with its oppressive heat and humidity. Then you had to learn to find hidden tunnels. Because the elusive communist guerrillas hid out, generally, in a vast network of underground passageways they had constructed. You had to hone your ability to navigate minefields. You had to be able to detect ambushes before they happened and respond to surprise attacks.
That’s what these six weeks were for. To turn members of the American military dog elite into Vietnam War professionals.
Specialists.
Ten dogs in addition to DED and his sister had been brought in from the mainland, along with another forty-six from a base in the Philippines and twenty-nine specially selected from a platoon at a base in Korea. Unfortunately, seventeen out of the total of eighty-seven dogs were unable to become fully capable specialists. DED’s sister was among these. And so, DED, you barked. Because while you would be sent off to the Indochina peninsula, your sister would be shipped back to Oahu, Hawaii.
You sensed, somehow, that you would never see her again. That you would never again be able to play with her. And so, DED, you barked.
Your sister’s name was Goodnight. Though she had failed the screening test on Okinawa and was shipped off to a military installation on Oahu to serve as a sentry dog, she was still an outstanding dog—they wouldn’t have used her if she wasn’t—and in time, she would have her own rather complicated role to play in your history. For now, we will set her story aside.
To focus on you, DED.
ME?
Yes, you.
Think of your name. DED was an acronym for “dog-eat-dog,” and it had been given to you in the hope that you would become a tough fighter worthy of the phrase. Do you get what that means, DED? Giving you a name like that was in poor taste, yes, but there was more to it than that. And as it happened, in the end, your name suggested your destiny.
You would consume canine flesh.
And soon.
That was the fate that awaited you.
MINE?
Yes, yours.
Woof!
Seven days later you were prepared to ship off to Vietnam. This was still June 1967. You and your sixty-nine fellow specialist anti-Vietcong dogs departed Okinawa and landed on the Indochina peninsula. One by one, the dogs were assigned to their new units. None was assigned to the IV Corps Tactical Zone, which was farthest south. Forty-four were assigned to the III Corps Tactical Zone. Half that number were assigned to Tay Ninh Province in the west, along the border with Cambodia. Four dogs were assigned to the II Corps Tactical Zone, and the rest—twenty-two in all—were assigned to the I Corps Tactical Zone, up north. Of the latter, eight went to Quang Ngai Province, four to Thua Thien-Hue Province, and ten to Quang Tri Province, all the way up north.
July 1967. DED was among the ten dogs sent to Quang Tri.
They went by helicopter.
They swooped down from the sky into a landing zone that had been cleared in the forest, into the thick of war.
The northern border of Quang Tri butted up against the seventeenth parallel. Against the DMZ. That summer, the DMZ was far from demilitarized—it was the site of intense fighting. The American Joint Chiefs of Staff had given permission to start shelling the DMZ a year earlier, though naturally this fact had not been made public. The Americans had one simple slogan in the border area, where the two states and the two sides in the conflict met: “Keep the Commies Out!” Seven months earlier, permission had been granted to return fire across the DMZ. Shooting back could be considered a form of invasion. Five months earlier, permission had been granted to carry out preemptive strikes. This was…well, obviously a form of invasion. They were doing all this and still had no results to show for it. Then, three months earlier, they started constructing a defensive wall. This time they were going to try closing off South Vietnam. This was the beginning of the “McNamara line,” which required an incredible investment of manpower and involved the use of all kinds of equipment: barbed wire, mines, observation towers, searchlights, and so on. They carried all this stuff in using CH-54 heavy-lift helicopters, commonly known as sky cranes, and conducted frequent flyovers to protect the project.
Did the wall work? Was it impermeable?
It was not.
At all.
True, they were still building it, but this was kind of ridiculous. Not infrequently the enemy would actually slip past the McNamara line and turn up behind the US forces.