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Retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Jay Kopelman was serving in the battle of Fallujah in 2004.  In an abandoned house, Marines came across a tiny stray puppy who was, even at 5 weeks old, brave enough to challenge them.  So the warrior and the little dog with a big heart became companions, despite military regulations against keeping pets in a combat zone.  Kopelman was determined to save someone from the hell of war, and it turned out to be the puppy he named Lava.  Kopelman’s books, “From Baghdad With Love” and “From Baghdad to America” recount his struggles to bring Lava home to America, and the efforts of man and dog to overcome PTSD as they adjusted to their lives after Iraq.

Who’s the hero?  Both.  As Kopelman says, “I may have saved Lava, but he saved me back.” -http://www.apdt.com/


Lieutenant Colonel Jay Kopelman (Ret.)

the following are excerpts from the book From Baghdad, With Love (Jay Kopelman, Melinda Roth, first published October 1st 2006 by Lyons Press). 

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At the sound of my voice, the puppy looked up at me, raised his tail and started growling this baby-dog version of "I am about to kick your butt."  Then he let loose with tiny war cries -- roo-roo-roo-rooo -- as he bounced up and down on stiff legs.

"Hey," I said, bending down.  "Hey.  Calm down."

There was fear in his eyes despite the bravado.  As I held my hand out toward him, he stopped barking.  He sniffed around a little, which surprised me until I noticed how filthy my hands were after almost a week of not washing. He was smelling dirt and death on my skin.

I leaned forward, but he tore off down the hall.  "Hey, come back."

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"Not Worth the Ammo"

Born in Pittsburgh and a graduate of the University of Miami, I'd been a Marine since 1992, when I transferred from the Navy.  Now, in my second deployment to Iraq, I was looking at a starving five-week-old outlaw.  Members of the First Battalion, Third Marines -- called the Lava Dogs for the jagged pumice they'd trained on back in Hawaii -- said they'd found the pup at the compound when they stormed it about a week ago.  He was still with them because they didn't know what else to do with him.  Their choices were to put the little guy out on the street, execute him or ignore him as he slowly died in the corner.  The excuses they gave me were as follows: "Not me, man, no way."  "Not worth the ammo."  "I ain't some kind of sicko, man."

In other words: Warriors, yes. Puppy killers, no.

They named him Lava.  The newest grunt was treated for fleas with kerosene, dewormed with chewing tobacco, and pumped full of MREs.  Officially called Meals Ready to Eat but unofficially called Meals Rejected by Everyone, MREs were tri-laminate pouches containing exactly 1,200 calories of food.  Lava quickly learned how to tear open pouches that were designed to have a shelf life of three years and to withstand parachute drops of 1,250 feet or more.

The best part was how these Marines, these elite, well-oiled machines of war who in theory could kill another human being in a hundred unique ways, became mere mortals in the presence of a tiny mammal.  I was shocked to hear a weird, misty tone in my fellow soldiers' voices, a weird, misty look in their eyes, and weird, misty words that ended with ee.  "You're a brave little toughee.  Are you our brave little toughee?  You're a brave little toughee, yesssirree."

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Every morning we fed Lava and then piled out of the house to various posts across the city.  Some Marines patrolled the streets; some cleared buildings looking for weapons; some got killed.  Me, I supervised three wide-eyed Iraqi soldiers who, in their new, U.S.-issued, chocolate-chip cammies, waved their rifles around as if clearing away spider webs.  They were untrained, out of shape and terrified, these members of the Iraqi Armed Forces, coaxed by the United States to help root out insurgents.

At night we all gathered back at the compound, where we covered the windows with blankets and sandbags, cleaned our weapons, and made sure Lava had dinner.  After that, we would bed down and review the day's events.

"We found a weapons cache ..."

"Yeah, well, we got caught in the alley ..."

"Yeah, well, we had to transport the wounded and then we got hit ..."

As we talked, Lava would paw through our blankets.  Then he would sit between my crossed legs and stare out at everyone.

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paita.  wa gani diay tawoy chance nga bisag makapangita na lang ug bag-ong pet owners nga mosawo ug kabinlan.

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Most nights, Lava slept on the roof of the compound with a group of Marines, but once the weather turned colder, he came inside.  He looked wide-eyed and cute, all paws, snuffles and innocence.  In reality, he wasn't innocent at all.  I personally saw the little monster destroy several maps, one cell phone, five pillows and some grunt's only pair of socks.


Beef jerky for breakfast: Some of the
guys tore up little pieces for Lava.

One morning I woke up and found Lava sitting near my sleeping bag, staring at me, his left ear flapped forward and the remains of a toothpaste tube stuffed in his mouth. "Morning," I said. He replied with a minty belch.

Another time, I woke up to see his entire front end stuffed into one of my boots, his butt and back legs draped out over the side. He wasn't moving. I thought he was dead -- probably from all those MREs. "Oh, no," I said, cursing. But when he heard my voice, his tail started wagging like a wind-kissed flag. I decided that from then on, he wasn't eating noodles, biscuits or beans in butter sauce. No more toothpaste. Only meat.

And then another morning, I thought someone had short-sheeted my sleeping bag because I couldn't push my feet to the end. It was Lava, who'd managed to crawl in during the night and curl up at the bottom in a ball.

