“You guys are the next on the list,” recalled Sergeant Michael Huntley of his deployment to Iraq in 2005. Huntley, a Marine canine handler, had begun training his new dog, Keve, the previous February. “In November 2005, it came time for us to go. Of course my family and friends were worried. People put me on their prayer list. My father told everybody at McLean Bible Church in Virginia, and they were really supportive through their thoughts and prayers.”
Huntley wasn’t too worried. From what he knew, he would likely be stationed at a well-protected, sizable air base such as Al Asad. The worries began when he and the other teams joined up at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, two weeks before deploying.
“As we were arriving, we learned a dog team was coming home from Iraq because the handler had been shot through the arm. He wasn’t hurt too bad, but he was still coming home,” Huntley said.
Because the dogs are so effective at detecting IEDs, insurgents put a higher bounty on dogs and their handlers than other soldiers and Marines. Snipers were on the hunt. When the injured handler arrived at Camp Lejeune, the deploying handlers peppered him with questions.
“He was at this place called combat outpost. It’s not really a working base, just a large post. It was called the wild west because all this stuff was breaking out there,” Huntley recalled. “If you liked to be in gun fights, get blown up, or get shot at, then combat outpost was the place to go.”
As he anticipated his assignment, Huntley took comfort in what he knew. (The dogs and their handlers normally rotate in and out of Iraq with each originating from different bases.) The Marine Corps was now sending dogs and their handlers for only two-week rotations into combat outposts because it was so dangerous.
When he arrived at Al Asad, he got his assignment. “Huntley, you’re going to combat outpost.”
That was not the only shock. The military had stopped the two-week rotation. Huntley was going to be there for seven months.
Huntley was thinking, Okay, we just had a handler leave there because he was shot and now things are blowing up there. Suddenly the likelihoods had changed. He was going to need more courage than he ever expected.
You are the source of courage when life takes an unexpected turn.
“I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.” (Philippians 1:20)