Installment VI Mad Scramble for Freedom

Semper Fido

One scruffy puppy in Baghdad. One hardened Marine who couldn't leave him behind.

Lt. Col. Jay Kopelman With Melinda Roth, from From Baghdad, With Love From Reader's Digest December 2006

Mad Scramble for Freedom

Iraqi police patrolling the parade ground watched a vehicle trailing dust approach a location in the Green Zone and stop. They watched one man get out and shake hands with another, watched the two men exchange papers, watched a dog jump out of the car. They approached the vehicle and asked to see the papers. What was the dog's purpose?

"He's a working bomb dog," one of the men said. "I'm taking him back to my compound." They examined the papers, the dog, the man's face.

A motorcade then sped to Baghdad International Airport. One vehicle contained David, Lava in a crate, other people, and gunmen in bulletproof vests who guarded the doors and windows. The vehicles zoomed along on a highway where 12 people had been killed by bombs in the last month.

Finally, my dog arrived at the tarmac near a truck loaded with gear. "This is Lava," David told Brad Ridenour, a dog handler for Vohne Liche Kennels and another vital link in the chain. Soon after, I received a new e-mail.

I stared. I opened it and read. "As of 1600 hours," it said, "Lava is out of the country." For the second time in my adult life, I broke down and cried.

Photographed by Lori Stoll
"We have a new family now," says Kopelman, with wife Pam, stepson Sean, and Lava in La Jolla, California.

Brad flew with two other dog handlers to Amman, Jordan, where they passed through customs. They spent the night in a hotel in Amman, while the dogs were kept in an underground garage. As a result, Brad spent most of the night down there. Lava bounced around and wanted to play.

In the morning, the dog handlers were taken to Royal Jordanian, which would fly them to Chicago's O'Hare airport. Ken Licklider, meanwhile, drove to O'Hare, where he met up with John, Kris and others. They waited in the baggage area. Finally, Lava's crate came through.

John later explained, "That's when the dam just broke." He told me how he rushed Lava outside and exclaimed, "His first pee on American soil!"

And about Lava's behavior once they got to the hotel room, which John described as "Running around and around the room in circles. Wow."

And then John was finally calling me and saying, "He's here. He's safe. He's an American dog." John, Kris and Lava flew into San Diego the next day.

Surrounded by the media, I waited at the Helen Woodward Animal Center. Reporters asked me how I felt. Before I could answer, the airport van pulled up. I could see Lava through the window, see how big he'd gotten. I saw the same face, the same goofy look in his eyes, the tongue hanging out.

When Lava hopped down, stopped and stared at all the reporters, and then turned toward me, I looked a little above his head. That way I didn't see the recognition cross his face, didn't see past and future connect in his eyes. Because if I did, I knew I'd lose it then and there, and none of my comrades in the U.S. Marine Corps would ever speak to me again.

I'd wanted him to be alive. I wanted to know he was breathing and leaping after dust balls. If he was alive, then he would make it here to California and run on the beach and chase the mailman instead of strangers with guns. I'd wanted him to be alive almost more than anything I could think of.

Now Lava was headed my way. Fast. As fast as his legs could carry him. As I bent down to deflect the crash, that's when I saw the look in his eyes. It was an older version of the look he gave me when I first spotted him that day in Iraq: "I am going to kick your butt."

Film footage showed a dog barreling toward a well-composed Marine in uniform who bent down, caught the dog in mid-leap, stood up and turned circles with his face buried in the dog's fur. Lava was safe. He was home.