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SILENT VOICES CRYING FROM THE PAST If you are a canine lover like so many Americans, than you will be appalled by this story; the Vietnam War was sad given the loss of human life, but that wasnt the only loss, as nearly 4,000 war dogs served in Vietnam, who saved countless American lives through their scouting and sentry duties. When withdrawing from Vietnam in 1973, the U.S. military classified the dogs as surplus equipment to be left behind during the evacuation; the dogs became disposable equipment, and mans best friend was left behind like a piece of garbage. There are few memorials across the U.S. that reflects canine heroism that saved the lives of countless troops, but you can find fine tributes to the war dogs, notably in New Jersey, and Fort Benning. In our political desperation to escape the Vietnam debacle, they were left behind, along with an unaccounting for 1948 U.S. POW-MIAs Vietnam troops. Mine is but a small voice, for the thousands of service animals that have sacrificed their lives, in silence, for our freedom during times of war, and these are the silent voices that must be heard. In the course of the Vietnam War an estimated ten thousand American potential casualties (or seventeen per cent of the total fifty-eight thousand American fatalities) were prevented as a result of the four thousand canine soldiers. Only two hundred sixty-one dog handlers were killed in action. In many instances, the dogs prevented soldiers from triggering a booby trap, or stepping on a land mine; they alerted their handlers to hidden enemy soldiers as far as a thousand yards away. The canine warriors detected underwater saboteurs by the smell of their breath from the reeds they used as snorkels, and some dogs even covered their dog handlers with their own bodies to protect them from gunfire and shrapnel, while losing their own lives in return. Former dog handler, Charlie Cargo, tells of the day his dog Wolf, a German Shepherd, refused to allow him to proceed any further up the trail. "I looked straight ahead and not more than two feet away was a trip wire. I would have died right there if he hadn't found the wire." Most dog handlers were too disheartened to revive the tragic events of their canine companions, and in respect to them, a book titled Silent Voices contains stories that others have been fortunate enough to hear, and are now shared with those that have chosen to remain silent.

The amazing stories of canines saving American soldiers in Vietnam go on and on. From 1960 to 1975 the Vietnam War became one of the longest and most unpopular wars, ever fought by the American armed forces. Unfortunately many of our heroic soldiers returned home abandoned and unrecognized, and much like their human counterparts, many of the Vietnam canine veterans also received a different kind of homecoming. Fewer than two hundred of the four thousand canine soldiers were returned home. Of the tens of thousands of missions logged by the four thousand American war dogs in Vietnam, some three hundred twenty-five died in the line of duty, while approximately six hundred succumbed to tropical disease. The K-9 team was so effective that the Viet Cong offered a bounty for dead dogs or their handlers. What happened to the remaining seventy-two percent of these heroic dogs? During the Vietnam War 1960-'75, about 4,000 American war dogs were employed in various capacities, of these only 120 war dogs returned to the U.S., through the efforts of their own dog handlers; any remaining dogs were considered to have various tropical diseases, died in Vietnam, and 15 were quarantined in Okinawa. Today, the U.S. military forces pride themselves on never abandoning any wounded, or dead soldier, as well as, insuring the care of our canines, who are saving lives in Iraq, and Afghanistan, certainly, a big change from the past Vietnam War, when U.S. POWs and-MIAs went unaccounted for, along with the brave and courageous K-9 war dogs, who were left behind in Vietnam.