Echoes of the Olifant

Author’s Note: This is an emotional 3-part story. I’m sure it will not be as emotional for the reader as it was for me to write, but it is emotional, nevertheless.

Prologue I:

Having had many dogs, cats and other pets that I have loved without measure in my 50 years, there is just something special about being a boxer’s human. I was in my 20’s before I learned how energetic, loyal and adoring these creatures are but am now blessed to have known these three few in my life.

In the early 90’s, soon to graduate from college and begin a long Army career, I was about to start my adult life and it had been a while since I had a dog. For many years before, I dreamed of having a boxer puppy and it seemed logical to have a companion with me to begin this new journey. Since then, I have been blessed to be a boxer daddy for nearly 28 years. For almost three decades, there has been a boxer in my life, and I have known and lived with just three. This is their story and the epic that connects them.

Part I: From The Song of Roland

The Paynim said: "I marvel in my thought, At Charlemayn, that is so old and hoar!

I know he’s lived two hundred years and more.

In lands so many his body he’s forworn,

Sharp strokes so many of lance and spear has borne,

Rich kings so many beggared and brought to naught—

When will he weary of going to the wars?"

"Never’, said Guènes, ‘while Roland still bears sword;

There’s none so valiant beneath the heavens broad..."

In 1992, I read The Song of Roland, the English Translation of La Chanson de Roland in college. That story touched me. Roland was the consummate hero, strong of mind and body, courageous, loyal, devout, and selfless. I can still remember the moment in my world literature class in the spring of that year that I decided when I finally got my boxer puppy, I would name him Roland. Later, in the fall, I brought home a fawn butterball that would travel the US and most of Europe with me for the next 13 years. Sticking with the French theme, his full name was Roland de Simon because his sire was a large AKC registered boxer named Simon.

With still about 18 months of college to get through before I graduated and took an ROTC commission to the US Army, Roland and I lived with a roommate in an old trailer I purchased with money I saved from a reserve deployment to Desert Storm. The trailer was in a nice mobile home park near campus, and about an hour from my family home. We often went home for the weekends, but the weekdays, for a year and a half, were spent with me coming home from class frequently to find my lily chopped to pieces and scattered about the floor of the trailer mingled with shreds of books and a few bags of consumed MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). He was certainly an obnoxious puppy, but even today, nearly 30 years later, I still own things he nearly chewed into oblivion.

I was fortunate to have a good support network my first 10 years in the Army or having a dog as a single officer would have been difficult at best. My first assignment landed me in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, only about four hours from my home in East Tennessee. If I had to be away for training or field time, I would take Roland home to my parents. Subsequently, that is the reason he ever more learned to expect Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies every night promptly at 9 p.m., because that is when Dad always shared his. The rest of the time, Roland and I were always seen together. We were like Mr. Bojangles and his dog – only, I don’t dance.

Our best years together were in Germany where Roland became a local celebrity. I lived in a small Bavarian community there almost evenly split between Americans and Germans. My apartment was a second-story loft in a massive half-century-old German home where I was treated more like family than a tenant. Roland had a foster brother, my landlady’s dog, Pasha. Truth is the two dogs mostly tolerated each other. Regardless, Roland was a little younger than Pasha, fitter and more outgoing. As a result, Roland generally had a better social life than I did. While I spent the day at work at the nearby U.S. base of Grafenwoehr Training Area, Daniella, my landlady’s teenage daughter would take Roland on a walk or to a regional league soccer game. If not Daniella, my neighbor, Sonja would take him on a fast-paced run through the woods. It wasn’t unusual for me to come home from work and find Roland out having fun with someone else.

In the summer of 1999, I received orders to deploy to Kosovo where I would meet my new battalion headquarters. My landlady made certain to assure me that she would take great care of Roland while I was gone. For the five months I was deployed, Roland moved downstairs with Gerda, Daniella and Pasha so he could be spoiled properly. He was still happy to see me when I returned home, but I think he grew used to living downstairs with the rest of the family.

When I took command in early 2001, Roland assumed the duty of company mascot. He frequently came to work with me and went on runs with us around the installation. Roland was a big boy, 86 pounds most of his life, about four pounds heavier than the average large male boxer. Because of his size, Europeans and Americans alike often confused him with a mastiff.

While in Europe, I don’t think Roland ever fully appreciated that he was a dog. He went everywhere with me, and it was just expected. At restaurants he just laid under the table and the staff almost always brought him a complementary bowl of water. At hotels, and pensions, they usually offered a doggie bed at no extra charge. With Roland by my side, I toured the beer halls and markets of Germany; walked every square inch of the medieval streets of Prague and even climbed Mount Zugspitze on the German and Austrian border. When I think back on my four years in Europe, it always reminds me of Roland, because he was always there.

Shortly after 9-11, I met a French gal living and working in Germany that I would eventually take home to be my wife. Of course, that was a big mistake, but that’s another story.

I landed back Stateside at Fort Knox, Kentucky and though it would be another year before I was married, I was no longer single, so there was always somebody to take care of Roland. He was getting older by now, but still getting around pretty well. I was happy to be a one dog guy, or family, but through an unusual situation with my girlfriend’s employer, Delphine brought home a 9-month-old husky-mix, rescue. Sky became a wonderful addition to the family, and she bonded with Roland immediately.

Sky learned from her big brother Roland for a little more than two years. My now wife and I moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado in early 2005 where I was reassigned to the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson. Roland made the trip across the country, and we visited several places along the way together, but he crossed the rainbow bridge later that year after a short struggle with congestive heart failure. I was lying next to him on the floor with my hand on his head as he took his last breath, two months before his 13th birthday.

My Roland’s Song was a long, happy one, and he left this world peacefully unlike his namesake. However, like the Roland of the epic French poem, his passing summoned Charlemagne.

“Companion Roland, your Olifant now blow;

Charles in the passes will hear it as he goes,

Trust me, the French will all return right so."

"Now God forbid," Roland makes answer wroth,

"That living man should say he saw me go

Blowing of horns for any Paynim foe!

Ne’er shall my kindred be put to such reproach.

When I shall stand in this great clash of hosts

I’ll strike a thousand and then sev’n hundred strokes,

Blood-red the steel of Durendal shall flow.

Stout are the French, they will do battle bold,

These men of Spain shall die and have no hope."

Echoes of the Olifant continues in Part II: Charlemagne Answers the Call.

Echoes of the Olifant concludes in Part III: Durendal, Sword of Roland.

All excerpts are from the David Rehak translation of The Song of Roland.