Meet Checkpoint Charlie

There are a great number of stray dogs roaming around Iraq. Soldiers who miss their pets back home have used to "adopt" these strays. The Army, out of fear of disease and infestation of fleas, created a policy that prohibits servicemembers from taking in these animals during their stay here.

But this has not prevented the Peruvian guards, a group of contracted soldiers from South America, from adopting Checkpoint Charlie, who gets his name from the famous checkpoint that separated East and West Berlin during the years after World War II up until the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late 80s.

I first met this dog about a week ago when I was going through a security checkpoint. He was just laying around like a dog will do when it is 100 degrees in the shade. He would occasionally get up to find a better spot when his shade moved, but I must say, he is a pretty unremarkable dog.

It is said that if you want to get shot in the green zone, the fastest way to make it happen is to kick this dog. The guards have made him their own. And while American soldiers are deployed for 15 months, the boys from Peru are often here for three years or more. If you can't have your wife and kids around, you may as well have a dog, even if he is a mut. So in the absence of their families, these guys have created a whole new family, complete with the family dog.

I talked with the guards about Charlie and they said he just came around a few years ago, looking so hungry and homeless they had to give him some scraps. Well, we all know where that went. The dog kept coming arounds finally making himself at home at the checkpoint. This led to the guards laying claim to the pooch.

I have heard tell that on some days the dog will lay right in the middle of the road. Do the guards move the dog? No. They close the lane to traffic so their dog can get some rest. Imagine an old dog quietly sleeping while mortar rounds impact and rockets explode. But he rests easlily because he has a guard posted to ensure no one dares wake him, let alone run him over. Ah, the absurity of war.

So in the midst of all of the chaos and confusion that is present in any warfare, there is a dog, who is the most carefully protected dog in the world. He has a personal security detail made up of Peruvian guards, who may just shoot on sight, any person who dares "kick their dog".

Today when I left the "pink zone", the Peruvians caught Charlie for me so I could bid him goodnight. After all, it was a close as I could come to patting my own dog on the head. "Good night Jack".