Dog Tags: Prisoners of War, by Alexander London (Scholastic, $5.99, 2012, 182 pp, book 3 of 4*) Review by Skye Anderson
Man's Best Friend Goes to War
But the dog in this case is a Nazi. Can our young American serviceman turn the dog around, befriend him and use him to locate wounded American POWs during a forced relocation in Belgium during World War II**? Can a dog really change sides? Can he be trusted?
Here we have two enemy soldiers (one, a canine), and one uneasy alliance.
Our hero is a young US Army soldier from New Mexico who enlisted at age 17 and became a medic. On his first day in battle, he is separated from his unit during the Battle of the Bulge in Ardennes and sees plenty of action - and blood - and death - and fear. He believes he is a coward without a rifle (medics didn't carry weapons). He teams up with the dog but neither one truly trusts the other.
Luckily, our team also teams up with some Resistance fighters and plots to free the Americans but can our soldier find his courage at last?
Writing Style
Author Alexander London has penned an exciting (not too scary but a bit sad) fast-reading book with several gems like "It was like that whine said everything anyone needed to know about war." (p 33, when the Nazi dog realizes his SS handler is dead.)
Remember cliffhangers? Those single sentences at the end of a chapter that make you turn the page to the next chapter? Cliffhangers abound.
Next: Dog Tags - Strays
*Semper Fido and Divided We Fall
*This is WW2 which ended in 1945 regardless of the author extolling the virtues of the US Air Force and its role in this story, even though the Air Force was not created until 1947. Someone please tell London.
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