BRINGING SMOKE HOME

Istanbul, May 4, 2011. I paced an alley in the middle of the city, fuming. I was a retired Marine Corps Reserve colonel. I had come almost 6,000 miles, from Omaha, on a mission that now looked hopeless. This isn’t going to work, I thought. He’s not coming home. The he in question? A donkey.

A donkey whose life had intersected with mine three years earlier, in Iraq.

I had been recalled to active duty to serve as commandant at Camp Al-Taqaddum for the 1st Marine Logistics Group. My Marines took care of infrastructure there—roads, electricity, water, trash collection. One afternoon, my commanding general showed me a YouTube video of several Marines trying to capture a donkey that was roaming around the base. Someone had pulled footage from our security cameras and set it to music—“Yakety Sax,” the frenetic theme song from . The video was hilarious. “Next time there’s a donkey on base, you ought to catch