From Baghdad To America (3 page)

And at this moment I make the most important promise I've ever made, to date, to anyone in my life. I promise the Marines that I'll find Lava a home in the United States. One where he can play in the park—one where insurgents aren't firing RPGs at him, IEDs aren't a way of life, and dogs don't have to survive on the corpses of dead enemy combatants. How I'll do this I have no idea, but I've just given a bunch of young kids—your kids—my word. And I'll be damned if I'm going back on it.

You see, as an officer of Marines, your word is your bond. You don't ever ask a Marine to do something you're not willing to do or haven't already done hundreds of times yourself; you lead from the front; and you always keep your word. (Are you colonels—you know who you are—who worry about getting that star on your collar more than taking care of your Marines listening?) If I can't do this one simple thing for these troops, how can I expect them to follow me into combat? How can I ask them to follow me through a doorway into a house that's suspected of being an insurgent hideout? Answer: I can't. I have to make good on my promise or my credibility is completely shot. For that reason as much as any other, I was committed to saving Lava.

He may be a dog and not a person, but in his own way Lava saved me and my fellow Marines more completely than any human being could have during those dark days. On many days he continues to save me from myself. So yeah, I brought him back.
Oo-rah.

Dear Jay,

I didn't think twice when one of my Marine buddies contacted me one day and told me about a good book he heard about on a rescued dog from Baghdad. Since just about every platoon out there had adopted an animal of some sort, and we had never even made it to Baghdad, I figured the chance of it being Lava was slim to none. However, I was doing research for a book of my own and was trying to get my hands on anything about Iraq I could find so I decided to pick it up. Yet when I went down to the bookstore and saw the cover I knew immediately that he was our dog. I couldn't believe it!

I brought it home and read it in one sitting and I was far more than impressed with your effort to bring him to the States. It is nothing less than heroic. The introduction and story of his rescue is not right, though. I know because I was the one who found him.

The day Lava encountered his first American was far from silent. Hearing a gre— nade pin drop among the sounds of incoming mortars, artillery, and random bursts of both enemy and our own machine-gun fire would have been impossible for even the keenest ear. Nonetheless, as we gathered in the courtyard of our newly occupied operations center to go over maps, the plan of the day, and enjoy the morning's first cigarette, one of the headquarters captains said that he could hear a whining like a trapped animal or possibly a wounded insurgent. We looked through the razor wire and sandbags atop the courtyard wall and saw nothing moving in the large dirt clearing on the other side. It was a desolate and bare battlefield except for the few blown-up vehicles, a 55-gallon metal drum, and scattered shards of metal debris, but there was certainly a loud noise echoing from somewhere. It turned out to be the sound of a hungry five-week-old puppy lost and alone in that metal drum, the only shelter he could find from the most dangerous place in the world.

Forrest Baker visiting Lava in San Diego

The same captain then ordered me, a corporal at the time and the only NCO available, to shut it up because it was giving away our position. Luckily there was no time for micromanagement and he left the “how” up to me. Ironically, as you can probably remember, a week after we found him the RCT issued an order to euthanize all animals in the city in order to control disease, since they had been feasting on their previous and long-deceased owners. That option, however, never crossed my mind. I had to go get it.

So I then gathered two of the junior Marines on the forward to cover me as I ran out into the clearing. With a tight grip on the stock of my rifle I sprinted out to the steel container that echoed his cry for help and used it to take cover. I had no idea if I was being observed and if so by which direction. The large clearing was completely surrounded by two-story buildings and I knew my cover wasn't very effective, or if it would even stop a round at all, so I quickly reached in to grab him but he scooted deeper inside to avoid my grasp. In order to reach him I had to let go of my rifle, something we have been trained never to do, and crawled in grabbing him with both hands. I got up and ran as fast as I could the hundred and fifty feet back to the courtyard with my rifle dangling from its three-point sling. As of then I had never been so exposed to danger in my life, but luckily not a shot was fired.

He was so tiny that he fit into the palm of my single hand. He was likely just being weaned and missed his mother, who was nowhere to be seen. With his white, gray, and black coat he looked as if he had been singed in a fire, which gave Sgt. Julius Hawkins the idea of calling him Lava.

