On December 3, 1966, a German Shepherd named Nemo was shot through the face defending his unconscious handler at a Vietnam air base. He refused to let anyone near the man until a veterinarian coaxed him away. Both survived. Nemo became the first US military dog officially allowed to come home from Vietnam.
This is his story. And the story of 26 more dogs like him.
Unbreakable spans more than 150 years of American military history — from the trenches of WWI to the compound in Pakistan where a Belgian Malinois named Cairo was the 81st member of the SEAL Team 6 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. From Sergeant Stubby, the Yale stray who caught a German spy single-handedly in France, to the 4,000 scout dogs of Vietnam who saved an estimated 10,000 American lives — and were left behind when the war ended.
These are true stories of dogs who walked point in jungle dark, detected IEDs that would have killed entire units, and refused to leave the side of the people they served. They are also the story of the handlers who never forgot them.
Unbreakable is also the story of what came after — the decades-long fight to bring the dogs home, the law named for a dog who didn’t make it, and the dogs now helping veterans survive the invisible wounds that combat leaves behind.
These dogs didn’t know they were brave. They did it anyway.
