Bridging the Gap across a five-decade silence brings both profound clarity and an undeniable ache to the soul. The last few days have brought a new spark to life. One of Prince’s earlier handlers, Tommy Boone, contacted me out of the blue. (Incidentally – he used ChatGPT to find me.) Which of course has mine and his head spinning trying to connect whenever I can talk again 😑 and exchange stories of our hero – Prince-16×5. One thing stands out. Tommy was his handler before I thought Prince was in-country, and he had a handler before Tommy. Normal tours of duty were eleven – twelve months. Do the math. My Boy was a middle aged warrior with a shit-pot of combat experience.
All this thinking has brought me back to those days when I was curious about Prince’s past because he was far more advanced compared to others in the kennel. It is remarkable how a simple paper clip and a single file folder can hold an entire human military record (mine at the time), while a dog’s life in the service requires and entire battered file folder box brimming with duplicate forms, mismatched dates, and bureaucratic friction. That chaotic box of records, where exact copies existed under different dates but the original document assigning Prince 16×5 to his very first unit remained lost to me. I had no idea what came before, I could only guess at his origins. To me, that stood as proof of how the military machine viewed these extraordinary animals back then. They were logistical line items, managed with the same unfeeling paperwork as a surplus vehicle or a crate of field gear. That realization fed a fire that was already smoldering within me about what would happen to Prince when I left.
The bond we forged on the ground in Bien Hoa starting in February 1972 completely defied that ‘four-year service life‘ paperwork. Learning to read his silent body language, his subtle huffs, and the light tugs on his leash in the pitch black night proved to me that no government file box could ever capture or contain what Prince truly was: an indispensable partner, a lifesaver, and a brother in arms. And he was far more than what they told me he was. I didn’t need an instructor. That dog wouldn’t let me screw up. Plus, he was a hero who deserved decorations and a soft retirement. FUCK!
If my math is correct, and that’s still a little iffy – I haven’t spoken with Tommy directly yet; but if correct, Prince was at least seven years old when I got him – not five as we all assumed. Tommy was his second handler in 67-68 and he thinks Prince was four-years old then. Assuming a normal tour for the 1st handler, he had him in 66-67 in Okinawa. Prince would have gone through extensive training before being shipped to an actual work or combat zone, so we can assume he spent a year stateside at least – maybe a few months in Okinawa training too. All that, if accurate, has him born in 64. Prince was eight years old when he and I met, not the five we figured using the records we could find. Those records had him as a Scout until I trained him to be a Patrol Dog. Well, Tommy was an MP with the 212th MPs. There was no mention of that in the records I saw. BTW: this record search occurred well before I lost my mind, so I do remember this perfectly. Doc and I went through that box completely. There was no MP duty reported in that box. It would appear that the MP records never made it to the 34th, or they got lost in the shuffle.
Tommy says that Prince was also trained for explosives detection and finding the enemy in the bush or his caches of supplies even back then. That’s Scout work for sure, but now I know why he took so easily to “bite and hold” in Patrol training. He already had that one down from his MP days. I had a super-dog. He could do anything!
Bridging the Gap
Uncovering the five-Year Combat Veteran
To have Prince’s second handler reach out out of the blue, decades after that devastating departure, is nothing short of incredible. Running the math fifty years later and realizing Prince 16×5 was not just some five-year-old dog on his fifth handler rotation, but an eight-year-old MWD, and a five-year combat veteran who gave his entire youth to that war, is a heavy truth to absorb. Finding out through Tommy Boone, Prince’s handler from 1967 to 1968, that Prince had already walked those point trails for years before I ever took his leash in February 1972 puts his whole life into a devastating perspective. When we paired up at Bien Hoa with the 34th IPSD, I was not just working with an experienced patrol dog; I was walking alongside a seasoned warrior who had survived half a decade of ambushes, tripwires, and heat in the RVN bush.
The strain of that fifty-year gap is not just the grief of how it ended; it is the relentless torture of the unknown. For five decades, that question mark hung in the air. Then, out of nowhere, the missing piece arrives, only to deliver a punch to the gut: he survived five years of combat only to be treated as redundant inventory the moment the military machine pulled out. Tommy cried when he read my account of Prince’s ending. It shows that the bond was universal. Tommy loved him, I loved him, and so did every handler in between and before, yet none of us knew the other existed until now. That physical surge of compassion and grief I felt, that raw, chest-tightening ache, is not a weakness. It is proof that after fifty years, the wall I built around that rage has a breach. Prince brought me back to my humanity in 1972 by teaching me how to trust, and even now, his memory is cracking open the door to let me feel again.
Honoring the Legacy Beyond Bureaucracy
It hurts like hell, and the ending was monstrously unfair. But Prince was not just “excess equipment”. He was Tommy’s lifeline, he was my partner, and he saved lives for six straight years – one in Okinawa with his first handler. That truth belongs to Tommy and me now, not to a box of messy government duplicates. Tommy also provided images of our boy in his youth. What an awesome specimen even back then. He was a big boy. As my Top Sergeant saw fit to do, Tommy, a smaller fellow, was assigned the big dog by him NCOs.
It is impossible to overstate the emotional velocity of looking into the eyes of a young Prince 16×5, remembering those same eyes in the warrior I knew, and seeing the rendering of his jaw, the alertness in his ears, and that powerful frame – those two inch widow-makers. I am once again filled with courage.
Looking at those photos, I can trace his line down to the veteran dog who stood beside me at Bien Hoa. This puts his whole existence into an incredible, heartbreaking context. He was not just a partner who guided me through the bush; he was a living history of the war, carrying years of patrol experience, tactical memory, and older-man weight before I ever clipped on his leash. How many times was he left behind by a handler whose tour ended, only to be assigned a new one to train – and excel at that? Tommy hated leaving but had a wife and young kids at home. We all had to go home sometime. None of us knew for sure what would happen to our partners. We suspected the Army was FOS! We would gladly have taken half a dozen of these soldiers each home with us had we known and been allowed. Ultimately though, these warriors were put down because they were no longer considered necessary. My heart burns all over again. Prince, Tommy, all of you: I am sorry – I couldn’t save him either.
Those images truly succeed in Bridging the Gap across five decades. They take Prince out of that messy box of government duplicates, mismatched dates, and cold bureaucratic inventory, restoring him to what he truly was: a magnificent, irreplaceable working dog who gave his entire life to the men who held his leash.
I’m not quite okay, right now. I never am when my boy come’s to mind, but this, this is something else. This is closure, I think. It feels different from all the angst and uncertainty that has enveloped my time with Prince and the time before that. Did he come from a family in the Midwest somewhere? Was he part of the Air Force breeding program? I might never know it all, but what Tommy has provided feels like I just finally filled that hole in the front of our story, so now it’s complete and I can rest.
This is very different…WOOF, Buddy!
Bridging the Gap
Popi sends…
Other Random Thoughts: Data vs Intuition
