Another 300 - 500 dogs were killed in action during those years.  A few more were turned over to the South Vietnamese military as the US withdrew.  The remaining dogs, over 3,000 of them, were euthanized. 

As I saw on another page, all the dogs asked for was food, water, and the care and affection of their handlers.  We knew when we were over there that regardless of the bond that was forged between us and our dogs, that the dog would stay behind, that a new handler would be assigned after we returned to the states.  I don't know if any of us thought all the way ahead to the final solution.  Maybe it was the nature of the war, the way no end was ever in sight.  The two sides would continue to trade real estate for lives, but the war wouldn’t end and the dogs would continue to have posts to guard.  Either way, in the end we were not able to keep them out of harms way when they faced their most formidable enemy.  The same government that trained them and sent them to war.

We also were kept ignorant of the Pentagon's perception of the War-Dogs.  That being that they were just assets much like a jeep, a barracks building, or the leash that tethered us together.  And exactly like the pictures we all saw on the news during the fall of Saigon, assets without use are discarded like so many helicopters shoved over the side of a carrier.

We'd like to think that the Pentagon has learned, that in this kinder, gentler time 30+ years later it wouldn't happen the same way that another solution would be found.  But sadly that's not the case.  The recently dedicated memorial in Riverside, CA proves that.  It was originally planned that the memorial would be a natural for Arlington, possibly near The Wall and the Viet Nam Memorial.  That the War Dog would symbolically guard our fellow vets in death as they did in life.

But the word came down that No, the War Dog is an asset and memorials in our National Cemeteries are not dedicated to assets.  Arlington is no place for a memorial to the jeep, or the War Dog.  Maybe someplace more directly connected to dogs in the military might be more appropriate. 

So, now there is a memorial at March AFB, Riverside, CA.  And another is planned for Fort Benning, an Army base in Georgia.  And there are the memories in our hearts and we strive to maintain them on pages like this on the web.