Craig Grossi and his dog Fred, who Grossi rescued from a battle zone in Afghanistan. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

In 2010, Craig Grossi was part of a group of Marines trying to hold its ground in a small town in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He saw Taliban rockets up close, and he saw comrades fall.

He also saw a smallish white and golden dog – a mutt with some corgi and lab features – scavenging for food in the battle zone. Grossi was impressed with the dog’s apparent smarts. He was putting up with desert heat to forage during the day, avoiding fights with other stray dogs in the battle zone, who mostly came out at night. Grossi, who always wanted a dog growing up but never had one, decided to approach the canine and offer him a stick of beef jerky.

“Second Chances” is Craig Grossi’s second book about his life since finding his dog, Fred, on a battlefield in Afghanistan.  Photo courtesy of William Morrow

“I walked up to him and saw that his fur was all matted, and he was covered in bugs. I thought ‘This is a bad idea,’ ” said Grossi. “Then I heard this little thump, thump, and he was wagging his tail. He took the beef jerky very gently, and he let me rub him. In a couple minutes the battlefield had melted away, and I was just a guy with a dog. Somebody saw him following me around and said, ‘Looks like you have a friend.’ But I thought they said Fred. So that’s what we called him.”

Grossi has been a guy with a dog ever since. He smuggled Fred out of Afghanistan, against regulations, and credits the mutt with helping him take control of his life as he dealt with a battlefield head injury, post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol abuse.

He says Fred gave him a renewed sense of purpose and a way to help others. Grossi has written two books about his life with Fred, and the pair make speaking appearances around the country. Grossi’s latest book, “Second Chances: A Marine, His Dog, and Finding Redemption,” came out in April. It focuses largely on the time Grossi and Fred have spent with veterans incarcerated at the Maine State Prison in Warren, where Grossi has taught writing.

“The more I told people about Fred, the more I realized how much people loved hearing his story,” said Grossi, 38, who lives in the Augusta area. “I could see there was a reason we both made it out of there.”

A DOG’S LIFE

Grossi grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and joined the Marines out of high school. He struggled in school, he says, but he always liked to write. When he was deployed to Afghanistan, he was a sergeant working in intelligence. He went on patrols in dangerous areas to gather information on the enemy, interviewed locals and prisoners, and wrote reports for the higher-ups.

In the fall of 2010, he traveled with about 70 or so other Marines to establish a small post in the Sangin District, near a Taliban regional headquarters. The first morning, Grossi remembers, the enemy came “at us with everything they had,” but the Marines returned fire with force. After about a week, the ferocity and frequency of Taliban attacks decreased, he said. It was during a relative lull that Grossi started to notice Fred roaming around the family home the Marines were using as a base, which included a couple adjacent structures for storing food, as well as a small orchard. Nobody had pets in the area, only big dogs kept for protection, so Fred seemed like an outlier.

From the day Grossi first approached Fred, they became constant companions. The dog accompanied Grossi and other Marines on nighttime patrols, when they’d hike several miles at a time through back country. At night, he slept with soldiers in their sleeping bags. He watched the Marines and did what they did, stopping when the Marines stopped and marching when they marched.

“As we walked, he’d move from Marine to Marine, poking each one at the hip and then getting a little rub. He was herding us,” said Grossi. “The people in the area would see us (Marines) coming in with our silenced rifles and night vision goggles and this funny little dog trotting behind.”

During his 30 days in Sangin, Grossi felt a growing need to take Fred home with him, to get him out of Afghanistan, even though it was against military regulations to take an animal out of the country. One day, an anti-tank rocket landed next to Grossi while he was inside a building on the Marine’s makeshift post. Knocked unconscious by the blast and debris, he suffered a traumatic brain injury. While recuperating in the hospital, he began thinking of how he would get Fred back to the United States. With help from other dog-loving Marines and civilians, he was able to get a letter from a veterinarian saying Fred was safe for travel, a dog carrier used for military police dogs, and flights on helicopters and planes for Fred.

Still, Grossi was nervous. He was nervous about getting caught and possibly facing stiff discipline and prison. And he was nervous about Fred not surviving the trip. So, on the day he and other Marines were to hike out of Sangin, he decided not to force Fred to come, only to let him follow if he chose to do so. A day later, after they had hiked six miles from Sangin, they saw Fred trotting through the desert toward them. With helicopters on their way to pick up the Marines, Grossi once again gave Fred a choice.

“I sat him down and said, ‘If you really want to come with us, when the helicopter comes, if you take a step toward the helicopter and aren’t scared by the motors, I’ll stop at nothing to get you out,’ ” said Grossi.

Fred was not scared. And Grossi got him out.

Fred, Craig Grossi’s dog and constant companion. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

FINDING PURPOSE

After getting out of the Marines in 2011, with Fred at his side, Grossi worked for the federal Defense Intelligence Agency, enrolled at Georgetown University and got a degree in international affairs. He found peace in bringing Fred to dog parks and on hikes and sharing their story. He eventually started writing about Fred.

