Cpl. Brown Dog, U.S.M.C.

Circulating on the Internet is a story of a dog, destined to be slaughtered for food, who ultimately wins the hearts of U.S. Marines. The author of the piece is Cpl. Charles Patrick Dugan, U.S.M.C. You can read about Dugan at this link. The story of this dog is a good read.

The year was 1966 and I was a newly assigned machine gunner in an infantry unit that was protecting a high mountain pass that was between Da Nang and Phu Bai, Vietnam. The pass is called Hai Van Pass, which means Place of the Clouds. It is located 30 km north of Da Nang. The Marine Corps name of the hill that my unit was on was Hill 724. It was a dangerous and treacherous area that was of high strategic value.

There was only one narrow highway that wound up steep cliffs (Highway 1)that reached the peak at Hai Van. At the base of the hill was a small village called Namo. My story starts in that village. On a patrol through the village, my squad noticed a small wooden cage outside of a hooch.

We were new to Vietnam and unaware of the customs of the people. Wewere always alert for booby traps and we moved closer to the cage. Inside the cage was a small, brown puppy that brightened up when he saw us approach his cage. He began wagging his tail and wanting to be held. It was love at first sight for all of us.

Don't tell anybody, but most Marines are real softies when it comes to animals. The owner of the hooch came out and I decided to offer to buy his puppy. I just didn't like his living conditions. The old villager started his trying to up the price and after much debate, he decided on a price. He then pulled out a sharp knife and proceeded to open the cage.

All of us were shocked that he pulled a knife out and we all raised our weapons to him. He looked very frightened and assured us that he meant us no harm. He explained in gestures that he was just going to prepare the dog for us. We were confused and then he made the motion of drawing his knife across his neck to tell us that he was going to kill the dog and dress it out for us to Chop-Chop. I can only tellyou that the anger level went up 100 notches at that suggestion. We then realized that the dog was being raised to eat by the villager.

I unbuttoned my flak jacket and reached in and took the dog from his hands. I threw the money on the ground and placed the pup next to my heart so I could carry him up the long torturous climb back to our base camp.

The first event that happened was all of us knew that it was going to be a challenge to get our superiors to allow us to keep him. It was a miserable walk back to our hill. Our fears were baseless because we had a wonderful Captain, named Capt. Silva, and he allowed us to keep the puppy as a mascot. We loved him before, but we really lovedthe Captain after that.

Next we had the heated debate on what the dogs name should be. It was not an easy process since marines are very bull-headed and strong willed. After much serious and highly intelligent discussion we arrived at the unique name of Brown Dog. You have to know Marines to appreciate this.

Brown Dog was the darling of the hill and only one Marine hated him and that was OK, because we all hated him too. We all decided that if Brown Dog didn't like him that there had to be a damn good reason. Later he proved to be a coward in combat and was removed from our hill before he had an Accident.

Brown Dog was very happy that he left. I lost a stripe because I caught this guy kicking at Brown Dog and I explained to him not to do that again. I explained a little too harsh and the 1st Sgt. explained to me the error of my ways.

Brown Dog had a ritual of his life on the hill. At night we were in bunkers staring out into a dark, fog filled jungle. We were issued Seismic Listening Devices which consisted of probes planted in the ground in front of our bunkers. We had a smallconsole inside that had earphones. We could hear footsteps approaching or animals moving. We got pretty good with the device. Brown Dog would make the perimeter of our positions and visit every bunker to check on His marines. He was always awelcome visitor and he spent all of his non patrolling time in his daddys bunker, MINE! He also went on patrols with us and had an intense hatred for the Vietnamese. He would growl and really act up when he would see or smell one.

On April 1, 1967, we were dug in and the fog was pea soup thick that night. I was in the machine gun bunker and we were really spooked. About 3 am Brown dog shot up and went on full alert. I rang the field phone and informed the Command bunker that Brown Dog had alerted. Our Lt., ( Naval Academy IDIOT) advised me to trust my Seismic Device and not a damn dog!

My bunker was the forward bunker and the most vulnerable. I looked at my machine gun crew and whispered that I was going to disobey the Lt.s stupid order. They all nodded as I prepared the pop-up flare to shoot into the sky. I popped the flare and Lo and Behold we had Beaucoup Gooks in the wire! All hell broke loose and it was a very violent battle that night. It was up close and personal fighting and many people on both sides were killed and wounded. Brown Dog was hit by shrapnel but continued to fight the enemy. I saw him attack the leg of a NVA before he was zapped.

The attack failed and for what seemed like an eternity, we waited for the sun to come up. There were dead people in the wire, burning, and moaning out in pain in the darkness. I held Brown Dog in my arms and awaited the medivac helicopters that were coming to help our wounded. I really thought Brown Dog was going to die in my arms.

