Prologue
The twilight before dawn cast shadows upon the small village in Afghanistan where American Marines we're at camp. There was silence except for the occasional shriek of a a desert eagle. But amongst a specific unit, chaos ensued. There was a mother military German Shepherd who was going into labour, and it was time for the puppies to be born.
After a few hours of hard labour, a litter of nine pure bred German Shepherd puppies lay next to their mother, happily drinking away on their mother's breasts. However, unbeknownst to the dogs overseers, outside in a dark alley way there stood a hooded figure in black. In the hooded figure's arms there was a basket with a small bundle inside. As the figure stalked towards the camp hesitantly, they accidentally knocked down a piece of equipment, which caused the dogs to start barking and the attention of the soldiers to come off of the mother dog.
In a panic, the hooded figure dropped the basket and fled before the soldiers could catch them. The soldiers approached the direction that the alarmed dogs had been barking in and only found one thing, a basket with a pink blanket inside.
One of the soldiers started to approach the basket but his friend stuck out his arm and blocked him from doing so. The friend looked at his comrade and shook his head. He looked down at one of the dogs.
"Duke!" he said. "Search!"
Duke obeyed and searched the area surround the basket. When he was sure that there was no bombs in the area, he slowly walked towards the basket with the awaiting surprise. Once his snout reached the basket, Duke abruptly sat next to the basket and poked his snout in between the blanket. There was something in there, and it smelt familiar.
It was a puppy!!
Duke pulled the blanket aside with his teeth and began licking the female puppy's head. He made sure the infant puppy was okay before he pulled away and sat down next to the basket. Meanwhile, as all of this had been going on, Duke's human comrades were baffled at his reaction to whatever was in the bundle of blankets. Duke eventually got tired of waiting and walked over to the group of humans and grabbed the sleeve of his human partner, Jack, in his mouth and led him over to the basket.
Jack knelt down and peered into the basket. There was definitely something there. However, because of the position of the blanket, it was impossible to tell what was in the blanket. Grabbing the edge of the blanket, Jack pulled it aside to reveal the shivering newborn, black German Shepherd. Duke watched as his human partner and his comrades become shocked at the find.
Eventually the soldiers got rid of their shock and had enough sense to try and get their mother German Shepherd to adopt the orphan dog. Bringing the wrapped puppy into the warmer tent, the soldiers carefully laid the puppy a few feet away from the mother German Shepherd. The puppies had since gone to sleep and the mother slowly got up and walked over to the puppy and sniffed it. After what seemed like a few moments, the mother picked up the female puppy by the scruff of her tiny neck and brought her over to the basket where the others were.
The soldiers sighed in contentment. Their comrade had saved the little newborn's life.
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