Grossi’s first book, “Craig & Fred: A Marine, a Stray Dog and How They Rescued Each Other,” came out in 2017. The advance money Grossi had gotten from the book enabled him and his fiance, Nora Parkington, to think about leaving the Washington, D.C., area and move somewhere “remote and inspiring.” They rented a cabin in the Down East town of Sullivan, near Ellsworth, so Grossi could finish the book. They both fell in love with the state. About four years ago, they decided to move here full-time, first living in the Portland area. Now they have a home in a small town not far from Augusta, which Grossi would rather not name for privacy purposes.

Although it appeared outwardly as though Grossi’s adjustment from the military was going smoothly, he was struggling. He said he had lost the “sense of purpose” he had felt as a Marine and during quiet times “my mind would turn to lost friends and the last moments I spent with them.” He drank too much and had trouble controlling his temper.

He said he knew he needed help when he and Fred were driving one morning to a speaking engagement for his book in northern Virginia. Someone on the road cut Grossi off in aggressive manner, he recalls. Grossi said he “flipped out” and “went full homicidal mode.” He tried to force the other driver to pull over, so he could confront him, physically.

“It felt familiar. I thought, this guy is trying to kill me,” said Grossi. “I had not wanted to admit that I needed help, therapy. But that was a scary moment, and I learned a lot from it.”

With professional help, and his focus on Fred and their joint story, Grossi said he was able to regain a strong sense of purpose in his life.

Craig Grossi gives his dog Fred a hug in their yard, near Augusta. Grossi’s book “Second Chances: A Marine, His Dog, and Finding Redemption” came out in April.  Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

It was while promoting his first book on the Maine Public Radio show “Maine Calling” that Grossi first became aware of the Maine State Prison and veterans held there. “Maine Calling” host Jennifer Rooks emailed the prison’s warden at the time, Randall Liberty, to tell him about Grossi. Liberty, an Army combat veteran, had established a veteran’s unit at the prison where inmates with military backgrounds could bond and support each other. Liberty, who is now commissioner of the Maine Department of Corrections, immediately knew he wanted Grossi to come speak at the prison, and invited him.

Grossi was impressed with Liberty and the programs available to inmates, including several where they trained service dogs that would later be assigned to help disabled veterans and others. He also bonded with and felt empathy for the veterans. He knew firsthand the mental and emotional cost of combat and readjusting to civilian life. He knows veterans often turn to alcohol or other substances to cope and can lash out in violent ways.

Grossi said he felt compelled to come back and spend more time with the veterans at the prison, so Liberty put him on a volunteer list. But he felt he needed a reason to be there, a constructive reason. So he started a writing program for inmates and asked some to write about their experience training dogs. He met with a group of about eight to 10 people each week for more than a year, until the pandemic halted the in-person program in March 2020. (He’s done some Zoom sessions since.) On Wednesday mornings, he would watch the inmates with their dogs, observing and taking notes, then spend the afternoon in a writing sessions.

Fred always went with Grossi to the writing sessions, just as he goes with Grossi on his speaking engagements. Fred looks forward to these outings as much as people look forward to seeing him and hearing of his story, Grossi says.

“He very quickly came to expect our weekly trips to see his friends. He’d drag me through the parking lot as if we were going to a dog park and trot happily through the prison greeting everyone we saw with his famous smile,” said Grossi.

One of the first “amazing” pieces of writing Grossi said he got from an inmate was from Michael Kidd, 30, a native of New Vineyard, near Farmington, who wrote about a dog he trained. Kidd joined the Army out of high school and got out in 2011. Less than a year after that, in 2012, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison on two counts of kidnapping and one count of robbery. Kidd and two other men were convicted of forcing their way into a Farmington’s couple’s home and robbing them of $1,500 that belonged to the American Legion, prescription pills and other items. The husband was assaulted and then was driven to an ATM machine and forced to withdraw $700, while his wife was held hostage in the home, according to published reports of the court proceedings.

Speaking via Zoom from the Maine State Prison, Kidd said that by working with Grossi, he’s learned to use writing as a way to achieve “clarity in areas of my life I haven’t delved into in the past, some of my experiences that led to my incarceration.”

Kidd said he wrote a hypothetical letter to his victims, which he is not allowed to send to them. He said the exercise was powerful because “remorsefulness is shied away from here,” he said of prison.

“I wanted to convey that I think about my crime every single day, and it hurts. But it isn’t who I am,” said Kidd. He said that his writing, reflection and time spent with Grossi has helped him realize “this doesn’t have to end in me coming back here. I can pick myself up.”

He added that he also really appreciates the way Grossi made him and other prison residents feel valued. “He has the ability to talk to us the same as he would to people in a college setting. When someone can come in here and see you as a human being, and not as your worst mistakes, it really stands out,” Kidd said.

Liberty thought “Second Chances” gave a realistic portrayal of the prison and “a holistic view of residents, rather than just writing about the crimes they committed. They are people, Mainers, brothers, fathers and sons, and we should invest time and resources” into reducing the chance they’ll commit crimes again, he said.

In “Second Chances,” Grossi writes about the inmates, and their work with dogs and with him. He also writes about his own continued journey, his own second chance at a fulfilling life. He said working with them made him appreciate the opportunities he’s had and the support he’s had, including family, co-workers and others who urged him to get help for his post-military struggles.

“Spending time with them had a great impact on me, it made me realize the value of second chances,” said Grossi. “What I learned from them is that a lack of opportunity is not the same as a lack of character.”