From Baghdad with Love Read online

  As in Delta Force or the navy SEALs, the working dogs make up an elite unit that outspecializes any weaponry or high-tech mapping systems the US armed forces possess. Several hundred thousand years of evolution make their noses stronger, their teeth sharper, and their legs faster than any human being alive. That’s what the handlers tell me anyway.

  Most are Belgian Malinois and German shepherds, and like the rest of us, each possesses his own military service record book and each learns to attack on command without thinking first. Before they ever arrive in Iraq, the trainers tell me that the working dogs attend boot camp at Lackland Air Force Base, where the Department of Defense maintains a high-tech veterinary hospital that includes specialists in pathology, internal medicine, surgery, radiology, and epidemiology who can perform fundus photography, endoscopy, arthroscopy, laser surgery, electrodiagnostics, hip replacements, fluoroscopy, and echocardiography in state-of-the-art clinical laboratories, dental suites, surgical areas, radiology areas, intensive care units, and anesthetic recovery rooms.

  Boot camp for the working dogs consists of explosives detection and patrol, where they drill, they march, and they pace like any human recruit. The dogs learn the four classics—sit, down, heel, and stay—but the command get him is added to the syllabus as well. They learn to obey the commands in upwinds, downwinds, and crosswinds in addition to a variety of movements including march, rear march, column left, and column right.

  Because of the large number of receptors in their noses and the large olfactory parts of their brains, the working dogs enhance the Marines’ ability to detect faint odors and intruders by about a thousand times, with about 95 percent accuracy. A well-trained military dog can detect dynamite, detonator cords, sodium chloride, potassium chloride, time fuses, and smokeless powder.

  When the dogs finish initial training, they’re issued bulletproof camouflage vests that weigh seven pounds and cost about a thousand dollars each. The vests contain compartments for cold packs to prevent heatstroke and attachments that enable the dogs to be dropped by parachute or hauled up by rope.

  Once equipped, the dog is paired with a handler. At Camp Fallujah, the two live and work together—they’re rarely apart—and the dog and handler become so dedicated to each other that after two years, the dog is rotated out to keep the pair from becoming too attached. They trust each other to perfection. They know each other’s breathing patterns. The bond between them is so strong that if a handler searches a suspect, and the suspect tries to hurt the handler, the dog attacks immediately without any command whatsoever. The dog then bites and holds the suspect down until he hears the command out, which means that if the handler is killed or knocked unconscious first, the dog will literally die holding the suspect down as he waits to receive orders to let go.

  It therefore comes as no surprise to me when the dog handlers at Camp Fallujah smile and shake their heads when I ask if Lava can hide out in one of the kennels.

  “Can’t help you, sir . . .”

  I’m equally unsurprised when they tell me the closest military veterinarian who can give Lava vaccinations works at a base in Baghdad—some forty treacherous miles away—and because of General Order 1-A, they doubt he’ll be able to help.

  They wish me luck, though, and give me what I suspect is some very expensive dog food.

  Back at the officers’ building, I immediately e-mail the military veterinarian in Baghdad. I know it’s a risk, but I hope the veterinarian is as understanding as the handlers here at camp.

  “I found this puppy in Fallujah . . .”

  Then I sit back and think about what the dog handlers told me when I asked what happens to the dogs when their tour of duty is over.

  As with the Marines, it turns out, the military working dogs’ elite status hurts them in the end. They aren’t like other dogs, and since the canine warriors can’t simply be debriefed, they have nowhere to go. If a military dog becomes physically unable to perform his tasks in the field—usually when he’s about ten years old—a veterinarian deems him as either “nondeployable” or “stateside deployment only” and his military records are sent to Lackland to a full medical review board.

  If a nondeployable dog is deemed “adoptable,” meaning he probably won’t storm local playgrounds and attack small children unprovoked, and if the potential adopter understands the possible risks, meaning he or she understands that small children might provoke the dog who might storm the playground and attack them, then the adopter signs an agreement that absolves the Department of Defense of any liability for damage or injury the dog might cause.

