Top Dog

by Maria Goodavage

  On November 10, 2010, eight marine dog handlers who happened to be at FOB Wilson and two intel marines gathered in the chow hall to celebrate the Marine Corps birthday. Willingham read the 235th birthday message from the current commandant. Next, a marine read the 1921 birthday message from Lejeune—aka “the greatest of all Leathernecks.” Willingham always especially liked the last paragraph.

  This high name of distinction and soldierly repute we who are marines today have received from those who preceded us in the Corps. With it we also received from them the eternal spirit which has animated our Corps from generation to generation and has been the distinguishing mark of the Marines in every age. So long as that spirit continues to flourish, Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past, and the men of our Nation will regard us as worthy successors to the long line of illustrious men who have served as “Soldiers of the Sea” since the founding of the Corps.

  Images of his father and of Lucca—two of his favorite marines—came to Willingham. Although the U.S. was barely getting its military dog program off the ground when Lejeune died in 1942, Willingham decided he’d have been proud of Lucca and other great marine dogs.

  He wondered what Lucca was up to in the kennels at Pendleton on the corps’ birthday. Probably just another day of waiting until their return, but he hoped she would get out with a couple of the guys who were looking after her. Maybe there would be an e-mail from one of them. Once they’d built up some rapport with Lucca, they were amazed by her detection skills, at how well she worked off leash with a minimum of quiet commands. It was surprising to Willingham how much he liked hearing about Lucca’s abilities, even with so many miles and months between them.

  The birthday celebration continued, with the special ceremony of the cutting of the cake. A week earlier, Willingham had arranged with the chow-hall staff to have a Marine Corps cake on November 10. It was a two-layer vanilla cake with white frosting, red and blue sprinkles, and a Marine Corps seal on top. He was impressed, especially considering they were in the middle of a desert in Afghanistan.

  Lance Corporal Johnathan Thorman cut the cake with his M4’s fixed bayonet. He gave the first piece to Willingham, who, at thirty-one, was the oldest marine present. Willingham ate a bite and handed it back to Thorman, twenty-one, the youngest marine there. The tradition symbolizes the passage of knowledge from older, more experienced marines to the newer generation of marines.

  If he could have made one birthday wish, it would have been that Donahue and Brenner could be here, enjoying cake, and looking forward to heading home with them in just a little more than a month, in time for Christmas.

  BY EARLY DECEMBER, all the dog teams were together again at Leatherneck, waiting to go home. Missions were completed, dozens of explosives and caches found, countless lives saved. Staff Sergeant Chuck Rotenberry and his thirty dog teams from Camp Lejeune—II MEF K-9—had arrived to take their place, and the transition was going smoothly. Willingham tried to make it as seamless as possible for Rotenberry, a good friend from way back in the marines.

  In one week, if all went as planned, Willingham and his teams would be on a plane back home. But as they all knew, in the military, travel arrangements don’t always go as planned, and on December 19, they were still waiting to go back. Willingham was beginning to have doubts about a Christmas homecoming.

  But this was a good day to be stuck at Leatherneck. Actor Mark Wahlberg had arrived to present a screening of his new movie, The Fighter, inside a hangar. It had come out in theaters in the U.S. nine days earlier, so it was a hot acquisition for this far-flung, makeshift cinema. Dozens of service members waited in line for his autograph and a photograph with him. Willingham was impressed by the actor’s humility and what seemed to be genuine caring and respect for every person he met. He didn’t rush people along. This was clearly not a celeb photo op for him.

  Wahlberg had expressed interest in seeing military dogs, and when word got to Willingham and his crew, they were more than happy to accommodate. Gonzo was particularly excited.

  “Do you think I can meet him in person?” he asked Willingham.

  “We’ll certainly try,” Willingham told him.

  When the time came, Willingham gave Wahlberg a brief about what the dogs can do and how well the teams did on this deployment.

  “Did you lose anybody?” Wahlberg asked.

