Fallen soldier’s family brings dog they named Hero home from Iraq

This was as close as Hero the dog had been to her old buddy Justin since they were photographed together in 2007. In that picture, they were snout-to-chest, a 23-year-old soldier cuddling a weeks-old stray puppy in Samarra, Iraq. But Wednesday, Hero could get no nearer than six feet, a grown dog snuffling above a grave at Arlington National Cemetery.

“Whaddaya think, girl, you guys glad to be back together?” asked Mitchel Rollins, patting Hero’s back, raising a little cloud of fur in the sun slanting across his son’s final resting place. “Are you still shedding? You gonna leave some hairs on Justin? I think he would like that.”

“You just don’t expect to see the name you pick out for your baby on a headstone,” she said, even as her baby’s dog demanded her attention, deflecting her grief, doing its job.

Dog and soldier took very different paths to Arlington. On March 5, 2007, one day after he befriended the puppy, Army Spec. Rollins was killed by a massive roadside bomb. Two weeks later, he was here in Section 60.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/fallen-soldiers-family-brings-dog-they-named-hero-home-from-iraq/2011/11/09/gIQAQ1yu9M_story.html?hpid=z2


Rollins's girlfriend Brittney Murray and Hero visit his grave at Arlington Cemetery. (Bill O'Leary/Post)

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