  Most of them, though, are deemed nonadoptable. These are the dogs whose entire lives centered on carrying out orders to perfection, who were so devoted to the military, they obeyed to the death. These were the most faithful, dependable, patriotic dogs of the lot, so they’re handed “final disposition” papers and euthanized.

  I stare at the computer screen in front of me and try hard not to make comparisons. Nonadoptable. Maladjusted. Apt to attack small children on playgrounds. I bleed allegiance to the flag.

  I follow my e-mail to the military veterinarian with an SOS to everyone but the gatekeepers of the Emerald City.

  “I found this puppy in Fallujah . . .”

  Later that day I receive word that I’m supposed to report to the Joint Task Force in Balad to replace a lieutenant colonel, Ignatius “Buck” Liberto, who’s going on leave for six weeks. I know the guy, right? So I e-mail him in Balad and ask if he’ll take Lava home with him when he leaves.

  No problem from Buck’s end, but he’s flying out on a military plane, and in order to transport a puppy he’ll need all of Lava’s vaccination papers and approval from brass. I’m thinking that’s no big deal until I get the response from the military veterinarian in Baghdad.

  He respectfully reiterates General Order 1-A that prevents the Marines from keeping pets, and further points out that diseases such as leishmania, hydatid disease, and rabies are common among stray dogs in Iraq.

  “My apparent lack of concern for this puppy isn’t due to not caring. I’m simply following orders, regulations, and my desire to protect the public health of our soldiers,” the veterinarian writes.

  “What I’m trying to make clear, Sir, is that nothing we can do for you is going to assist you in getting the dog home.”

  Well, shit.

  CHAPTER NINE

  December 2004

  Camp Fallujah

  DUST SWIRLS IN the Humvee’s headlights as it grumbles in low gear toward the far end of the base. Concrete bunkers, concertina wire, tents, and sandbags appear and disappear before me like quick thoughts, and I notice how much sharper the edges of things seem than when muted by all-out sun. Then again, everything seems weird when you can’t sleep in the middle of the night.

  It’s weird that I’m driving across base. It’s weird that it gets so cold in Iraq and that I’m crossing thin-skinned ice puddles under a black winter sky tattooed with stars. It’s weird that the prefab metal buildings erected by the Iraqi Republican Guard to train terrorists are now surrounded by US-stuffed sandbags to keep them out. It’s weird that the white beam of the headlight seems to stab with violence at whatever I’m passing—the chow hall, a big plastic tub used for Marines who decide to get baptized, a Humvee with a ram’s skull roped to its front, the “Morale, Welfare and Recreation” building filled with PlayStation 2 consoles that the psychologists recommend we use to unwind. It’s weird that there’s war. It’s weird that I’m part of it.

  Where am I driving? To the Lava Dogs’ building.

  Why am I driving to the Lava Dogs’ building? Because I can’t sleep.

  Why can’t I sleep? Because Lava is in the Lava Dogs’ building.

  Now that they’re back on base, it only seems natural that Lava should visit his uncles who conveniently live as far away from the officers’ building as they can.

  Only I can’t sleep.

  I start to nod off, but suddenly, like an alarm�
�s going off, I think, I’ve got to leave for Balad in two days, followed by Figure it out, Kopelman, followed by But how . . . , followed by Just figure the thing out, followed by Lava’s going to get shot.

  See, orders just came down and the Department of Defense hired contractors to kill all nonmilitary dogs found on American bases in Iraq. Seems word got out about the stray dogs eating dead bodies, and while it’s perfectly okay for us to make the bodies dead in the first place, it’s not quite cool to have dogs walking around eating them. There’s some fine line there I guess we’re not supposed to notice. Maybe it has to do with cooties.