  “Yes, we lost one great marine, Corporal Max Donahue, and we had a serious injury. Corporal Alfred Brenner. It was tough, man.”

  “I’m so sorry for your losses,” Wahlberg told him. They talked a little more and Willingham was struck by how down-to-earth he was. He seemed so attentive and likable. Willingham imagined introducing Wahlberg to Lucca.

  For the dog-work demo, Willingham chose Corporal Aaron Stice and his specialized search dog, Johnny, to show Wahlberg some off-leash bomb detection. On the way to the training area, Johnny, a Malinois, trotted up to Wahlberg and greeted him in the up-close-and-personal way dogs have.

  “Whoa, what’s going on here?” Wahlberg said, laughing, as Stice called back his dog.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Willingham said.

  “Hey, no problem. He’s a dog!”

  Crotch hound, Willingham thought.

  Stice and Johnny did their bomb detection demo, and Lance Corporal Anthony Liberatore put on a bite suit and played the bad guy as Rod and Corporal Andrew Sanchez sent out a dog to apprehend him.

  Willingham asked Wahlberg if he wanted to put on the bite suit.

  “Thank you”—he grinned—“but that’s OK.”

  Afterward, Wahlberg met with the handlers for about ten minutes.

  As promised, Gonzo got his turn. But when it came time to say something, he froze. This brave marine—a respected NCO who had been engaged in numerous firefights, had several finds with his dog, and spent most of his time in Helmand supporting British Special Forces—just stared and smiled.

  After Wahlberg left, some serious ballbusting ensued.

  “Deer in headlights! This is you, dude!” and his friends made their eyes giant and starstruck.

  “Hey,” Gonzo told them, “I was trained in combat, not celebrities.”

  ON THE CHILLY morning of December 22, Willingham and his teams said their good-byes to Rotenberry’s handlers from II MEF, and good riddance to the treacherous land that had claimed Donahue and Grief and badly injured Brenner. With their packs on their backs and their K-9 partners heeling at left, they walked in two rows to the C-17 waiting for them at the flight line at Leatherneck.

  Even with the planned overnight stop in Qatar, they thought they’d make it back by Christmas Eve, easy. They let their families know to set a place for them at the table. But one night turned to two, and on the morning of Christmas Eve, they were still in Qatar.

  They were able to get a plane to Germany later that morning, but instead of going direct, they had to fly to Iraq first and pick up some guys, then drop them off in Kuwait. By the time they arrived at Ramstein Air Base that night, there were no flights heading back home. Nothing was open except for a convenience store, so the handlers stocked up on candy bars and sodas and hung out in one another’s rooms ’til late.

  “Christmas Eve in Germany,” Nuckles said to Willingham. “Not where we’re supposed to be.”

  “I know. I can think of worse places, like the one we just left a few days ago,” Willingham said.

  On Christmas morning, the handlers took their dogs out to enjoy a romp in the snow to burn off some energy before the flight. Willingham watched the dogs playing in the falling snow, rolling and wriggling in it, and kicking up powder as they ran. Their resilience, the way they were in the moment, the way the past was the past and life was all about mouthfuls of snow or whatever was going on in the present—that was worth stopping and thinking about on a holiday.

  He wondered if Lucca wou
ld still remember him when he got home.

  WILLINGHAM FELT BAD that his marines weren’t going to make it back in time for Christmas day festivities with their families. They were looking at Christmas night, at best. He couldn’t give them a turkey dinner, so he did the next best thing. Before the flight, he and Nuckles got a ride to the Burger King on base and bought sixty cheeseburgers and thirty orders of fries and gave them out on the C-17.

  “Merry Christmas, everyone!”

  He lost himself for a few minutes in the sound of paper wrappers crinkling, the loud talking of the marines going home, the barking of excited dogs in their kennels, the familiar—reassuring—smell of burgers and fries. It felt good. Then he saw the spot where Donahue had sat on the way to Afghanistan, when Willingham had hoped that they’d all be returning together. He had worked so hard for so long to try to make that happen. And in his mind he saw Donahue in the hospital. The memory tangled with the image of Brenner in the hospital, the weight of Grief in the body bag and of Wiens on his stretcher from the morgue.

