The piece of doggrel in the title ends “box me up and send me home, ” and was a popular ditty among American soldiers in Vietnam. On March 14 HBO begins showing the ten part miniseries, Pacific, which is a retelling of World War II in the Pacific Theater. It follows by a couple of years on the heels of Band of Brothers, the Tom Hanks produced HBO miniseries on World War II in the European theater which also played on HBO.

The press indicates that the new series is in part a response to requests for Pacific theater veterans who wanted to make certain their story was told. Most surviving World War II veterans are now in their seventies and eighties. The Associated Press wrote in a 2008 article that of the 16 million who served in World War II about 2.5 million remained and that those veterans were dying at a rate of over 1000 a day. A museum historian indicated that at that rate the last World War II veteran would pass in 2020.

I served with the 43 rd Infantry Platoon Scout Dog attached to the First Brigade of the Fifth Infantry Division (Mechanized) in Quang Tri, I Corps, bordering the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in 1970 whose unit patch the Red Diamond appears above. An article on VA Watchdog dot org states that there were eight million service members in Vietnam era from 1964-1975. Since 2001, according to the article, the death rate of Vietnam veterans has doubled. The article states that the rate is approaching 300 a day, almost five times the daily casualty rate during 1968, the peak casualty year of the war. The average age of the Vietnam veteran is 62 as of 2010 although I am 67 and five years older.

Vietnam veterans will tell you that the war is never very far from their thoughts even though for most of us the major events are now forty years in the past. Strange things can bring the war back to life. The March 15, 2010 issue of People has an article entitled “Healing the Dogs Who Serve.” The article describes the new $ 15 million dollar Holland Military Working Dog Hospital at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, named after Lt. Colonel Daniel E. Holland, who died in Iraq in 2006. The primary aim of the facility is to put working military dogs back to work, but it also has a program that allows people to adopt the dogs that cannot be rehabilitated with priority given to the dogs handlers who have left the military.

The military subjected the three to four thousand dogs who served as sentry, tracker, and scout dogs to a much different fate. The majority of them were euthanized at the end of American involvement in the war or turned over to the South Vietnamese Army. My dog was a beautiful black and white German shepherd named Kentucky who had already served at least one tour in Vietnam by the time I arrived in country. For seven months Kentucky and I walked point on patrols or joined armored or staight leg units in ambushes . We also served with a Civic Action Program (CAP) unit that was stationed in a Vietnamese village. I can remember going out on a night ambush with about five Marines and a contingent of four of five villagers that we referred to as ruff-puffs rather than regional forces, their proper military name.

When I read the People story, I went to the website of the Vietnam Doghandlers Association (VDHA), the best source of information. I had supposed that the Army had turned Kentucky over to the South Vietnamese. But the VDHA has a link to the dog’s history. I found Kentucky’s name and the notation Red Tongue, 71, 6. Vietnam is hot and humid, and dogs sweat through their tongues. When Kentucky and I went to the field I carried a five pound bladder of water. We could stay in the field only for up to five days at a time. Otherwise the dog’s sense of smell and alertness deteriorated. The notation indicates that Kentucky died in 1971 at the age of 6 from heat stroke. The VDHA site has an incomplete list of men who served in the 43 rd IPSD. No one from the platoon died during the time I served, but the site lists 37 names including my own, and 15 are accompanied by the notation, KIA.

Many Vietnam soldiers later suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ( PTSD) from the strains of combat and the hostile reception many,if not most, encountered when they returned home because of the controversial nature of the war. I have often wondered how combat affected the dogs since they essentially were in Vietnam for the duration. A small box in the People article asks “Do Dogs Get PTSD?” The note quotes Walter F. Burghardt Jr., the military’s only board certified specialist as concluding that they do. In dogs the symptoms can range from failure to perform tasks ( like finding explosives ) to changes in relationship with handlers. When I was in the field with Kentucky, he would become very agitated and bark loudly when he heard artillery or shell fire. When I first came in country and started training him, I reached over to correct his seated position, a standard procedure in working with dogs. He began biting my arm, and I had to go for a tetanus shot. So looking back I conclude that at that time Kentucky exhibited signs of stress.

For the four footed and two footed veterans of the Nam, the entrance to the netherworld is not the River Styx but as the cadence call familiar to everyone in  the Infantry goes:

River of Saigon
Oh Mighty River
River of Saigon
One more river to cross.
One more river to cross