Researching Military Dogs: Let The Records Bark

The general history of the Marine Corps's use of dogs during World War II and subsequent conflicts has been told several times and is the subject of at least one book. Studying original records, however, is a very different experience from reading a secondary source, no matter how authoritative it may be.

When browsing original records, one is engulfed by the tiny details and individual stories that are invariably lost in the large murals painted by historians. But these miniatures are worth looking at, since they may offer the viewer small realities that can be enlightening, amusing, poignant, and memorable.

Each Dog Record Book is about 4" x 6" in size and 40 pages in length. A new book was opened for each dog "when he (she) first report[ed] to the Dog Detachment Training Center for duty." In making entries, "neatness, clearness, and strict economy of space" was expected to be observed, and each book had to be returned to the Dog Detachment Training Center at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, when the dog was "separated from the service," which explains how these little documents came to be preserved.