Exclusive extract from From Baghdad, With Love (Pan Macmillan Australia) by Lieutenant Colonel Jay Kopelman.
I don’t remember exactly when I got to the house that served as our command post in the north-west sector of Fallujah, and I don’t remember exactly how I got there.
I remember being exhausted, the tiredness weighing more heavily on me than the 60-pound rucksack I lugged around, and as I walked through the front door and shrugged what I could off my back, all I could think about was sleep.
That’s when I saw Lava for the first time. Only it’s not as if I walked in and saw a chubby puppy cuddled up on a blanket undefiled by the world like an overstuffed lamb. There were no squeaky toys, no baby yips, no eyes looking up at me with an artless blue-grey innocence.
Instead a sudden flash of something rolls toward me out of nowhere, shooting so much adrenaline into my wiring that I jump back and slam into a wall. A ball of fur not much bigger than a grenade skids across the floor, screeches to a halt at my boots, and then whirls in circles around me with the torque of a wind-up toy. It scares me, right? Like I’m tired and wired and anything quick coming at me jerked at my nerves, so I peel back off the wall and reach for my rifle even though I can see it’s only a puppy.
Now, before you get all out of whack about me aiming a weapon at a cute baby mammal, keep in mind that I just walked in from the streets. Out there, things were spooky, like a plague or a flood or dust from an atomic bomb has just rolled through. Most of the city fled before the US-led attack, and the quiet rang so loud after the bombardment, even windblown newspaper sent your nerves screaming for solid cover.
The day before the offensive started, we dropped leaflets over the city warning the few remaining citizens that we were on our way in, but insurgents inside spit back that they had hundreds of car bombs rigged, booby traps set, and suicide bombers with jittery fingers waiting to go. They’d already dug trenches in the city’s cemeteries for the expected martyrs.
In the days prior to our march into the city, our warplanes pounded Fallujah with cannon fire, rockets, and bombs. Because the skies were so crowded, attack jets had only a three-minute window to unload their cargo and clear out before another jet swooped in. Hundreds and hundreds of pounds of 105mm shells, 25mm rounds, and 40mm rounds blasted into Fallujah that night with the impact of meteors from galaxies away. The aerial bombardment was so spectacular, me and the 10,000 other marines waiting to advance on the outskirts of the city doubted anyone inside would live through it. But plenty managed, and now that we were here, sniper fire came at us from nowhere like the screams from ghosts.
So when this unexpected thing, this puppy, comes barrelling toward me in this unexpected place, I reach for my gun. I must have yelled or something, because at the sound of my voice, the puppy looks up at me, raises his tail and starts growling this baby-dog version of I am about to kick your ass.
The fur gets all puffy around his neck like he’s trying to make himself look big, and then he lets loose these weeny war cries — roo-roo-roo-rooo — as he bounces up and down on stiff legs.
I stomp my boot his way to quiet him down, but he doesn’t budge and intensifies the roo-roo-roo-rooos shooting in staccato from his lungs.
“Hey.”
I shove the rifle to my back and bend down. The puppy bounces backward in time to the roo-roo-roo-roooos but doesn’t take his eyes from my face.
“Hey. Calm down.”
He looks like a bloated panda bear, and when he howls the last rooooo of the roo-roo-rooooo, his snout stretches skyward until his fat front paws lift off the floor.
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 his attention. Recognise it right away.
I reach into my pocket, roo-roo-roo, pull out a bullet, roo-roo-roo-roo, and hold it out toward him in hopes he’ll think it’s food. The puppy stops barking and cocks his head, which makes me feel manipulative but wise.
“Thatta boy.”
He sniffs the air above his head, finds nothing, and then directs his nose toward the bullet. It interests him, and he leans forward for a better whiff of the metal, which surprises me until I notice how filthy my hands are, almost black from a week without washing, and I realise he’s smelling accumulated dirt and death on my skin.
I lean forward, but fear gets the better of him and he tears off down the hall.
“Hey, come back.”
I stand there and watch him careen into a wall. I wince, that’s got to hurt, but he gets up, shakes his head, and takes off again.
“Hey, come here.”
The puppy stops and looks back at me, ears high, tiny tail rotating wildly, pink tounge hanging out sideways from his mouth like he’s crazy. I realize he wants me to chase him, like he figured out he was bamboozled only he’s too proud to admit it and now covers up with this I-was-never-afraid-of-you routine. I recognise that one, too.
He leaps in a circle on paws as big as his face, hits the wall again, and repels into a puddle of daze. I’m, like, mesmerised by the little guy. Wipes my windshield clean just watching him, so I scoop him up off the ground with one hand and pretend I didn’t notice his wall slam.
“Tough guy, huh?”
He smells like kerosene.
“What’s that aftershave you’re wearing?”
He feels lighter than a pint of bottled water as he squirms and laps at my face, blackened from explosive residue, soot from bombed-out buildings, and dust from hitting the ground so many times.
“Where’d you come from?”
I have a pretty good idea where he came from and a pretty good idea where he’s going, too. I’ve seen it before, marines letting their guards down and getting too friendly with the locals — pretty girls, little kids, cute furry mammals, doesn’t matter; it’s not allowed. So as I’m holding the little tough guy and he’s acting like he just jumped out of a box under the Christmas tree, I call my cool to attention.
It’s not allowed, Kopelman.
But he keeps licking and squirming and wiggling around, and I remember this part pretty well, because I liked the way he felt in my hands, I liked that he forgave me for scaring him. I liked not caring about getting home or staying alive or feeling warped as a human being — just him wiggling around in my hands, wiping all the grime off my face.
Book Group questions
By caring for and hiding the abandoned puppy, Jay was breaking strict military regulations — was he right in doing so?
The puppy created a kind of normalcy in a surreal situation — was this a good thing?
If Jay had not been able to rescue Lava from Iraq, would the dog have been better off never knowing love and kindness?
Has your idea of the kind of man who becomes a marine changed since reading this book?
Did the story confirm your impression of what’s happening in Iraq or did it challenge your view?
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