Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 1, 1993 TAG: 9302010026
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MOGADISHU, SOMALIA LENGTH: Long
DODGING THE CHAOS, WATCHING FOR ENEMIES
SOME SOMALIS glare, some cheer - either way, you're always in danger if you're an outsider.Looking Somalis in the eye while storming along with armor and weapons somehow seemed like admitting vulnerability. So I hid behind my camera as our convoy ripped through the city toward the inland village of Baledogle.
The 6th Battalion from Fort Eustis was taking supplies to a small outpost that before long would grow into a major trucking crossroads. Sixty-two miles inland, Baledogle is convenient to many of the centers where starving Somalis are being fed.
There was little sign in Mogadishu of the heart-wrenching starvation images seen on CNN. No walking skeletons, no baby's eyes caked with flies. Instead, the city was a fetid stew of destruction and crime.
Civilization seemed to have broken down after two years of civil war. Now the results were glaring and shouting at us along the crowded market district known as the Gantlet.
By this time, the danger of coming under sniper fire or rock attack in this risky area seemed comparable to crossing a busy street: Be careful, and the odds are on your side.
We made it through and entered what must once have been suburbs. Walls and driveways announced villas set back from the road. Empty windows gaped, former shades of paint were visible around mortar holes, and outsiders had built huts in the yards out of thatch or corrugated roofing material. The spacious homes now were used as barns.
Finally we reached the bridge at Afgooye. Marines had been ambushed here two days before and killed six Somalis, and just last night Americans rooted out several tons of stashed weapons.
Sgt. John Walrath, a 28-year-old from Fort Eustis, Va., stood up in our Humvee as we approached, the eagle tattoo on his biceps twitching as he clutched his M-16. Nothing happened.
The bridge marked a transition between Somalias, from the urban to the rural. And they are vastly different.
"The most peaceful, happiest Somalis I've seen are living out in the country as nomads," Fort Eustis Capt. Mike Boyle, port operations officer, had said back at headquarters. "It makes you wonder sometimes if maybe yanking these people up into the 20th century isn't such a good thing."
The rural Somalis have struck some kind of harmony with their environment. Their thatched huts have three basic shapes: round, like the giant termite mounds that blister the landscape; cone-topped, like the scrubby bushes that grow everywhere; and long, low and flat like the land itself.
Beside the hardtop road ran an equally wide track of white dirt. This was the foot highway. Somalis with bare feet or thongs trudged it from shady spot to watering hole, stooping under bales of sticks or driving herds of skinny cattle and camels with thwacks from a cane.
Most surprising of all in this land of famine was field after field of what appeared to be corn. All of it going bad for lack of harvest. The grain coming into port through the international relief effort wrecked the market for local farmers.
Some bargain
"Fire Base Snafu - For Sale," read the sign thrust into a termite mound at the entrance to the 6th Battalion outpost at Baledogle. And another sign, shaped like an arrow: "Fort Eustis, 6,000 miles."
"It's myself and six others - The Magnificent Seven. We come up last Sunday, I think it was, and established Fire Base Snafu. And it is for sale," drawled Master Sgt. Wayne Randall, 39.
So far, no buyers. The climate seemed a good 10 notches hotter than the 98 degrees of the port, and there was no breeze. A fine, red dust covered the ground and erupted with every step or roll of a wheel.
"The first couple or three days we had some snipers, but they were bad shots," Randall said. Marines from a nearby base went to work, and now the snipers . . . "Well, they're gone," he said.
Water is delivered every two or three days. The Magnificent Seven shower by slinging a water bag over a tree. They do most of their work in the cooler morning, then take turns at guard duty at night. During the day, they don't move or dress any more than necessary.
"When there're no reporters here, I run around in my underwear," Randall said, gesturing at his sweat-stained T-shirt and camouflage pants. "I dressed up for y'all today."
Humor helps him survive, but Randall had just about run out of jokes. The convoy from Mogadishu brought him a care package from home.
"Soon as I get back to the states, I'm gonna quit," he said, riffling through pictures of his grandchildren. "All the while my kids were growing up I was out doing foolish [stuff] like this. I'm not gonna miss my grandkids, too."
