2010020402

2nd of the 319th: Haiti Night Missions Are Scary But Effective

By R.Gregg, The Raleigh Telegram

Thursday, February 4, 2010

PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI - It’s kind of a surreal moment, like something you’d see in a movie and being here involves all of your senses.

It’s dark -- very dark -- as there are no street lights and the power is out. We see candles every now and then on the side of the streets in the tent camps, some of them placed in the Red Cross plastic buckets that were given out, giving the light a faint glow.

I shine a flashlight on the ground every now and then to make sure I don’t step in something wet or sharp, which could be fatal in this country.

There’s a certain smell in the air as we walk by certain areas and I’m not sure if it’s from the raw sewage or garbage in the streets or both.

We’re walking on dusty streets in the middle of the city of Port au Prince several days after the earthquake. The rubble is still piled around us where buildings fell, with flattened cars and houses reduced to crumbling bits and pieces.

It’s hard to tell if people died in some of the collapses as no one has started removing the rubble and rescue missions have ceased. We just don’t know if people are under the concrete remains as we walk by.

I’m with the first platoon in the Golf Battery in the 2nd of the 319th, a brigade in the US Army Airborne division out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Captain Jason Alexander had been leading food drop off missions during the day (see separate article).

Now we’re on a night mission on foot from Advance Operating Base Green, which is located in the middle of the city at a former equestrian facility. Some of the soldiers sleep in the open on cots while others sleep in horse stalls.

There’s plenty of shade due to trees that seem to be nonexistent in the rest of the city, but the animals also draw in a lot of mosquitoes.

All of our work in this sector is headquartered at the base and from there, the soldiers receive supplies, head out to perform drop offs directly to the Haitian people where they live, run foot patrols to see which tent camps need supplies, and also to reconnoiter the area.

Lt. Valtin & Sgt. White:

From North Carolina

The first platoon is led by Lieutenant Jeremy Valtin, a young man from Sanford, North Carolina who graduated from Western Harnett High School and a 2008 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, which right now seems a long way from here.

Personally, I think he looks exactly like the actor Toby Maguire who starred in Spiderman, but no one else seems to see the resemblance even after I ask him to pose like he’s shooting a web.

The lead sergeant in our platoon, or “smoke” sergeant as they call him, is Sergeant First Class Matt White. Another North Carolinian, Sergeant White grew up in Greensboro and now lives on a farm in Randleman, just south of Greensboro.

Sergeant White, who they sometimes call “Pops,” is not that old at 37 years of age, but compared to the other troops under him who are mostly in their 20’s, he’s up there. He joined right after high school and has been in the Iraq War -- both of them -- and in Afghanistan as well as other assignments around the world.

Ironically, he’s an NC State fan and has to take orders from a UNC graduate, but as the sergeant says, it’s a North Carolina platoon, so he’s fine with that.

“What are the chances?” asked Sergeant White about a platoon being led by a lieutenant and sergeant both from North Carolina and another soldier who grew up in Fayetteville. On top of that, what are the chances of having a reporter from their home state being assigned to cover them in Haiti?

Sergeant White is the kind of guy you’d want alongside of you in a war and when he retires in a few years, it will be the Army’s loss. He’s tough, smart, and experienced, but also funny.

Just before we left camp, he told us about how he had to meet with some tribal chiefs in Iraq over dinner and after eating the local food, he was sick for four days straight. However, after he got over his initial sickness, he was immune to the local cuisine.

“I ate everything they put in front of me after that,” he joked.

His sense of humor has come in handy in working with the Haitian people despite the fact that he doesn’t speak French. A smile and a laugh are pretty much universal.

However, like any sergeant, he won’t hesitate to tell you if you’re doing something wrong but he’s probably saving your life in the process. He’s a stickler for making sure he knows where all of his men are at all times. Headcounts before and after we go into a location are mandatory.

Last night, we went to a local tent camp after dark and brought in a load of food, which comes in boxes of what the Army calls “Meals Ready to Eat” or MRE’s.

The MRE’s are large plastic pouches that contain smaller plastic pouches with everything from spaghetti and meatballs (the good ones) to an egg and cheese omelette (not so good). Smaller packets also contain things like peanut butter, crackers, snacks, desserts, and even chipotle bread.

The MRE’s pack a lot of calories, along with some basic items such as matches, toilet paper, gum, and even Tabasco sauce, and don’t need water to be eaten.