  Anyway, it also turns out that I’m not the only loon who wants to get a dog out of Iraq. There are actually a lot of guys writing home looking for help. I mean, there were all these stories online about it, which I found while Googling “Iraq dogs out” and “Iraq puppy out” and that sort of thing. I was at a complete loss until I found the story about an army sergeant who said that his unit tried to get their dog back to the United States—but the “dog killers,” he said, got her first. They hid her and fed her and then found someone going back to the States who would take her, but then at the last minute, as she was actually in the flight line ready to go and all the guys were saying good-bye, some jerk following orders comes up, yanks her away, and shoots her.

  That’s the kind of thing that makes you pause and wonder, What the fuck?

  So I start Googling anything I can think of—puppy passport, help, help puppy, helpless puppy needs passport, help Marine help helpless puppy—I’m feeling kind of frantic about the whole thing and getting nowhere at the speed of light.

  As I’m trying to go to sleep that first night without Lava, all this crap is shooting through my head with the velocity of bullets fired in rapid succession. GO-1A. Vaccinations. Bodies. Rules. Regulations. Reasons. Will it hurt? Then as things get weirder and weirder like they do in the middle of the night, the unauthorized thoughts start rolling in to the tune of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” oo-rah, oo-rah. So I get up, start the Humvee, and drive across base to the Lava Dogs’ building seeing all these weird things and thinking all these weird thoughts like how in the hell could someone shoot a dog like that? Orders? Orders? Since when do Marines follow orders?

  When I get there, it’s all dark and everyone’s zonked out and I can’t see Lava anywhere.

  “Hey, little guy,” I whisper, expecting him to leap into my arms with tail-pounding joy.

  Instead I hear this tiny growl, Lava’s warning that he’s about to kick my ass, and then see this wienie shadow rush toward me with tail erect and fur on end screaming roo-roo-roo-roooooo.

  Bodies shoot up on every cot.

  “Hey, hey, hey, it’s me . . .”

  “Who the hell is me?” someone grumbles as I hear the click of several rifles being readied for some action.

  I bend down and pick Lava up. “Shh, shh. It’s me. Just me.”

  The bodies plop back down on their cots. Several pound pillows back into place; several Marines use my name—and God’s—in vain.

  “Hey, hey, calm down,” I tell Lava, who’s quivering with delight over what he’s done and with what he’s found. I sit there for a while in the dark scratching his little ears until he finally calms down and curls up asleep in my lap.

  Am I insane?

  I am a lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps. I am an officer in a brotherhood that always goes in first, and that pretty much sums it up right there. We’re brave to the point of insanity, so being a Marine takes a certain kind of mind-set to begin with.

  Which means you don’t always follow orders.

  The common belief is that you go in a boy and come out a man, like they have this magical ability to change who you are, but the truth of the matter is, we were insane going in and insane coming out, only now we sing this anthem and know cool martial arts.

  Insane isn’t the right word exactly. None of us really believes Marines guard the streets of Heaven, but how sane is it to want to go in first? I can sit aside from this and in a cool, calculated, scientific manner look at it for what it is: not insanity, but a primitive gene that requires some of us to be the fittest and the bravest and the best-est there is, and then the public relations brass throws in the word proudest so we don’t feel like cavemen on caffeine.

  It’s not because we didn’t belong or didn’t like team sports, and it’s not because we couldn’t afford college or were manipulated by recruiters or dumped by some chick and then had to prove a point. Those guys joined the army. We didn’t have rotten childhoods, we didn’t hate math, we didn’t bully skinny kids on the playground and didn’t start fires in the garage.

  And it’s not like we joined up without thinking about it, or like once we got in they didn’t give us time to think about it. Believe me, sleep deprivation, food rationing, and sit-ups make you think a whole hell of a lot about it. We weren’t coerced. We weren’t brainwashed. Our souls weren’t plundered.

  We just can’t help it.

  We aren’t cut out for anything else. We were Marines going in and Marines coming out. We don’t want to take orders.

  And you want to know something? I don’t care anymore. I used to, when I first joined up. I worried about my parents’ objections, my college buddies’ sneers, being called a “jarhead” for the rest of my adult life. But hell if I could help it. The minute I signed on the dotted line, I had this sort of out-of-body party that hasn’t been matched since.

