Chapter 31

Dogs

Some of the inhabitants of COP South walk on four legs. But the dogs that roam our camp are not a nuisance; instead, they are our guardians. And, in time, they become our friends.

When we arrive we find four dogs that are holdovers from the previous team, and although initially I am not pleased with their being there it is not long before I realize the benefit their presence brings: they hate Iraqis. The junood have mistreated the animals, throwing rocks at them and teasing them and tying them up, and now the dogs go apeshit whenever an Iraqi soldier comes near the American compound. They become my alarm system at night, alerting me and the team whenever a jundi attempts to sneak inside the wire to steal cases of water or soda. We hope they’ll warn us if the insurgents attempt to infiltrate our compound and cut our throats in the dark of night.

Three of the dogs have names. Snowflake, Mama, and Louie wander in and out of our compound, seeking food and attention. The fourth dog is referred to as “the mean one,” or simply “that big, black bitch,” and she stays hidden deep inside an abandoned HESCO structure on the far edge of camp. She has had a litter of puppies, and any attempt to get near her or her babies brings with it the risk of losing a hand. Before long the puppies have grown, and they too join their mother and determinedly guard their empire on the far edge of the camp. They want nothing to do with us, and so we in turn want nothing to do with them. Their mother disappears, and we never hear from her again. Eventually her pups join her, wandering the wasteland that surrounds COP South.

Mama has also gotten herself pregnant, though we are unsure who the father is. We think it might be Louie. As the weeks pass her belly swells and we see less and less of her as she searches for a nesting spot to deliver her litter. When the puppies finally come she won’t let us near them, but the Marines line up anyway to catch a peek of the seven runts that have survived the birthing process. Sure enough, several of them look like Louie.

Snowflake also appears randomly, happily taking handouts when he is not blackened and filthy from scavenging food in the charred hole of the camp’s garbage pit. He prefers our leftovers, not the bags of dried dog food that one team member has convinced friends to send to us. When our convoys leave the camp, Snowflake often follows us outside the wire, bidding the Outlanders farewell when our vehicles leave the dirt trail and turn north onto the hardball.

Louie is a big, dumb puppy, and his dirty gray and black coat and rawboned enthusiasm remind me of the stray puppy I once adopted as a child in Italy. Louie is the dog that the team loves to hate, and he is a nuisance. Piles of Louie droppings litter the area like twisted land mines, and I threaten to banish him from the camp if the Marines don’t clean up after him. One morning I find three gifts Louie has left by the door to my hut. In a fit of rage I grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him outside the concertina wire, yelling at him not to come back. But he twists his way back inside the coiled wire and moments later is vying for my attention.

I am livid, yet in my anger I remember how I handed over my Italian puppy to an uncaring master, and how the dog met his horrible end at the hands of an insidious canine illness. The last time I remember seeing the dog he was lying in a putrid swirl of his own blood, feces, and urine, and he stared up at me with big, sad eyes as if to ask me why I had abandoned him, why I had consigned him to such a hideous fate.

And then I forget my anger with Louie, and I remember that a lance corporal temporarily assigned to our team has convinced some humanitarian organization to pay $3,000 to ferry Louie back to the United States. The young Marine has tended to Louie since he was born, and he has decided that he cannot live without the mutt. One day a team of contractors shows up at the camp and whisks Louie away to America and a future rendezvous with his Marine savior. Two of the team members sink into a depression after Louie’s departure. One of them, Sgt. Mark Hoffmier, abandons his gruff exterior and shifts his attention from Louie’s disappearance to the new litter of puppies being reared by Mama. Hoffmier, the team’s resident firearms enthusiast, is often brooding and unhappy. But beneath his acerbic exterior lies a conscientious, compassionate young man who demonstrates this by caring for the litter of puppies.

Hoffmier counts them daily, retrieving errant puppies that have wandered away from the concrete bunker in which Mama has nested them. Eventually the sergeant builds a tiny doghouse outside his hooch, and then he builds a dog run next to the hut. One by one he moves the puppies from the bunker into the dog run and the waiting doghouse, and he spends his free time watching over the mutts as if they are his own children. He picks out one puppy that closely resembles Louie, and he begins making arrangements for the dog to be spirited away to America the same way Louie was. But our premature departure from COP South means that Hoffmier will not have the time to coordinate his puppy’s salvation, and he sadly accepts the fact that the dog will have to remain behind to fend for itself.

At first I am irritated at the time and attention Sergeant Hoffmier and all of the Marines have expended looking after the mangy pack of animals that roam our camp, but then I become conscious of the silent impact these dogs have had on all of us. They remind us of home, and they allow the Outlanders to be human in a place where it is easy to lose one’s humanity. The Marines hate the critters, but they love the dogs, and it is only after I realize this that I finally understand how we will win this Long War. The Marines are not robots. They are not mindless. They are capable of killing, yes, but they are capable of something much more powerful. They are capable of loving—loving their country, loving each other, and, yes, even loving the pack of ratty mongrel dogs that, like us, have made COP South their home.

It is that ability to love that makes my Marines invincible. But will our Iraqi counterparts learn the same thing? Will they be able to set aside their petty squabbles, their tribal infighting, their allegiances to the past, and instead embrace each other as brothers? Will they choose the lighted path toward progress, or will they veer blindly into the darkened corridor toward regression? We don’t know; all we can do is watch the dogs.

And wait.