Dogs of War
Some of the men bristled at the arrangement.
This was to save them all from enemy fire? The canine was a ruined show dog. To make matters worse, the platoon’s backup was a German shepherd who months before had been roaming the streets of the Bronx with the three boys who owned him. The company commander didn’t like the setup one bit. They had to make it to the junction of the Piva and Numa-Numa Trails as fast as possible, all while chaperoning a cadre of untested dogs into combat.
But the commander had his orders. He motioned for the quiet, red-headed private in charge of the canine scout, PFC Robert E. Lansley from the 1st Marine War Dog Platoon, to take his position on point with the Doberman, named Andy, in the lead. At the rear, PFC Rufus Mayo, an Alabama boy who raised hunting dogs before the war, took the shepherd, named Caesar, on a leash. Since walkie talkies weren’t working well in the dense vegetation and phone lines couldn’t be strung until the area was secure, Caesar would, theoretically, serve as their lifeline, running messages hidden in a little metal pipe secured around his neck to regimental headquarters. That is, if he could find his way back, avoid sniper fire, and keep himself from chasing a wild pig off into the bush.
As they moved up the trail following the Piva River, they heard gunfire and artillery in the distance as the rest of the Second Marine Raider Battalion fought to secure the shores of Empress Augusta Bay. It was the beginning of the assault on Bougainville, a speck of land among the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. Allied forces needed to capture a safe zone large enough to build an airfield that could handle fighter escorts and light bombers for an eventual attack on the nearby island of New Britain, the final Japanese stronghold in the region. From there, the effort to subdue Rabaul, Japan’s equivalent of Pearl Harbor, would begin in earnest, allowing Allied forces to hop from island to island and get within bombing range of Japan itself.
The campaign in the Pacific depended on the Allies in Bougainville. For the Marines marching blindly into the dense, enemy-occupied jungle, the future depended on dogs who were never supposed to have been part of the war in the first place.