  Oo-rah.

  Listening to these guys snore around me, I really like what I am—a Marine. I like being strong. I like being brave. I like going in first. I want to go in first, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anyone shoot my puppy.

  CHAPTER TEN

  December 2004

  Rancho Santa Fe, California

  JOHN VAN ZANTE was having trouble concentrating on the conference call. It was an important one, meant to spawn ideas for an upcoming pet adoption drive for the Helen Woodward Animal Center, but the new mission kept bullying his concentration.

  The new mission was when John’s boss, Michael Arms, had told him about a Marine who needed help getting a puppy out of Iraq. Apparently a series of e-mails sent out by some lieutenant colonel in Fallujah wound their way through friends and friends of friends to Michael Arms, who, as a former Marine in Vietnam and now the president of the Helen Woodward Animal Center, didn’t have a choice about whether he’d help out or not. The mission of the center—“people helping animals and animals helping people”—and the mission of the Marines, former or otherwise, wouldn’t allow it.

  “Are you going to help?” John had asked.

  “Of course we’ll help,” Arms said. “Will you take care of it?”

  John shook his head. Help? His help? He didn’t know how much help he could offer from Rancho Santa Fe. The town was located just outside San Diego, a major military town, and while talk of the war infused almost every conversation, this story brought it closer to home than he was used to. Now when he heard the stories coming out of Iraq, they projected all sorts of images into his head that he knew were ridiculous but couldn’t turn off: little puppy squished to death in Marine’s backpack; little puppy run over by a tank; little puppy beheaded by insurgents.

  What in the heck possessed a three-tour, tough-guy Marine to try to save a little puppy in the middle of a war, anyway? And why was he, an easygoing public relations guy, now being looked to for help? He wasn’t a soldier. He didn’t know anything about Iraq.

  While the center offered a variety of programs supporting the bond between humans and animals, including a Pet Encounter Therapy Program, an adoption center, a therapeutic riding program, and an equine hospital, John wasn’t so sure they were equipped to rescue a puppy from Iraq.

  The center focused on bringing knowledge, compassion, and respect to all living things. Lofty ideals, sure, but put into actual practice. The Pet Encounter Therapy, for instance, brought animals—dogs, rabbits, birds�
��to homes for abused children, hospitals, psychiatric facilities, and senior centers, where residents held and caressed the animals until their blood pressure lowered or their hyperactivity waned or their desire to crawl in a hole and die went away for a few precious hours.

  But the center surely didn’t have time to focus on one little puppy in Iraq.

  Then again, it probably didn’t have time not to.

  The only reason John had taken this job in the first place was because there wasn’t enough time to do everything that needed to be done. Years earlier he had shaken hands with mortality after learning that his brother had a stroke and his sister had cancer. He’d decided that while his career in commercial broadcasting paid the bills, it didn’t promise great poetics on his tombstone. At least this job gave him a reason to take up oxygen. At least it gave him time to do something that meant something. At least it allowed him to save some people and animals from horrible lives and deaths, but the problem was, saving only some made it harder not to save them all.

  And now, since Arms had ordered the go-ahead on helping this Marine and his puppy, John hadn’t thought about much else. He read news stories about the war with a new sense of urgency. He studied maps, he investigated export laws, he made phone calls and wrote letters to anyone he thought could help, including California’s senators.

  The puppy was found abandoned during a house by house search in Fallujah. A Marine Lt. Col. from La Jolla, CA, fell in love with the puppy. We’ve been working to try to get the puppy transported to the United States . . .

  Regardless of party affiliation, we firmly believe that it shows that the United States and our military personnel continue to hold respect for all life. Is there anything more innocent than a puppy?

  Any help or direction you can provide will be greatly appreciated . . . time is of the essence.

  Today’s conference call included John, his boss, and several executives and public relations people from the Iams pet food company, who were co-sponsoring the Home 4 the Holidays event—the world’s biggest pet adoption drive and the center’s most important adoption event of the year.