At this drop, although we offered to carry the food to a secure room in the back of the compound, the camp leader wanted us to drive the Humvee with the food directly to it. That meant driving in the dark through an area where people were sleeping and soldiers with flashlights lead the Humvee carefully down the path.

We drive the Humvee through the courtyard to reach the back room and while children look on, we pack the room full of boxes of food and water.

In addition to handing out thousands of MRE’s and bottled water directly to people one by one, in instances such as this, the Airborne soldiers are also working with Haitian leaders in each tent camp to hand out food since they can help more people that way.

The drawback is that there is the chance that the camp leaders will squirrel away food or even sell it on the black market.

However to minimize that risk, as he always does, Sergeant White will pay another visit to the camp the next day.

The sergeant warns the camp leader, telling him that he is going to talk to people at random the next day to make sure they received the food properly.

Tonight, we are going to try and find more camps in this sector that need food and also check out the neighborhood in general.

The soldiers say they have to figure out the best way in and the best way out for each camp, plus assess security risks and size up how to perform crowd control. If you just show up with a load of food and start handing it out, then it’s a recipe for a big crowd getting out of hand very quickly.

“You can’t just go in and drop off,” says Lieutenant Valtin. “You’ve got to have a plan.”

Tonight, as we walk out of the large metal gates in front of Alpha Base, we’re headed on foot towards a small orphanage that is not far off.

The Orphanage

Getting there by quietly walking through the dark streets, the orphanage was not easy to find, as it’s located off the street behind a basketball court converted into a soccer field, down a set of steps, through a tent camp, and finally at the end of a path near some trees.

We step over pools of water, as one of the soldiers warns me to watch out for the “poo river” where people dump their waste water and we continue towards a single light in the dark.

Here at the orphanage, which was damaged in the earthquake, people are sleeping on the ground using sheets or anything they can find as cover. Some people sleep in cars or just on he ground.

Sergeant White and Lieutenant Valtin meet with Rico, the large man running the church orphanage and they share a friendly conversation as he rests on the back of a pickup truck.

Originally from Miami, he is an American citizen and was here at the orphanage when the earthquake hit. His family in the United States is trying to help pay to keep the orphanage operating, but they’ve run into several problems.

Dozens of the infants in the orphanage are sick with dysentery or typhoid fever, and the sergeant tells the man that they need to separate the sick children from the healthy kids, otherwise they will all end up sick.

Sergeant White says that Rico has also been sick and may have to return to the US.

In addition, the orphanage’s generator has conked out and they can’t fix it.

Sergeant White tells the man that he will return tomorrow with doctors to take a look at the children. The following day, he brings in some American civilian volunteer doctors who put in IV’s into the children and check them out.

The 2nd of the 319th also has one of their mechanics take a look at their generator and when I left the country, he had it running but was trying to diagnose why it wouldn’t put out any electricity.

Although he probably wouldn’t admit it, despite being a veteran of several military campaigns, Sergeant White seemed to be emotionally affected by seeing these young infants and children suffering from disease through no fault of their own.

Perhaps because it is his duty as a US soldier bringing humanitarian relief to Haiti but also perhaps because he is simply a father himself, he was definitely doing everything he could to help them out.

“I’m not going to quit going down in there,” he said. “Babies, we’re just working with babies.”

As we leave the orphanage, Sergeant White takes a count to see if everyone in our platoon is back out on the street.

Heavenly Singing

As we make our way up the darkened street, we can hear heavenly singing. It’s a little strange and incongruous to hear such angelic sounds amidst all of the destruction around us.

Walking up a hill into a open square at the intersection of several dusty streets, we see lights and a large mass of people.

As we have seen before in other areas of the city, the people are attending an evening outdoor church service. They don’t have hymnals and they don’t really need them as everyone seems to know the words to the songs that seem to float overhead as we walk by.

We leave the bright scene behind us as we walk further away, still able to hear the singing as we see signs of life in the evening.

The city during the day is vibrant, packed with people, and full of traffic. At night, it’s the complete opposite, almost shockingly so.

We come across a few street vendors selling items at night, with their faces lit by candlelight or even a game of dice with several men crowded around a board taking bets, but usually after 8 or 9pm, the streets are completely deserted.

Saving A Baby

Our next destination is a large warehouse building that the team of soldiers believe to be a camp for people left homeless by the earthquake.

As we approach the building, we make our way through the front gate and around the side of the warehouse. You can see an abandoned car off in the distance and plenty of dust floating around in this secluded courtyard.

