Tiger the Lurp Dog

by Kenn Miller

A landmark novel of the Vietnam War The men of the Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol—Stagg, Wolverine, Mopar, Marvel Kim, and Gonzales—are commando-style soldiers, called “Lurps” for short. Five men, completely dependent on one another. Proud to the point of arrogance. They’re joined by Tiger, their a flea-bitten scavenging stray or “dust dog,” a sneak and a coward, lazy and haughty. But, like his masters in this dirtiest of all wars, a survivor.When their buddies on Team Two-One disappear, the Lurp team members have to fight their own brass to go on a mission to find them. And suddenly a grueling war becomes an unimaginable nightmare.

Genres: War, Fiction, Military Fiction

214 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Kenn Miller (b. 1948) is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War. From 1967 through 1969, he served three voluntary extensions of his combat tours in an Airborne Ranger company in Vietnam. He was a Long Range Patrol team member and team leader in LRRP Detachment, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division; F Company 58th Infantry (LRP); and L Company 75th Ranger.

After his military service, Miller returned briefly to the United States, then moved to Taiwan. After marrying and returning again to America, he studied history and English at the University of Michigan. He then worked as a janitor, auto worker, physical education teacher, ghostwriter, and part-time editor and “book doctor” for Ballantine Books, Ivy Books, and the Naval Institute Press. Miller now lives in San Gabriel, California.

Reviews

[Nadir · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great contribution to the story of the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols of the Vietnam war. Miller's novel makes one aware of not only the military job these small groups of men had to perform and the difficulty inherent in that work, but also of the personal issues of concern to young men at war - both that which they expressed and that which they held inside. Well worth the time to read.

[Chrisl · Rating 4 out of 5]

If rereading Vietnam books, I'd start with Miller's Tiger and Herr's Dispatches. Who knows, with a reread the Lurp Dog might earn 5-stars.
Dispatches
***
quote from
https://www.military.com/undertherada...
"When a little book called Tiger the Lurp Dog by former U.S. Army and LRRP team leader Sergeant Kenn E. Miller hit the shelves in 1983, chances are the average American had never heard of the term LRRP, pronounced “lurp,” short for Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol.

Tiger is just a mutt, a “dust dog” according to the Vietnamese, but he’s the mascot of LRRP Team Two-Four. His ‘main man’ is Mopar, a 19-year old SP4 who talks of his girlfriend Sybill Street and dreams of surviving long enough to buy beer in a supermarket. Marvel Kim is a luck-obsessed Korean who grew up in Hawaii and is the conscience of the story. Rounding out the team is Communist hating Cuban refugee Gonzales and Staff Sergeant Wolverine, former Special Forces, replacement team leader, and a man determined to outrun his past no matter how far he has to go to do it."

KIRKUS REVIEW - bah, spoiler

"Strong, small-scale, gently intense Vietnam fiction--marred, unfortunately, by the cloying, cute, almost Disney-esque appearances of the camp dog referred to in the title. Miller's close-up focus is on a mid-1960s Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LURP) camp, especially on Team Two-Four: young Mopar, the special favorite of brown-black mongrel Tiger; relatively erudite, equally young Marvel Kim, of Korean ancestry; Cuban nationalist Gonzales; and their new Team Leader--Wolverine, a Green Beret who's on the run from his Gospel-Church-family background and whose rung-ho approach (""we're gonna have the wisest and sneakiest Lurp team this man's Army has ever seen"") at first alienates ambitious, restless Mopar. (Jive-talking J.D., leader of another LURP team, sums up Two-Four this way: ""You got a Special Forces madman for a TL. Have one crazy gook commo man walkin' slack with an M-79, and a pointman who talks to dogs, then end it off with a Cuban tailgunner who don't know how to talk at all."") The team goes out on its first, uneventful mission, while J.D.'s team over in the next valley gets blown away; Miller plainly, vividly evokes the jargon, the silence, the tedium, the leeches, the dependence on hard-to-hear radio messages. Then, while the men split up for a while--Mopar on leave (raunchily anticipated) back home, Marvel to recondo school--Tiger the Lurp Dog is featured in a few vignettes: killing chickens, cannily surviving through an obstacle-course of mines, barbed-wire, punji stakes, showing a better-than-human escape technique. And then the team reunites, adding one member (the oafishly cheery Schultz), going out on a mission that ends in terror and carnage. . . while, back at the camp, loyal Tiger the Lurp Dog is ""waiting for Mopar, his main man, waiting for his team to return from wherever it was they had gone."" True, there's a faintly effective, dark irony in the man/dog parallel here--the animal knowing far better how to survive; what comes across much more heavily, however, is the B-movie/sit-corn sentimentality. And that's a great pity, because the scene-by-scene writing here, except for one or two lapses into farce, is quietly black-comic and credible. Without the doggie-gimmick as an ostensible framework for this short, uneven book, Miller might have developed the human characters instead, building the best of these talented, involving episodes into a full-fledged novel.
Pub Date: Oct. 11th, 1983"

[MisterLiberry Head · Rating 5 out of 5]

The eponymous Tiger is “a medium-small dog, lazy and self-indulgent, yet alert and shifty—a true recon dog” (loc141). Voluntarily attached to a Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol (’Lurp’) team that includes Mopar, Marvel Kim, Gonzales, Schultz and hardcore Staff Sgt Wolverine, Tiger stays behind at Brigade base – doing important dog stuff – while the soldiers probe deep into the North Vietnamese mountains. The men of Team Two-Four are doing incredibly dangerous work, where “reporting back to the rear was the most important part of a Lurp’s job” (loc745). But some Recon Zones are just bad luck (or jinxed), teeming with North Vietnamese Army Regulars. Ultimately, as Two-Four’s radioman, Marvel Kim, realizes of the enemy: “It was their country, they were everywhere” (loc2977). On re-reading this gritty war novel, what is tragic about TIGER THE LURP DOG (first published in 1983) is that the resourceful, self-confident soldiers for whom Tiger waits back at the chopper pad are so damned young, not even 20 years old.

[Thomas R. Winscher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not What I Expected

This book to a totally different direction then I ever expected. I thought the writer did a good job at bringing the characters together to make this an interesting story about a very ugly war. People who have not been there will be huffing and puffing over things that happen, but, that was how things were. It is just that no one talks about it. This is worth the time to read. A bit slow in the beginning, but the book is worth the time. Enjoy.

[Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting read and a unique angle (for me) used by the storyteller. However, I felt tiger was underdeveloped and not a major character as indicated by the title. Overall, this is another standard small combat story set in Vietnam with nothing too unique.
After reading The Art of Driving ... I was expecting more narration from the dog's perspective but was disappointed by the actual amount.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this one over and over and over.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

War is war. Wether Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan. Every camp probably has a tiger. The chapters through Tigers eyes were good.

[Bart · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very good novel. A bit journalistic, but very well assembled.