When the choppers came I handed my baby to the door gunner and asked him to get him medical help and told him that we would all be dead if it wasn't for Brown Dog. Marine to Marine, he gave me his word and I watched the dust-off. My Capt. pulled me aside and told me that he was glad that I never followed orders. He rubbed my head and told me that he was going to call to headquarters and tell them the story and he ASSURED me that Brown Dog was going to get the best of care.

Brown Dog had lost a lot of blood so I really didn't have much hope. The next day we received word that Brown Dog had been taken to Army Vets and they had saved his life. He had over 100 stitches, needed blood and antibiotics but he was going to live.

He was the hero to all of us. He received a canine award for heroism and we promoted him to Cpl. I also got my stripe back much to the chagrin of the Lt.

Cpl. Brown Dog returned to a heros welcome as we had a full formation to welcome him home.

I left the hill June 9th, 1967 and he was in very good hands with the Marines on the hill. I tried to take him home but that was impossible. I really hurt having to leave him on the hill, but I knew the Marines would take excellent care of him.

I have always thought it was so ironic that once he was going to be eaten by the Vietnamese and in turn he caused the death of so damn many of them!

All of my friends still have his picture and we all know that we would not be here today if it were not for a little, mixed breed dog named Brown Dog. He will be in our hearts until we die and a part of our souls forever.

When we assemble for our reunions, we always toast Brown Dog. Rest in peace little Warrior and wait for Your Marines to join you. We will always be Semper Fidelis to you and your memory. A Salute and three cheers for the finest Marine on our hill!

Ooo-Rah Brown Dog!

Cpl. Charles Patrick Dugan 2164539 USMC
Vietnam 1966-1967
Machine Gunner – Infantry

Uu-ah to Cpl. Charles Patrick Dugan and Brown Dog.

Link in this Blog: The Survival of Pat Dugan

Beware, the Brave Sheep’s Work was Expunged

“The men in the ditch pushed forward, trying to reach a low earthen berm for better cover. The Taliban had a line of sight straight down the canal. Rounds snapped a couple of feet away. To the AP reporter, a civilian with no military background, it seemed counterintuitive: running forward, toward the danger. Not back.”

The previous paragraph was written by AP reporter Christopher Torchia while accompanying our troops in the Afghanistan war against the Taliban. Torchia is a Sheep without a doubt, but a brave Sheep. Torchia and an AP photographer risk their lives plying their trade bringing us their observations and photographs.

To Torchia it is “…counterintuitive: running forward toward the danger. Not back.” He described, perhaps unwittingly, the quintessential difference between Sheep and Sheep Dogs, AKA warriors, military and non-military alike. (For those unaware of the concept of Sheep, Wolves and Sheep Dogs, see other pieces posted previously in this blog or consult the work of LTC Dave Grossman.)

I first read Torchia’s article in the print version of my local newspaper. Unfortunately, my newspaper did not post the article on its Internet site. As I do in these circumstances, I went to the Internet to find other postings of the article to provide an Internet link to the readers of this blog.

Often, I discover that the editors of print and online media change the titles and eliminate portions of AP articles. In this case, the first two of three located Internet postings of the article eliminated the sentence, “To the AP reporter, a civilian with no military background, it seemed counterintuitive: running forward, toward the danger. Not back.” They excised one of the only two unique portions of the article. The remaining distinctive sentence is, “The AP reporter, hauling the wounded man’s ammunition belt, was with two or three men who sprinted around a corner, straight into another ambush.”

It must be permissible for a journalist Sheep to assist the military by hauling an ammunition belt. But, it is apparently not ok for the journalist to observe that Sheep fundamentally react differently than Sheep Dogs in the face of danger. Such an observation forces recognition that there are two distinctly different classes of humans. And by extension, there is a requisite admission that survival of the masses requires a violence oriented class of individuals willing to engage in endangering activity for the betterment of mankind. That puts a kink in the leftist anti-military mantra.

Certainly, editors are constricted by space requirements, and must remain cognizant of professional standards and relevance. But, I wonder if personal and/or corporate political and social agenda sometimes plays a significant part in the editorial decision making. If agenda is the case, journalistic work becomes partial commentary and a form of editorial dishonesty accomplished by omission of portions of the journalist’s work product. In essence, the story is changed from what the journalist recounted.

Our freedoms are predicated upon an informed public. As in all things written, let the reader beware.

Link in this Blog:
Caught in the open: a firefight with the Taliban

We Warned You-America Rising

Kudos to the authors of this self-explanatory video.

Deny Parole to the Onion Field Killer Gregory Powell

In 1963, Gregory Ulas Powell and Jimmy Lee Smith kidnapped LAPD officers Ian James Campbell and Karl Hettinger. Officer Campbell was murdered in an onion field outside Bakersfield. The infamous crime was documented in former LAPD sergeant Joseph Wambaugh’s classic non-fiction book, “The Onion Field.”

Smith died in jail, but Powell is scheduled for a parole suitability hearing in Los Angeles on Wed., 1/27/10.

