THE DOGS OF WAR

In 1943, U.S. forces attacked the South Pacific island of Bougainville. Outnumbered and outgunned, their best hope lay with specially trained soldiers named Jack, Andy and Caesar. Two problems: The trio had never seen combat, and they were canines

- Jason Daley

THE soldiers filed off the beach and into the twilight world of the jungle. The enemy lay concealed ahead, they could be sure. They followed an unlikely leader: a black-and-tan Doberman named Andy who betrayed no sense of the danger of the situation.

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 New York City with the three boys who owned him.

As they moved up the trail, they heard gunfire and artillery in the distance as the rest of the U.S. Second Marine Raider Battalion fought to secure the shoreline. It was 1943; the assault on Bougainville, a speck of land among the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, had just begun. Allied forces needed to capture a safe zone large enough to build an airfield for an eventual attack on the nearby island of New Britain, the final Japanese stronghold in the region. From there, the Allies would hop from island to island until they were within bombing range of Japan itself.

The campaign in the Pacific depended on 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.

A Different Kind of Soldier