Soldier Dogs (32 page)

Later in the day doctors had to amputate one of Donahue’s arms. His mother, Julie Schrock, sick with worry when she heard the news, took refuge in the fact that he was alive. If anyone could make a good life with three limbs missing, it would be her son. “He’d be joking around in no time, flirting with the nurses. He’d be an inspiration for anyone else who had to go through this.”

But at 4:30
A.M.
on August 6, 2010—two days after the explosion—she got the call from a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. Her son was brain dead. “Words can’t describe the excruciating pain of that message,” she says. “If only I could have just been there to hold him so he wouldn’t have been alone.” He wanted to be an organ donor, so Schrock was told they had to keep him alive another day until they could operate. That’s why his official death date is listed as August 7.

The next day she got a package in the mail. It was from Max. A DVD, with photos and video snippets from Afghanistan. His family got out the laptop and watched it on the kitchen table until the last frame. It was a photo of him in full combat gear, just him and his rifle in the desert. Across it, these words: “See you soon—I miss you guys.”

In death, as in life, Donahue was there for others. His death saved three lives in Europe. His liver helped a thirty-four-year-old man in liver failure. His right kidney went to a sixty-seven-year-old man who had waited for a kidney transplant for more than ten years. And a fourteen-year-old boy’s life would change forever because of Donahue’s left kidney.

His casket rolled slowly off the plane in Denver. Six marines dressed in their blues saluted in perfect unison. Schrock caught sight of her son’s dog tags on the casket handle. They were undamaged, yet her son, inside his final resting place, was broken beyond repair. The thought made her nauseated and angry but mostly just numb.

At the packed funeral on August 13, his father said this:

“I loved the way you always stood up for the little guy or were willing to help someone in need. You hated bullies. And it didn’t matter how big they were, either. They knew they had their hands full with Max Donahue. When you were growing up, all the little
kids liked to hang with you because they felt they were safe. They knew you wouldn’t let anything or anyone hurt them. You were their hero.

“… I’m going to miss you, your laugh, your passion and compassion, and your love for life. You literally lived it to the ‘max.’ We all love you. And we’re all so very proud of you. And every American that values their freedom should be proud of you, too, for the way you so bravely served your country. I know at times as a father I’ve let you down, but as a son you have never failed me. You’re my hero. God bless you, Max.”

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A
ny soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who has ever served during wartime knows that with serving come loss, triumphs, partings, tragedies, and unbreakable bonds. But for dogs and handlers, it’s all doubled, in a way, because there are two of you. You’re a team within a team within a team, and you have your own dramas, your mutual losses and joys.

And while you’re stronger because of each other, you’re also each more vulnerable. Everything one of you does affects the other. If one of you gets hurt, the other is at a loss. You have to stop working. Without your other half, you can’t function, and in fact, you are not allowed to keep working on your own. If it’s bad enough, you mourn, and eventually you find a new teammate and go through the months of bonding and training and certifying that lead to life with a new other half. And you begin again.

But even without a loss of life or limb, bonds and partnerships are routinely forged and broken in the military dog world. Perhaps your dog needs to deploy before you can, so he goes off with a new
handler. Or if you get shipped to a new base, in most cases your dog will not travel with you.

And so it is, comings and goings, beginnings and endings—a never-ending cycle of life and death is enacted all around you, both in your own microcosm of soldier dog and handler and in the universe of war that’s your backdrop.

And when you think about all that this means, you see more clearly than ever that a soldier dog is so much more than just a piece of equipment. And you wonder: If these dogs also risk losing life and limb in combat, how should they be treated when they can no longer serve their country? Should treatment reflect their status as equipment, or as brother species-in-arms?

These questions lead to many others, some of which are tuned to cultural debates. Is man’s best friend entitled to rights or just compassionate regard? What’s fair treatment of these dogs? What’s the right thing to do?

On their long nights of patrolling near the Panama Canal in the mid-1990s, Army Sergeant John Engstrom and Max P333 forged an indelible friendship in the midst of the dense jungle. When you walk together six miles every night in a foreign environment, the bond comes easily, as it tends to with expats. Engstrom and the long-haired shepherd would talk about politics and life while on alert for trouble. It was a one-way conversation, really, but that didn’t matter to Engstrom. Max listened, looking intently at Engstrom when he came to emphatic points.

Max kept Engstrom’s mind from the jungle laden with large spiders. In an elephant versus mouse scenario, the robust 195-pound man hated the creatures, and they were everywhere. During one patrol where Engstrom had to crawl on his belly alongside the canal looking for someone Max had alerted to, Engstrom ended up covered with hundreds of ticks—spiders’ bloodthirsty cousins. They embedded quickly, and by the time the hospital started taking them out hours later, many were round and soft with Engstrom’s blood. On their long patrols, Max couldn’t keep the arachnids away physically, but the dog’s presence kept them from overtaking Engstrom’s imagination.

Max was an aggressive partner when he needed to be—a “real dog” in handler parlance. He bit the bad guys hard and with confidence. But with Engstrom’s wife, the dog turned to mush. Max would start out dignified and well mannered, but within thirty seconds of her kindly attentions, “he’d wag so hard his ass shook, his ears would go back all happy and goofy.” Max had almost nonstop ear infections, despite the best treatment, and she’d rub his ears just the right way, and the lethal weapon would purr.

Engstrom had to say good-bye to his partner in early 1995. They had been reassigned to others. Later that year, Engstrom left Panama because U.S. presence was drawing down. But he didn’t forget that dog.

Back in the U.S., Engstrom ended up at Lackland Air Force Base, instructing green handlers from all services in the art of working with military dogs. As part of the job, he’d routinely take them on tours of the base. In June 1997, he was showing a small group the dog hospital. He saw that there was something going on in the necropsy lab.

A military dog necropsy isn’t the relatively tame affair you see on
NCIS
. A series of knives, one bigger than the other, hang on a magnetic strip on the wall, as at a butcher shop. Dozens of smaller, shiny cutting-and-grabbing instruments lie on a tray off the foot of the necropsy table: hemostats, tweezers, clamps, rib cutters, a steel mallet. Sinks and vats catch fluids and parts. It is a scientific business. Since there is no chance of an open-casket funeral, dogs are cut and opened with everything hanging out in ways you don’t want to imagine. Sometimes just the head is recognizable. Sometimes not.

Engstrom opened the door to the necropsy lab and brought his students in. They approached the table on which the splayed mess that was once someone’s comrade was ready for disposal. And then Engstrom saw it. The head, the odd Cyrillic tattoo from his original breeder, and the other tattooed ear he knew so well from all those ear infection solutions he’d massaged in.

It was Max.

Engstrom doesn’t remember much after that. Just shock, followed by a sick, empty feeling. A hole in his own gut. “Man, they cut him apart.” He went home after that. Or maybe he didn’t. He can’t remember. The nightmare fogged the day. You don’t want to see a friend like that, he explains. You should never see a friend like that. For months it was hard to shake the image, the sickening shock. He never tried to find out why Max had been euthanized at age eight. He thinks the dog had hip issues, but he just couldn’t bring himself to ask.

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