March 2000
Only a few of the young soldiers will ever set foot on a college campus, but they saved lives.
by Jack Satterfield ’72
|
After Hurricane Mitch |
Natural and man-made disasters seem so commonplace these days, we've come almost to expect the worst. But we never really prepare for it. I've had a rich career involving television news, military service, and work in the defense industry that has led to travel on six continents in every imaginable condition. I've probably witnessed more than my share of misery and consider myself flea-bitten, cynical, and profane. Nothing short of the Normandy invasion, however, could have prepared me for what I saw in late 1998. Just a couple of weeks after Hurricane Mitch wrecked Central America, I went to Honduras to fly with the U.S. Army and observe relief operations. The U.S. Southern Command, with headquarters in Miami, had dispatched Joint Task Force Bravo, with units from every service branch, to help put the region back together again. Our military people were part of a global humanitarian effort. Boeing, my employer, builds the big, tandem-rotor CH-47 Chinook helicopters the Army used to get food and medical supplies to people cut off from any help by ground. We wanted to document these operations because relief work has become an increasingly important Chinook mission worldwide. Boeing colleagues Bob Ferguson, Will Morrison, and I spent a week flying on missions that lifted tons of grain and medicine into areas devastated beyond comprehension. I also had flown with Army Chinooks after Hurricane Andrew flattened Dade County in 1992. That storm caused unimaginable property damage, and more than 60 people died. But Hurricane Mitch was more lethal and damaging. Virtually all the modern infrastructure in Honduras vanished, wiping out about a half-century of tentative technical progress. Rebuilding will take decades. We'll never know the death toll. Our Chinooks flew over milewide river valleys buried under 20 feet of mud. Villages once stood along the streambeds. People by the thousand were under that muck or swept out to sea as floods ripped the landscape. The survivors, many of whom had next to nothing before the storm, were left barely clinging to life--no food, sanitation, or water except for the sewage they drank and in which they bathed. Boeing videographer Will Morrison, a rangy, tough former Marine and Vietnam vet, broke down and wept openly many times. Crying came easily in Honduras. The Honduran government seemed to care not a whit about the people left stranded in the countryside. For the "haves" in many developing countries, life is often a zero-sum game. Experience teaches them that if others gain, they must lose. Consequently, many of the privileged hoarded what they could, not only to protect themselves but also to keep peasants under their control. In Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, men with assault rifles and shotguns guarded businesses and homes that survived the storm. The scene reminded me of legendary Dodge City in the 1880s. In one case, I watched a Honduran Army colonel fire his pistol in the midst of some 5 year olds gathered near our helicopter. As the children scattered in terror, the colonel explained that they were getting in the way. Several districts in Tegucigalpa, almost all of them poor, also were wrecked. Relief workers told us heavy equipment was available to help clean up the ravaged city, but hundreds of students in hip boots dug away at the fetid mess with shovels. They said the government told them this would generate more sympathy and lead to foreign-debt forgiveness. For every instance of deception and meanness that angered us, however, we also saw astonishing decency. Without the American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen--mostly just kids--who came to help in hard-scrabble places like Soto Cano, Honduras, starvation and disease would have taken at least as many lives as did Hurricane Mitch. Our servicemen and servicewomen, average age about 22, I'd say, lived without complaint in tents and mosquito netting through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and beyond, after leaving their own families on 48 hours' notice to save the lives of people they didn't know. The unit with which we worked--the "Flippers," of Company C, 159th Aviation Regiment, 18th Airborne Brigade of Fort Bragg, N.C.--delivered thousands of tons of food, powdered milk, medical and relief supplies, and hundreds of passengers, mostly medical teams and relief workers, to those in need. In one case, an Army crew flew their Chinook, capable of lifting 25,000 pounds, to carry a critically ill, 6-pound infant--the only cargo on that trip--to a hospital. Those four young men saved the baby's life. I left Honduras with a mixed sense of anger over the ineptitude of Honduran authorities, astonishment that the American media and public seemed more interested in Monica Lewinsky than the Central American disaster, and pride in our military people. On my return, a friend said, "Welcome back to reality." My response: "No, we live in Disney World. Honduras is reality. Tonight, when you go home, get on your knees, hug your children, and thank God you live in the United States." Only a few of the young soldiers with whom we worked could get into Swarthmore. Many of them probably will never set foot on a college campus. The same can be said of many workers at Boeing who actually built Chinooks, enabling the Army to save so many lives. What they did, however, is far more important than my meager attempts at intellectual development so long ago. Those soldiers went about saving innocent lives with no sentiment, no self-reflection, no awareness of their own importance. The people who build Chinooks seem to get well-made hardware out the door to the customer with the same absence of indulgence and emotion. The point, I guess, is that attending a fine college--and all the elegant theorizing in the world--isn't worth a bucket of warm spit if we don't do something to justify the space we take up on the planet. So, when the time comes for honorifics, I suggest, for a change, let us not now praise famous men. Instead, let's give the kids in Company C--at least the ones old enough to drink--a round of beer. Jack Satterfield '72 is a communications manager at The Boeing Co. in Philadelphia. |
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