As a forward command element under the charge of Lt. Col. Ramos aka “Colonel Rambos,” our operation load was heavy, yet during the 38 nights that we spent in Fallujah we did have a few chances to play with the little guy and watch him grow, just as if he was one of ours back home. He reminded me so much of my dog Shasta that in a way it brought me thousands of miles back to the U.S., if only for a few moments, till the sound of gunfire would snap me back into reality.

When we finally left the city and returned to Camp Owens to sleep in our own cots I was so relieved to get out of there that I had forgotten to check up on Lava and make sure he had a place to stay. I wasn't all that worried, though. In that long and bloody month he had certainly become the most popular member of our company and I knew someone was bound to find him a good home. I just never imagined that he would have made it all the way back here. For me reading your book was simply not enough. I just had to see him alive and well for myself. Thank you for having me come down to San Diego to reunite with him. I still have a hard time believing that I was the first to rescue the only good thing to come out of that hell of a place. Yeah and you did a pretty good job too.

Semper Fi,

Forrest Baker

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.”

—MAHATMA GANDHI

I got Lava here despite all the odds.
Look at all the military guys trying to bring home adopted dogs—several of them wrote letters to me describing their wartime buddies, and the Humane Society even has a campaign to get the Department of Defense to change its rules about this. The stirring call to action in the form of a letter to then-Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of their members, lays the issue out beautifully:

There was no response.

Then again, I never got called to the carpet by my superiors and none of the hired dog killers got to Lava, so by any measure I consider myself lucky. Then there's the fact that Lava and I both managed to stay alive and healthy, with all our limbs and organs accounted for and functioning. That's a lot more than I can say for many of my fellow Marines and countless soldiers. But when Lava was hit by that Land Rover, it turned me even more upside down than the straightforward weirdness of being back in civvie skivvies.

Everything I'd been so sure of, everything I'd been so coldly certain about, was shot to hell. When it happened, all I could do was berate myself as harshly and completely as I'd done to the Iraqi soldiers I'd been sent to train. “How could I be so careless, so stupid?” I muttered over and over in the veterinary hospital in that zone of unreality. Somehow the verbal abuse made me feel better. Throwback to officer candidate school, maybe? I wanted to have my body and soul broken down again, emptied. To have any sense of humanity drilled out of me again. It would be a relief. That was my comfort zone, after all.

If I hadn't been old enough to know better—and hadn't been such a pansy—I would have put my hand through a window so I could feel Lava's physical pain on at least some level. As though that would take the pain from him just a little bit and put it on me. Why couldn't I go back in time? Why couldn't I alter events so that my walking Lava at that precise moment wouldn't coincide with an inattentive driver speeding down the street? Could I figure out a way to possibly go back—like when Superman reverses the rotation of the Earth—and prevent the confluence of Lava's walk and one of those ladies-who-lunch going who-knows-where at warp speed?

I survived some really horrible shit in a bombed-out city halfway around the world. Now you're telling me that a lady-wholunches, driving a big-ass SUV, is going to stymie me, a lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps? Can someone help me, please? Anyone?

I suppose the modern world of medicine came to my rescue, as it does for those who can afford it. Lava survived, but it wasn't cheap. After numerous surgical procedures to clean and sew up his leg wound, Lava has fully recovered—to the tune of roughly eight thousand dollars. I know you're thinking I deserved it, and I probably did. It's really not the money, you know. I'd gladly have spent every last dime I had if that's what it took to save Lava. It's the feeling of helplessness that rips your heart from your chest and stomps on it with golf spikes—the old metal ones, not the new molded plastic ones—reminding you of what a useless human being you are. In those first few days of uncertainty (or should I say the second or third round of first few days) at nearly losing Lava, I promised myself that he'd never know pain again.

If nothing else, I promised I'd always be there to take care of him and save him from himself, and from my stupidity. I'd just have to see it coming.

I honestly can't give you a blow-by-blow of Lava's first moments in California. I do remember that I couldn't make eye contact with him because I knew I'd break down. But I also remember that I couldn't
not
make eye contact with him because Lava well, Lava doesn't let me get away with ignoring him, or ignoring what he means to me. The Helen Woodward Animal Center helped me bring him back, and a trainer there named Graham Bloem helped with what they call the “intake—” checking his heart, blood pressure, temperature, and all that.

