Bridge of Stones: A Spiritual Journey via Soldiers, Hippies, Dogs, and Landmines
Alan Taylor
In addition to the horrors experienced by US military personnel in 1967 Vietnam, landmines added their own cruelty. American soldiers and Vietnamese villagers were being decimated. To rectify this problem, several psychology graduate students and their professor from NCSU formed a company called Behavior Systems Incorporated to train dogs to detect landmines, the first time dogs were used for this purpose.
The training worked, so in 1968, Charlie Fasanaro and a few of his hippie friends arrived in Fort Gordon, Augusta, GA, then home of the Military Police, to teach the 25th Infantry Division, 60th Mine-Scout Dog Platoon how to use the dogs. The enmity between the two groups was palpable, but they knew a larger purpose lay in front of them: saving lives. Charlie was mostly responsible for building the bridge between them. When the platoon was deployed in 1969, Charlie went to Vietnam to assist them as well as work on a project he developed to discover if villagers were friend or foe. In this capacity, he went on missions with the 1st Marines, experiencing everything they did.
The story also traces his difficult path of reconciling the conflicting attitudes in his own heart. As a young man, Charlie was equally drawn to the deep peace of the monastery as well as the nobility and honor of the warrior class. In Vietnam, he was forced to reconcile his own internal battle between being a man of peace among men of war, as well as the reality of dealing with PTS upon their return.
This story is based on actual events of a project that saved more than 10,000 lives, as well as his efforts of creating peace in the chaos of conflict, both individually and collectively.
