Dog Names that Start with Ne

Dogs of war perform essential duties on a daily basis, frequently saving the lives of those with whom they are assigned.  Dogs are incredibly trainable to function in some useful ways in both wartime as well as peacetime.  Our pop culture dog today is one of those whose courage in combat has been memorialized for all to appreciate.

Nemo is a German Shepherd Dog who has the honor of being one of about 200 of the over 4,000 war dogs who were deployed to have come home alive from the Vietnamese War.  He was born in the fall of 1962, his career with the military started in the summer of 1964 when he joined the Air Force and commenced his eight-week training course with his handler, Airman Bryant, assigned to Fairchild Air Force Base in the state of Washington.  Then came January 1966 when Nemo and Bryant transferred to the Republic of South Vietnam, as part of the 377th Security Police Squadron stationed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon.  About six months into this assignment, Airman Bryant transferred back to the United States, leaving Nemo to become partnered with Airman 2nd Class Robert Thorneburg.  

In December 1966, Thorneburg and Nemo were on patrol when sixty Viet Cong infiltrated the Air Base.  Twice during the night, Nemo alerted Thorneburg to the presence of the enemy and communicated his willingness to perform as trained - he was a killer in combat.  The team of two was victorious in the first of the two sightings but initially not in the second one.  Nemo’s signal to Thorneburg enabled the airman to shoot one enemy soldier, as he sent Nemo to do his job.  In the confrontation, Thorneburg was hit in his left shoulder twice, and Nemo, having thrown himself upon the enemy soldiers, gave Thorneburg the valuable time he needed to call for backup.  But, our guy Nemo took a bullet in his right eye which exited through his mouth in the process.  He displayed his loyalty and training when he dragged himself over to Thorneburg, who lay helpless and severely wounded, and placed himself across his fallen handler, guarding and daring anyone to come near.  Reportedly, only another controller was able to remove Nemo from his “guard post.”  Both Nemo and Thorneburg survived but never saw each other again, Nemo retired and lived his remaining six years in his kennel on the Lackland Air Force base in San Antonia where he was trained, passing in 1972.