Apparently Lava was pretty difficult to pin down for his exam. Graham has worked quite a bit with Lava since that day, and he's told me more than once that Lava definitely recognized me. “I could see the look in his eyes: He knew. It was quite an experience being there.”

I was going through major turmoil in my personal life when Lava finally arrived, and having my dog back in my arms was the best feeling I'd had since returning. I felt it again after the accident. When I picked him up after he was hit by that car, I knew I mattered to him. He took my emotion—love, caring, whatever you want to call it—and reflected it back to me, as if I were a good person. As if I deserved to be loved. Without that, I think I would have gone as crazy here as I did in Balad, or al Walid, or anywhere else I was in Iraq other than Fallujah or Baghdad, where being unable to control Lava's fate tortured me that much more since I was physically removed from the little guy.

Lava forgave me over and over. Even when I'd visit him in the hospital and take him out to play while he hobbled on three legs, the fourth in a cast, he was nothing but excited to see me. He never made me feel as though
Look what you did to me
was on his mind. There was none of the vindictiveness, shock, or anger you'd expect from a person. It was only pure joy.

Dogs are known for that. People call it unconditional love, though I'm not sure that's the term I'd use. I've never been what you'd call a hard-core dog person. I didn't grow up with dogs. I don't get all mushy when I see them. I didn't even like Lava too much when I first met him, beyond thinking that he knew I wasn't sure about him, and he kept giving me these
I've got your number
looks until I'd reach down and give him a shove. He didn't give up on me.
Unconditional
isn't right, though. It's more like he trusted me to do the right thing in a way I'd never felt before. His trust in me gave me a different sort of strength than I'd ever had. It was a feeling I needed desperately at the time. I was supposed to be instilling that same sort of trust in the Iraqi troops I was training, and it wasn't working too well. There was no shared trust or shared vision.

In 2004 there didn't seem to be the level of emotional or nationalistic investment by the Iraqi military you would expect to see from people who wanted to live in a free, democratic and secure society. I'd like to think that this seems to be changing, slowly but surely, but I'm not sure. With Lava, the commitment never wavered. He was fully vested in his rescue and delivery to a free, democratic, and secure society—Southern California.

Lava impressed me with his drive. He never cowered in the corner. In this way, he is like a Marine. The Marine Corps has served in every American armed conflict since the Revolutionary War—and we're usually the first ones in. He's got the loyalty part down pat, too. Our motto is
Semper Fidelis,
often shortened to
Semper Fi.
That's Latin for “always faithful,” and it's supposed to signify the dedication and loyalty that Marines retain for “Corps and Country” even after leaving service. Lava has that in spades. If he'd been captured he would have followed the Code of Conduct without blinking an eye. Memorizing the code was part of the drill at Officer Candidates School—and later at SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) School—and no Marine ever forgets it.

Lava would protect me and my family to the death. He was the same way in Iraq with me and everyone who helped take care of him. Make no mistake, however. It hasn't been all sweetness and light. Having a dog is like having a child who's eternally two years old. Lava wants to get into everything, yet he's clueless about the dangers of his actions.

I should have seen that right from the start, right when we first began giving him a new life. We de-wormed and de-flea'd Lava with kerosene and chewing tobacco (I don't think these are accepted methods among the veterinary organizations, but they seemed to work). We fed him, gave him shelter and a warm, dry place to sleep.

Without us, fate would have dealt him the card of death, sooner rather than later. Perhaps that fifty-five-gallon drum he first called home would have been blown up by friendly fire. He might have served as a four-legged IED (improvised explosive device)—the remotely detonated 155mm shells that insurgents plant in light poles, overpasses, guardrails, animals, and any other spots they can be hidden to maximize indiscriminate life-ending damage—intended to rid the land of the invading forces of Satan (that would be us, the U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq). Had he not been used as cannon fodder by the insurgents, he might have starved to death. Or been killed any number of ways: a wayward rocket; a bullet from a contracted Department of Defense exterminator or even an officer, as described in one of the many letters I've received since writing
From Baghdad, With Love;
drowning by an overzealous rule-abiding Marine, soldier, or sailor; being crushed beneath the tread of an M1A1 Abrams tank. Now I had to add to the list: possible death by Land Rover.