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RETIREMENT & LIFESTYLE PLANNING | |
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| ISSUE - 27 - Autumn 2006/2007 | |
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For the love of Lava
A Marine's love for an abandoned puppy in wartorn Iraq soon became a dogged determination to relocate “the little tough guy” to a safer life.
Lava was actually lucky to survive his first encounter with the Marines. Those clicking sounds in the abandoned house – were they grenade pins? An insurgent strapping on a bomb? Timed explosives? The men of the First Battalion, Third Marines – known as the Lava Dogs – were unsure and understandably jumpy. It was November 2004, the first week of the US invasion of Fallujah and they'd already seen plenty of the stuff of nightmares.
Most deaths in that week (and horrible head and face injuries) have come from insurgents hurling grenades from hidden corners of abandoned buildings just like Lava's hideaway. But for some reason – destiny? – the Marines do not hurl grenades themselves but zero in on their target with rifles at the ready – and come face-to-muzzle with a five-weekold puppy who is clearly delighted to see them.
Before he even meets Lieutenant Colonel Kopelman, the pup – naturally named ‘Lava' after his rescuers – has been de-fleaed with kerosine, wormed with chewing tobacco and is gobbling ‘Meals Ready to Eat' (MREs, better known by the Marines as ‘Meals Rejected by Everyone') – and anything else he can get his sharp little teeth into. All this is strictly against the rules ( Prohibited activities for service members under General Order 1-A include adopting as pets or mascots, caring for or feeding any type of domestic or wild animals ) but Kopelman, like his comrades, falls swiftly, if reluctantly, under Lava's spell.
He becomes absolutely determined to transport the pup to California and a new, safe life as an American dog. The result is a gripping story, firmly grounded in an account of the grim chaos of the Iraqi war that is far more compelling than any media report. Nor does Kopelman shirk the obvious question, why of all things save a puppy amidst all this destruction?
Perhaps the answer lies in Kopelman's response when he first meets Lava: “There's fear in his eyes despite the bravado. He's only a puppy, too young to know how to mask it, so I can see how bravery and terror trap him on all sides while testosterone and adrenaline compete in the meantime for every ounce of attention.” It's something Jay recognises right away – perhaps because he's seen it in the eyes of so many young combatants.
Or in the response of journalist Anne Garrels, embedded with US troops in Iraq and a key link in Lava's rescue chain. “He saved my sanity today,” she emails Kopelman. “I was just so fed up with this whole place, and the whole job and went over and romped
with him for awhile.” Whatever the case, “Once I decide to save Lava, it becomes an unprogrammable mission I don't have the smarts to reassign or the guts to walk away from,” Kopelman writes; adding later, after further service in that same terrible war, “at least I saved something ”.
More
Read the full account of Lava's dramatic evacuation story in From Baghdad with love by Lieutenant Colonel Jay Kopelman (with Melinda Roth), Macmillan Australia 2007, RRP $24.95.
Photo: Courtesy of Jay Kopelman
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