It’s a wartime love story like no other. This one is about a marine and a dog.
The dog ” five weeks old, near death and starving ” was found in a shelled-out house during fierce fighting in Fallujah two years ago. The unit that found him, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, was nicknamed the Lava Dogs for the jagged pumice they had trained on in Hawaii. They named the puppy Lava.
The marine ” Lt.Col. Jay Kopelman, of La Jolla ” was a reservist deployed from Camp Pendleton to train Iraqi Special Forces.
The puppy traveled in the colonel’s backpack, played on the base, loved military mre’s (meals ready to eat), which the troops call “meals rejected by everyone,” and tried his best to please everybody.
“He had this ability to make you forget all the bad stuff ” the death and the destruction ” and while you were playing with him you could imagine you were at home among family and friends, and everything was right with the world,” Kopelman said.
But of course it wasn’t, the marine writes in his book, “From Baghdad With Love,” an unflinching and sometimes sardonic account of the fighting and the bureaucracy of war.
Kopelman made it his priority to keep Lava alive ” to hide him against the standing rules of his commanders ” and then, move mountains to get the dog out of Baghdad.
“Well, I didn’t wake up one morning and decide,” Hey, today seems like a great day to violate a standing order,” Kopelman said.
From Baghdad With Love: “It was sometime between the afternoon I saw the dogs eating dead bodies and the time I found Lava rolled up in my sleeping bag. After that the excuses flowed: because the Iraqi soldiers were failing; because I was tired; because so many children hadn’t been evacuated by their parents when they’d been warned “¦ because I couldn’t sleep at night anymore unless some little fur ball was nestled up against me and breathing on my feet.”
And because he promised his men. “They wanted to save him as much as he wanted to be saved. I gave them my solemn promise. As a marine leader, you make promises and you need to keep them. Because sometimes that’s all you have,” Kopelman said.
The truth was, many in command did look the other way. And the dog on base was not such a secret.
“He pooped on their boots, peed on their blankets and chewed up their clothes,” Kopelman said.
Eventually, as orders came for soldiers to put down any dogs seen near their camps, the situation did become more urgent and the escape was mounted.
“I started Googling anything I can think of ” puppy passport, help, help puppy, helpless puppy needs passport, help Marine help helpless puppy ” I’m feeling kind of frantic about the whole thing and getting nowhere at the speed of light “¦ I like what I am”a Marine. I like being strong. I like being brave. I like going in first. I want to go in first, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anyone shoot my puppy.”
It took some American reporters, an Iraqi housekeeper and a firm that trains bomb-sniffing dogs to remove Lava from Iraq, the Helen Woodward Center and the Iams pet food company ” and even a doggie passport to bring Lava halfway across the world.
From Baghdad With Love: “I want Lava to be alive, because then there’s hope that he’ll make it here to California and get to be an American dog who runs on the beach and chases the mailman instead of strangers with guns.”
Lava arrived in the United States ten days after Kopelman returned. He sleeps every night with Kopelman’s 8-year-old stepson Sean ” home in La Jolla.
The book, which came out the first week of October, started at 25th on the New York Times Bestseller List in its first week of publication.
This Nov. 11, in a Veterans Day celebration like no other, Lt. Col Jay Kopelman and Lava will visit the La Jolla/Riford Library, 7555 Draper Ave., at 10.am. The public is invited.
For more information, call (858) 552-1657.