Sgt. Jeffrey Wayne Cassell, another of the Magnificent Seven, is, at 32, a few years behind Randall in his career and his attitude. The convoy brought him the paperwork necessary to re-enlist. His hitch isn't up until August, but Cassell couldn't wait.
"Back in the rear [at home], it's just like, `OK, I'm taking another three years.' Here, I'm doing what I've been training to do the last 11 1/2 years," he said. He took the oath a few paces from a dead scorpion as big as a salamander.
"Oh, I love it here," Cassell said. "We got the shower, the MREs [Meal, Ready to Eat]. The only thing missing is my wife."
Major changes
If anything could make a person homesick for the port at Mogadishu, Baledogle could. Rolling back to the relative safety and shade of our warehouse home was a relief.
Troops who have been "in country" awhile joke that their living standards are permanently altered. Across town at the old U.S. Embassy compound, Marines from Camp Pendleton, Calif., came up with a list of behavioral changes to expect when returning stateside. Some examples:
"No longer flushes toilet." "Prone to waking up at 2 a.m. and walking a block to find a place to use the bathroom." "Will often wait until there are at least 11 others in line before taking a shower." "Puts handful of sand in bed before going to sleep." "May prefer to sleep with loaded gun rather than spouse" and "Gets sleepy every time they hear gunfire and helicopter-like noises."
Women could add a few gripes of their own.
"To tell you the truth, I don't like the way they have this set up - the males and females together," said Spec. Kelly Nicholas, 27, of Fort Eustis. "I think the female needs a little more privacy than the male does."
Nicholas is one of about 120 women living in the port warehouse with almost 10 times that many men. While the men can take evening strolls in their underwear (boxer shorts), the women cannot. When it got around that women had slightly longer showers, the time was cut back.
All that would be fine, Nicholas said, if she could just have a secluded place besides the latrine to change clothes.
A solution was in the works. Marines were at that moment clearing out a storage area near the front of the warehouse to serve as a women's changing room.
Given that the troops don't know how long until they go home, such improvements are a mixed blessing. Sunday after dark, I spotted 10 newly arrived portable toilets while listening to a USO guitarist singing, "Sweet Home Mogadishu/Where the water smells like you/Sweet Home Mogadishu/Lord we'll feed 'em all the food."
When I later mentioned to one of the soldiers that the crude latrines would soon be replaced by new technology, the reaction was unexpected.
"Everything they bring in like that to make us more comfortable," said Capt. Theressa Magee of Fort Eustis with a shake of her head, "just means they're going to keep us here that much longer."
What's happening?
Living conditions aside, what troubles the soldiers about being confined to the port is never seeing the results of their work.
One of the few opportunities to encounter Somalis, aside from the ones with rocks in their hands, is at the dock. Somali stevedores have in the last week or so begun unloading commercial ships as the port lurches back toward being a place for free trade.
Another contact point is near the front gate, where the Marines keep their motor pool. Here there is a gap in the surrounding wall of metal cargo containers, also known as conex boxes.
Soon this will be a new port entrance, where humanitarian trucks can come and go with greater safety than on the main road. For now it is a window to another world.
Beyond the gap, stretching almost to the airport, is a ramshackle village of tin and thatched huts that house about 50,000 people, called the Hamar Jab-Jab district. Nearest the port is called the Taleh section.
Every day, children from the village swarm to the gap in the container wall. They pester the pair of Marine guards with pidgin English - "Boosh!" for George Bush, and "Hey!" and "Money!" - and beg for food or even trash. Last Monday, one boy sat with a chewed-up MRE spoon hanging out of his mouth.
Many of the children had round scars on their chests, stomachs or arms. Their mothers take them to folk doctors who burn them with hot nails.
One boy was missing his left arm, another his left leg.
"One of the first things I saw when I got here was this guy crawling up a conex box, with one leg, carrying a 120-pound bag of grain that he had stolen," said Lance Cpl. Chuck Kelsey, 21, who has an angry scar on his right bicep from being pelted with a rock.
Standing with the Somali children this day was 22-year-old Mohamed Noor Mohamed, who spoke some English.
