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Military Working Dog Memorial and Retirement Ceremony

  • Published
  • By SrA Ken Miller, Jr.
  • USAFE Band
10/24/2013 --  On Wednesday, October 16th, Ramstein Air Base's 86th Security Forces Squadron held a memorial and retirement service for Military Working Dogs. The host and coordinator for the event was Technical Sergeant Nicholas Ramsey, who also narrated the event. The ceremony started off with USAFE Band's own, A1C Melissa Lackore singing the National Anthems. Being an animal lover herself, A1C Lackore said in an interview: "It was an absolute honor to have the opportunity to perform for often unrecognized heroes in our military. I have such admiration for everything that the military working dogs and their handlers do to protect our nation."
For the memorial portion of the ceremony, this event celebrated the service of Military Working Dog, Timo who entered the service at Lackland Air Force Base on 17 January 2006 and arrived to Ramstein on 06 Aug 2006. Timo had a busy military career, and after seven years of honorable service, Timo was laid to rest on 13 July 2013. For the retirement portion of the ceremony, Military Working Dogs Sonja, Reggie and Fil were retired from their service duties. Sonja was adopted my TSgt and Mrs. Hammond and Reggie was adopted by Capt. Gehling. SrA Kilgore ended the ceremony by reading a poem "Guardians of the Night."

And when our time
together is done And you move
on in the world Remember me
with kind thoughts and tales,
For a time we were unbeatable,
Nothing passed among us
undetected.

If we should meet again on
another street I will gladly take
up your fight, I am a Military
Working Dog and together We
are guardians of the night.