Absolutely, boomersooner! In fact, if you read the Snopes page, they say that although it is not factually true (for example, they could find no trace of a Paul Mallory who was in the military and was KIA), they do speak of the difference that pets/found animals make in the lives of the members, and that this story told a truth, although the facts were not so.

Make sense?

PS Snopes text can't be copied and pasted, or I would have pasted the relevant text here - they say it much better than I can!

I will type part of it here - the closing paragraph at Snopes:

However, that the story may not be literal truth doesn't prevent it from being figurative truth. Those who serve overseas do so at the cost of great personal sacrifice. A tale such as this - literal truth or not - serves to remind us all of how much they give and how much we owe them.