affiliations provide him with the same sort of brotherhood he valued so much in the service.
“The most important thing is to surround yourself with good people,” he says.
Good dogs help, too.
Get well soon, FPL Harris and the Friday team
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