War Dogs Remembered

More than 40 years later, the gratitude and love Dorr, 59, feels for the dog he served with is as strong as ever. And it's for this reason that Dorr, president of the Vietnam Dog Handler Association, drove from his Yoakum, Texas, home to be in Southern California this week.

About 200 Vietnam War dog handlers, who were trained to read and communicate with their canine partners, have gathered for a reunion. And on Saturday they'll join an expected several thousand others for the 10th anniversary rededication of the War Dog Memorial at the March Air Reserve Base in Riverside.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/02/12/war.dogs/index.html?hpt=C1


Chester says that being left over there was one of the hardest experiences he has known. Not just for him. He could shift and make his way out. No. the pain for him was the realization that the US Army did, could, order its dogs abandoned. Most of the handlers, with few exceptions, were despondent. The dogs were confused.

After he and the other dogs in his platoon were turned over to the Vietnamese, who had no intentions of working them, but of killing and eating the meatier of them, he got himself and most of the other dogs out.

They lived as a pack of strays in the jungles of SE Asia for a long time afterward, until they found sanctuary with a former US friend, also betrayed and left behind. They also owed a lot to a pack of werewolves. But this is all part of a story that Chester would have to tell. Not mine to tell.

Warin