cover image Canine Warrior: How a Vietnam Scout Dog Inspired a National Monument

Canine Warrior: How a Vietnam Scout Dog Inspired a National Monument

John C. Burnam. Lost Coast, $28.95 (400p) ISBN 978-1-935448-24-2

Burnam, a retired Army sergeant, shares in this memoir the saga of his two combat-heavy tours of duty serving in the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry and 24th Infantry Divisions in the Vietnam War, and his successful quest beginning in the early 1990s to erect a national monument to honor his fellow dog handlers and their dogs. Burnam's descriptions of Vietnam War combat are well drawn and evocative. Those accounts include his detailed renderings of what it was like to work with German Shepard scout dogs in the midst of combat at its deadliest. The heavily illustrated section on Burnam's efforts to build the moment is less compelling, thought it nevertheless serves as a tribute to the life-saving work done by untold numbers of military dogs and their handlers in every American conflict since WWII. As Burnham writes, when the U.S. Military Working Dog Teams National Monument was dedicated in 2013 at Lackland Air Force Base, he had "accomplished my mission by building a national monument to honor them all forever!" Photos. (May)