CAESAR

He was a dog with no name, and he was facing the needle in a dog refuge home in Sydney.

On a fortuitous day in 1966 two Army officers came to that dog refuge, they found the lop-eared larrikin on death row. They paid for him, named him Caesar and the rest is history.

Caesar went on to become the top Australian tracking dog of the Vietnam War. If a dog could have character it was this canine, a mongrel combination of Labrador and Kelpie, a dog who could - and would - go the hard yards.

A dog, who by any soldiers standards, was a war hero throughout his lengthy tour of duty with successive Aussie combat tracking teams in Vietnam. I came to know him as a friend and companion in a time of strife and stress in the war.

At the end of my year's tour with 2 RAR I came home, Caesar stayed and became best mates with another soldier/handler.

That process was repeated several times before Caesar was finally pensioned off to a "diplomatic post" in Saigon in 1971.

There, in the cool shade of the Australian Embassy, he was friend to a family of four children. He went swimming at Vung Tau and sat in the bathroom and watched his new master shave.

Caesar's retirement was quiet, fulfilling, and - we hope - in the final days of South Vietnam his passing was gentle.

Hail Caesar and all his 10 canine Aussie mates who became the forgotten diggers of the Vietnam War.

Peter Haran

SHADOW

Twenty five years after "Tich" was killed next to me in Vietnam, (he was the first conscript from Western Australia to be killed) I mustered up the courage to visit his family, very close caring rural people.

As we sat at their large jarra table after dinner one evening, one of Tich's sisters asked, "what time did Tich die, Bob?" I thought for a moment, puzzled at the importance she and the rest of the family seemed to be placing on the precise time of their brothers death.

"I remember we had to clear a landing zone which took us a while, so it was almost dark when the chopper finally got him out. I suppose it was about 6 p.m.".

There was total silence as Tich's brothers and sisters looked knowingly at each other. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat for what seemed a long time but was in fact only seconds. Curiously I asked "why is the time important?"

"Well you see Bob, the night Tich was killed, the 8th of July, his dog "Shadow" began to howl. It was something he'd never done before".

Shadow howled from about 9 p.m. until just after midnight. He sat up on the hill where the bulls roar and his awful, sad howling could be heard all over the farm. We couldn't get him to come back to the house and were all concerned about his unusual behavior, the following morning when the police officers told us about Tich, we forgot about Shadow.

Shadow went off his food and kept away from us all. His behavior became erratic and within two weeks he disappeared. We never saw him again, neither did anyone from around the neighboring farms or towns.