Sergeant White enters the warehouse with a few men to see how many people are there, while other soldiers wait outside.

As I stand there watching the scene unfold, a woman holding a baby comes up to me and tugs on my jacket and points to her baby. I wasn’t sure what she needed until I shined the flashlight in her direction and could immediately what was wrong -- her baby’s foot was horribly infected.

In my best high school French, I tell her to wait for the doctor, or in this case, the platoon medic, to come back out of the warehouse, along with our translator. Our translator (see separate article) actually grew up in Haiti and later joined the Airborne after he moved to the United States.

We learn from the baby’s mother that a piece of concrete fell on the baby’s foot and it had become infected. With crowds of people standing around watching and with several flashlights lighting the way, the medic washes the baby’s foot and then puts on some antibiotic ointment and some bandages.

Then the translator explained to the woman how to change the bandages and the medic gave her some replacement gauze to put on the wound.

As the baby was in a great deal of pain, one of the soldiers next to me took out a surgical glove and turned it into a balloon to give the child.

As he handed the child the five fingered balloon that looked like a blue bird, the baby instantly enjoyed the new toy.

When the soldier explained that it was a “poulet” or chicken, then the entire crowd started laughing, along with the baby.

School Bus City

We needed to stop at one more camp along our patrol route. We entered a large building that emptied out on a wide sloping field that contained dozens of brightly colored school buses.

Perhaps at some point the buses were used for inter-city travel in Haiti, but right now they were being used as homes, as hundreds of people were sleeping in them. The buses are brightly colored and look like something out of the 1960’s in America as they often have the words “love” or rainbows painted on them. Several I have seen in the city have portraits of Jesus or words of praise on them.

Lieutenant Valtin and Sergeant White were visiting the school bus camp to find out how many people were living there, so we could come back the next night and bring some MRE’s for distribution.

They talked with camp leaders about the details and made arrangements to meet the next night with some food, and that subsequent food and water drop off the next night went very smoothly and quickly thanks to advance planning.

Mobile Phones & Gangs

Back behind the buses, there were several dozen people living in tents at the bottom of the hill. Walking back to the back of the compound, we could see a car battery powering a single light and some mobile phone chargers next to a tent made of sheets.

In a country where there are seemingly no land lines for phones, no email or internet access, and certainly no Facebook accounts, or other ways to keep in touch, cellular phones are popular. Many times we’d see a dozen phones or more being charged by a car battery, often the only source of power.

Quietly, Sergeant White leads a group of a few men to the edge of the camp where they gather at a concrete block wall.

In my attempt to follow them in the dark, I run into a clothesline which was somewhat painful and also embarrassing. Then I ran into another one.

We gather at a hole in the wall, which overlooks another camp. Yesterday, when we were dropping off food at a camp, three men who were armed with pistols tried to enter the camp and their intent was evidently to try and steal the food from the Haitians.

When the Airborne soldiers responded, the three armed men left quickly, not wishing to engage professional soldiers armed with automatic rifles.

The adjacent camp we were looking at now through the concrete wall is where those armed men came from and the sergeant speculated that the men were part of an armed gang.

The soldiers warned me not to take a flash photo as they looked through their night vision scopes towards the camp. I couldn’t really see anything, but then one of them loaned me their scope.

It was almost like looking at a daytime scene, as the field of view was lit up in that phosphorescent green that you see in CNN broadcasts of night time scenes during the Iraq War. Seeing only a pig or two running across the ground, we went back up the hill to join the rest of the men to leave the school bus camp.

Singing Once Again

As we made our way back to Alpha Base, we once again hear singing, although it turned out to be an entirely different group of people.

Outside of a church, dozens of people are sleeping outside.

“They sleep on the streets in that area there,” said Sergeant White.

Next to them, a man with a megaphone leads them in a religious song in French. [click here to listen]

The music is beautiful and even if the surroundings are not exactly heaven on earth, these people seem to be happy to just have each other.

After we make our way back to the base, the platoon is ready to hopefully get some rest despite the mosquitoes and start all over again tomorrow morning for another 14 hour day.

The soldiers from Fort Bragg will likely be there another six months or so before they head back to the United States.

In the meantime, the 82nd Airborne is working hard in Haiti to wage a war on hunger and to help out our neighbors in their time of need.

A man who can assess a situation pretty well, Sergeant White summed up their mission in Haiti in just a few words.

“We’re saving the world one MRE at a time,” he said.

:: END