  He tried not to go there. It was Christmas. He wanted to be like the dogs and be here, now.

  IT WAS JUST after midnight, minutes after Christmas day officially ended, when they landed at March Air Reserve Base, about sixty miles from the San Diego area and Camp Pendleton. Some Patriot Guard Riders had been intending to meet them there earlier in the day to welcome them home. The main mission of Patriot Guard Riders is attending the funerals of members of the armed forces, police, and firefighters, and providing escort, often by motorcycle—as they had at Wiens’s funeral. Sometimes the volunteers rallied a group for special occasions beyond funerals. Welcoming home a busload of marine dog teams on Christmas fit that bill.

  But when Willingham realized how late the flight was going to get them in, he contacted them from Germany and told them not to worry. “You’ve got family to be with. We’ll be fine.”

  At the air base, the marines loaded onto the waiting bus for the ride to the kennels. “Whoa, Santa’s here!” some of them called out when getting aboard.

  “Yo, Santa!”

  The bus driver, with a real white-gray beard and a Santa hat, played up the role, with an occasional “Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas!”

  Before they started the final leg of their trip home, Willingham heard motorcycles and looked out the window. He was astonished to see twenty motorcycles pulling up to the bus. Most of the riders stayed with their bikes, waving, holding flags, revving engines. A few climbed aboard.

  “Welcome home, fellas! Merry Christmas! We’re here to escort you home safely.”

  The marines cheered.

  “Thank you so much for doing this for us,” Willingham told them.

  “It’s our honor. It’s what we do. Thank you for your service to our country.”

  About an hour later they arrived at the Camp Pendleton kennels. The Patriot Guard Riders parked and waited while the handlers took their dogs to their old kennels and said their good-byes and thank-yous to their dogs. They’d be back the next day, or maybe the day after. They’d give their dogs a break from training but take them out and have fun with them.

  Leaving each other this first night after seven months of being together so much of the time was hard. Many wished they could take their dogs home, as Willingham had twice wanted to do with Lucca after deployments. They tried not to let it get them down and told themselves that at least their dogs knew this place, and that they were safe here, and they’d see them soon.

  While the others were saying good-byes, Willingham decided to check in on an old friend. He walked up to Lucca’s kennel. She was already sitting there, looking at all the action of these dogs coming home after being gone so long. It was almost the way he’d left her seven months earlier.

  Any doubt that she would remember him was gone as soon as she saw him. He opened the door and hurried into her kennel.

  “Mama Lucca!”

  She wagged so hard her whole body wriggled. She jumped up, licked his face once, and raced around the kennel, running between his legs every pass. Excited, whine-like noises came out of her, something he never heard before, but it sounded like pure canine thrill.

  He wanted to hug her, but she barely stood still long enough to get an ear rub and some head strokes. Then off she went, tearing around the kennel, overjoyed that her marine was finally home. The visit had to be short, because the Patriot Guard Riders were waiting to escort the marines to their final stop—a warehouse where their families and friends awaited their own reunions.

  After a couple of minutes, she settled down a little, and he managed to give her a hug. “I gotta go, Lucca, but I’ll be back soon!”

  This time, as he walked away, he did look back. She was standing there, watching him, and wagging. He beamed back at her. He wondered if they both had the same thought: Thank you for not forgetting me.

  THE WILLINGHAM FAMILY celebrated Christmas on December 27, after Willingham had a day to rest and adjust. Claire, now three, and Michael, eighteen months, had warmed up quickly to their dad. They opened their presents in their pajamas, Jill cooked up a feast, and Willingham reveled in the happiness of being home. He felt like he had one foot in a Norman Rockwell painting. But he couldn’t go all in, as much as he loved his family, as much as he tried. Part of him was still in Afghanistan, responsible for thirty dog teams and all the troops they were supporting—lives hanging in the balance, ready to be snuffed out if a dog didn’t hit an odor because of the way an IED was buried, or the way the wind was blowing, or fatigue. He thought of what Donahue’s family must be going through this first Christmas without him, and of the seemingly endless surgeries Brenner was enduring.