The California Board of Parole Commissioners includes:

Arthur Anderson
Troy Arbaugh
Lea Ann Chrones
Robert Doyle-Chairman
Jack Garner
Hollis Gillingham
Peter Labahn
John Peck
Michael Prizmich
Thomas Powers
Mary Ann Tardiff

This morning I sent an e-mail to Chairman Robert Doyle urging the Board of Parole Hearings to deny suitability for parole to Powell, CDC A57622. The e-mail address was confirmed when I received back an e-mail thanking me for my input. Mr. Doyle’s e-mail address is: Robert.Doyle@cdcr.ca.gov

I suspect that the e-mail addresses for the rest of the Commissioners has the same formula as did the e-mail address for Doyle: first name, period, last name @cdcr.ca.gov

Send an e-mail to Doyle and any of the Commissioners supporting the denial of parole for this cop killer.

Link in this Blog:

Board of Parole Hearings

Scott Brown’s Senatorial Victory in Massachusetts

Today is the first time that I’ve felt real optimism since the American public elected the most leftist U.S. president in history one year ago. The fact that the deep blue state of Massachusetts, blue at least nationally, handily rejected the Democratic party candidate and choose a Republican party member to hold the senate seat most recently dominated by Ted Kennedy speaks volumes about the American people.

The Massachusetts people did not just reject Martha Coakley, they rejected Pres. Obama and his leftists buddies Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and a host of other political cronies, who represent philosophies antithetical to the American dream.

Lock and load is still the order of the day, but there is once again a ray of sunshine shining through the darkness of leftist agenda.

Arabic Fanciful Thoughts-Almost as if They are Children

In the introduction to Frank J. Gaffney’s tome, War Footing, noted historian Victor Davis Hanson writes on the Arabic mind. Hanson’s description reminds me of the fantasy oriented mind of a young child.

Do not look for logic and consistency in the Middle East for they are not to be found.

It makes no sense to be frustrated that Arab intellectuals and reformers damn us for removing Saddam while they simultaneously now praise the democratic rumblings that followed his fall. We should accept that the only palatable scenario for the Arab Street was one equally fanciful: Brave demonstrators took to the barricades, forced Saddam’s departure, created a constitution, held elections, and then invited other Arab reformers into Baghdad to spread such indigenous reform-all resulting in a society as sophisticated, wealthy, free, and modern as the West, but felt to be morally superior because of its allegiance to Islam.

This is the dream that they found preferable to the reality: the Americans alone took out the monster of the Middle East; any peaceful protest against Saddam would have ended in another genocide; and adherence to Islamic fundamentalism is a prescription for economic stagnation.

Ever since the departure of the European colonials, the United States, due to its power and principled support for democratic Israel, has served as a Middle Eastern psychological need to account for its own self-created impotence and misery. This is a pathology abetted by our own past realpolitik and nurtured by the very autocrats that we sought to accommodate and who now, in their 11th hour, have turned on us for following principles rather than their own promises to maintain order and status quo.

After all these years, do not expect praise or gratitude for billions poured into Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, or Palestine-or thanks for the liberation of Kuwait, protection of Saudi Arabia in 1990, the remove of Saddam, more less for Americans concern for Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Somalia, the Sudan, or Afghanistan. Our past sins always must be magnified as much as our more recent benefactions are slighted.

The Western reader might well conclude that the “Arab Street” is delusional; an apt characterization while acknowledging that Arabic perception is the stuff of their self-serving cultural reality.

In confronting age old incendiary Middle East issues and the Islamist agenda, the error is ours if we insist on misunderstanding the Arabic mind and then predicating our actions solely from a Western perspective. That is true whether the Arabic mind is in the Middle East or in America. Concurrently, we must continue to offer the philosophy of Western style freedoms as a viable alternative and a helping hand up for a culture which last enjoyed greatness 1,000 years ago.

Source in this Blog:
Gaffney, Frank J, & Colleagues, "War Footing," Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2006, pgs xvii-xviii.

Colonel Robert L. Howard-Hero

American history is chock full of heroes. We used to know them. It is their spirit and blood that pays the price to secure freedom. Securing the freedoms that we enjoy is not pretty. But, today’s children know them not. These are the grandchildren of the Vietnam War generation. Why don’t they know? Simple; their parents know them not, as well.

Not long ago, I attended an elementary school tribute to the third grade student’s heroes. A Vietnam Vet in the crowd broke down in tears when he revealed that this was the first time that anyone ever thanked him for his military service.

I wish that today’s parents made American heroes a general topic of discussion at the dinner table. Here’s a good hero to begin the discussion, Col. Robert L. Howard, Congressional Medal of Honor.

View the video below; go to the Internet tribute site link; and see more information at the Wikipedia site.

Links in this Blog:
Robert Howard Tribute Site

Wikipedia-Col. Robert L. Howard