I pulled the dog up under my chin. He snorted and snuffled, and I scratched his ears. "What's going to happen to you once we leave here, little guy?"

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I returned to the main base with Lava on Thanksgiving Day in a Humvee -- which, after serial bombardments, firefights and crashes, looked more like a secondhand stock car. Lava loved the loud trip; he perched on my lap and drooled. Once safely at Camp Fallujah, I spoke to the military dog handlers. The working dogs made up an elite unit that out-specialized any weaponry or high-tech mapping systems the U.S. armed forces possessed.

When I asked if Lava could hide out in one of their kennels, the handlers shook their heads. "Can't help you, sir." They said that the closest military vet who could give Lava vaccinations worked in Baghdad -- some 40 treacherous miles away. They doubted he'd be able to help. They wished me luck, though, and gave me what I suspected was some very expensive dog food.

When I contacted the military vet in Baghdad, he respectfully reiterated General Order 1-A, adding that diseases such as leishmaniasis, hydatid disease and rabies were common among stray dogs in Iraq. "My apparent lack of concern isn't due to not caring," he wrote. "I'm simply following orders."

Well, shoot. But I wasn't about to stop there. I'd already snuck Lava into the officers' building, where he slept with me on a cot. On the computer, I was Googling anything I could think of -- puppy passport, help Marine help puppy. I felt frantic about Lava's fate. Yes, I was a Marine, brave to the point of insanity. But I'd be damned if I was going to let anyone shoot my puppy.

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Passing the Test


Scott Peterson/Getty Images
Journalist Anne Garrels, who found
Lava, "incredibly affectionate,"
kept an eye on him in Iraq.

Meanwhile, a man she knew in Iraq, someone I'll call Sam to protect his identity, managed to locate a vet and get Lava all his shots and proper documentation. Before long, Anne had to leave Baghdad, while I was assigned to patrol the Syrian border until leaving for the States. By now, I had learned about Ken Licklider, who owned Vohne Liche Kennels in Indiana. He was a former U.S. Air Force police-dog handler who trained dogs for search-and-seizure work; many of his dogs were used by the military to sniff out bombs in Iraq. There was a chance that Lava could fly out with Ken's dogs and handlers to the United States. "It means putting Lava on a transport with them," John Van Zante told me.

John, of the Helen Woodward Animal Center in California, and Kris Parlett, with the Iams dog food company, were my link to Ken. Iams had even offered to pay all the transport costs. Now we just had to sneak Lava out of the Red Zone in Baghdad, where he was hiding with journalists, to the military base in the Green Zone, the walled center of the city. John and Kris would take it from there. Me, by e-mail: "Thanks, John."

John: "We may actually put Lava on a plane. I hope this is it!"

Then, a worry. The kennel's overseas program coordinator: "Can you confirm that Lava has all his health and shot papers in order? Recently we ran into a problem with one of our dogs, and the military vet would not allow the dog to leave the country for an extra thirty days. I don't want that to happen to Lava." Neither did I. On top of that, I was leaving soon.

Sure enough, in early March I left Iraq, spent three days in a tent in Kuwait, and then flew to Shannon, Ireland. I was on my way home, but all I could think about as I drank pints with a bunch of other Marines was this: I just didn't see Lava making it to California to be with me. The plan to fly him out seemed too easy. You only get so much luck, my thinking went.

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Mad Scramble for Freedom

Iraqi police patrolling the parade ground watched a vehicle trailing dust approach a location in the Green Zone and stop. They watched one man get out and shake hands with another, watched the two men exchange papers, watched a dog jump out of the car. They approached the vehicle and asked to see the papers. What was the dog's purpose?

"He's a working bomb dog," one of the men said. "I'm taking him back to my compound." They examined the papers, the dog, the man's face.

A motorcade then sped to Baghdad International Airport. One vehicle contained David, Lava in a crate, other people, and gunmen in bulletproof vests who guarded the doors and windows. The vehicles zoomed along on a highway where 12 people had been killed by bombs in the last month.

Finally, my dog arrived at the tarmac near a truck loaded with gear. "This is Lava," David told Brad Ridenour, a dog handler for Vohne Liche Kennels and another vital link in the chain. Soon after, I received a new e-mail.

I stared. I opened it and read. "As of 1600 hours," it said, "Lava is out of the country." For the second time in my adult life, I broke down and cried.

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When Lava hopped down, stopped and stared at all the reporters, and then turned toward me, I looked a little above his head. That way I didn't see the recognition cross his face, didn't see past and future connect in his eyes. Because if I did, I knew I'd lose it then and there, and none of my comrades in the U.S. Marine Corps would ever speak to me again.

I'd wanted him to be alive. I wanted to know he was breathing and leaping after dust balls. If he was alive, then he would make it here to California and run on the beach and chase the mailman instead of strangers with guns. I'd wanted him to be alive almost more than anything I could think of.

Now Lava was headed my way. Fast. As fast as his legs could carry him. As I bent down to deflect the crash, that's when I saw the look in his eyes. It was an older version of the look he gave me when I first spotted him that day in Iraq: "I am going to kick your butt."

Film footage showed a dog barreling toward a well-composed Marine in uniform who bent down, caught the dog in mid-leap, stood up and turned circles with his face buried in the dog's fur. Lava was safe. He was home.



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Usahay aduna... pero dili kuno guaranteed.



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