Rebecca’s War Dogs of the Week: Hipstamatic canines from the 1/8

By Rebecca Frankel
Chief Canine Correspondent

This week, FP is running a 5-part photo series: The War in Hipstamatic. A mesmerizing collection, these images were shot with iPhones by a group of photojournalists who embedded with the Marines in Battalion 1/8  in Helmand province for five months starting in September 2010. (It’s all part of a project called Basetrack — I encourage Best Defense readers to check it out.) 

The photos from this foray into app-image journalism number in the thousands and I was happy to discover among them three portraits of the company’s dogs — two bomb-sniffers and one adopted stray.

Above: Gunner, a military working dog, looks up from the cot where he was resting at Patrol Base Dehanna, in Nawzad district, on Jan. 9.

Image by Teru Kuwayama

Layla the Dog: TBJ Marines on foot patrol found Layla when she was a puppy, but because of IED risk, taking her on patrols was too dangerous and they decided to trade her for some cigars to Cpl. Brady “Pancho” Cervantes, 23, of 1/8 3rd Platoon, from Dallas, Texas. Here she is with her Marines from the 1/8 at Shir Ghazay Patrol Base in Landay Nawah County, Afghanistan.

Image By Rita Leistner

Cpl. Gretchn at Combat Outpost 7171: Gretchn is IED Detector Dog with 1st Battalion 8th Marines Bravo Company, First Platoon. Here she poses — just as the rest of her Battalion did — in Helmand Province, Afghanistan on Oct. 30, 2010.

Image by Balazs Gardi