  He had been racing at 120 miles per hour in a war zone, and he couldn’t find the brakes to slow his mind to the cruising speed of domestic life, diapers and all. Even weeks after his return, he realized something had changed in him with this deployment. He’d never been one to anger easily, but he was snapping at small things, drinking more. Samuel Adams had once been a nodding acquaintance. Now it was a frequent companion. Harder stuff, too.

  “Babe,” Jill said one morning early in the New Year over coffee in the kitchen. “I don’t think you can take another deployment. I don’t think I can, either.”

  Hard as it was to admit it to himself, he knew she was right. The deployments had taken a toll on both of them. He wasn’t the only one bearing the burden of war. In his absence, Jill had been working full-time as a nurse until some day-care scheduling issues came up, and taking care of their two young children almost entirely on her own. He didn’t know how she managed, and neither did she. She tried to keep up with her running, training for half and full marathons when she could. It’s the one activity she had that was just hers and that helped clear her head and keep her centered—something she needed as she tried not to think of what could happen to her husband in that godforsaken place.

  Claire also felt the pain of her dad being gone, even though her mom always kept it light when they talked about him. When she was two and a half years old and he was in Afghanistan, Claire seemed a little down. Jill asked why she was sad. “I miss my daddy so much in my heart that it hurts,” Claire told her. Jill’s own heart tightened. She didn’t tell her husband how badly Claire missed him. What was the point?

  Jill looked for ways to help her daughter and decided to play the DVDs of her husband more often for Claire and Michael. One of their favorites was Willingham reading The Little Engine That Could. They also loved the songs he sang, laughing every single time he sang, “I’m a Little Teapot.” They sprouted a handle and a spout when their dad did, and when he tipped over and poured, so did they.

  Willingham knew his wife was right about not deploying again. It wouldn’t be easy. Besides his family, military working dogs were his life—one military working dog in particular. It was clear he would never deploy with Lucca again, even if he deployed as a
kennel master. It’s what happens when military dog handlers rise through the ranks. They get to a certain point of responsibility, and they don’t get a dog. The clock was running out on Lucca being “his” dog. It had been a long run together—nearly four years—longer than most dogs and handlers have together. She would have to become someone else’s dog no matter what he did.

  He was seeing her every day at the kennels, taking her out for walks, playing with her, grooming her. It was like old times, except without the war and the intensive training. Whenever he showed up, she watched and wagged as he opened the kennel door, her little black eyebrows raised in anticipation. Once he entered, she did a happy dance until he settled her down.

  Three months after his return from Afghanistan, in March 2011, he had her out on a walk in the nearby hills. They came to a flat, grassy spot near the top of a hill, and he sat down. She joined him and stretched out in the sunshine.

  “Lucca,” he said as he stroked her coat and felt how it was already getting slightly warm from the sun. Nothing like back in Iraq, though. “I got something to tell you. I gotta find you another handler soon.”

  She looked up at him, and he could see she was a little uncertain—why was he so serious? It wasn’t his normal style.

  He recognized the look and cut to the chase. “But I’ve got a plan, and I think you’re gonna like it.”

  IN MAY, ROD was wrapping up specialized search dog school at Lackland. He’d been wanting to do SSD training since Afghanistan. He liked seeing the way the dogs worked untethered, tied to the handler with something stronger than a leash. While deployed, he’d heard Willingham would be choosing several handlers to go to SSD school in January. Rod approached Willingham to find out if he’d consider him.

  “I’ve been hoping you’d ask. I think you’d make a great SSD handler,” said Willingham.