"We have not job and not president. Everything is not. All people in Somalia, they have not a job," he said. Mohamed is a carpenter.
Two brothers and two sisters died in the civil war, Mohamed said. "I come here every day. . . . What am I to do? To stay in my home is not good. I want to see my friends [from] America. Yes, I like such America."
During a pause, a small rock whizzed over and hit the reporter next to me in the back of the head. Mohamed was unapologetic.
"They are babies," he said of the children around him. "They do not know better."
Some know better. Some have formed a kind of Port Irregulars squad, like the urchins who helped Sherlock Holmes solve mysteries on Baker Street. In this case, the man they help is Sgt. Luis Tavares, 27, from Fort Eustis.
Tavares is a stevedore but formed this allegiance during his shifts on guard duty. "There are about 12 kids now, they more or less signal out which ones are the thieves, which ones are OK," he said.
The kids have warned him of ambush and exposed a man who was carrying a 9mm pistol. They also gave Tavares a glimpse of the forces at work in their lives.
"One night two weeks ago, by the conexes, this older guy was telling them to throw rocks," Tavares said. "They didn't want to. So he started beating them with a chain. About six of us, we ran around to get him, and he stopped, so we couldn't bring him in. Now, basically, when they throw rocks, we just kind of leave them alone."
That night, some of the troops gathered in the chapel tent for a Martin Luther King birthday service. Afterward, a group gathered around 26-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. William Whitehead of Camp Pendleton, known as "Preacher."
Dressed in a T-shirt and running shorts, face contorted, bald head gleaming with sweat under a single light bulb, Whitehead sang spirituals with the fury of a thunderstorm: "Soon and Very Soon," and another with the refrain, "Why don't you save a seat for me?"
The close night air crackled at the sound, and after he sang, Whitehead couldn't seem to hold back the spirit that gripped him. "You got to let the Lord in your heart, no matter where you're at!" he shouted. "We in a foreign land, a foreign country. We ask that we not lose what we have in our heart, right here!"
The circle of troops responded, "Amen!"
"Talk to me, brothers! We all sacrifice. We all sacrifice, being here, leaving our families back home."
"Amen, amen."
"Talk to me, talk to me. . . . It hurts my heart to see the people here live the way they live."
"Amen!"
"They killing their own self!"
"Amen!"
It went on for almost 30 minutes, and when Whitehead tried to stop, almost limp with exhaustion, the troops begged, "You got to sing one more!"
Whitehead led them in "Amazing Grace." And I couldn't help but wonder if the Somalis, not 50 feet away behind the wall, understood.
Baledogle to boondoggle
The next day, Tuesday, was a blur. We flew on a Royal New Zealand Air Force plane down the coast to Kismayu, where a Fort Eustis diving unit is cleaning up the harbor so relief work can begin in earnest.
One visitor was Dr. Curtis Andersen, 32, of Oakland, Calif., one of three Navy physicians on staff at the port. Andersen has a penchant for what he calls "boondoggles," schemes that take him off port on days when he doesn't have to pull a medical shift.
Now Andersen brought the news that one of his colleagues was making a similar mission in the morning. This time, it was with a group of Marines taking food to the Taleh section of the village outside the port.
At last, a chance to see what this whole Somali effort was supposed to be about: feeding the hungry.
We rode with the Marines on the way to catch our plane. There were no rocks or threats from these Somalis, only smiles and cheers. The elders welcomed the troops. Women in vivid floral shawls hung back and giggled. Children, their bare feet slapping across piles of trash, swarmed Marines handing out candy.
"I hated this place, until today," said Sgt. Robert Wiggs of the 1st Forward Support Group at Camp Pendleton. "Every time my kid writes me, he says, `Dad, feed a little kid for me.' "
Now, finally, Wiggs could say he had.
It seemed like a fitting way to leave Somalia, with the memory of that mission fulfilled. But it was too pat for what really had been a troubling week.
Two days earlier, I had been wandering around the motor pool with another reporter, picking up spent Soviet cartridge casings. A teen-age Somali boy who lived and worked on the port came over to see what we were doing.
"Army," he said, looking at the shells and making like a pistol with his hand.
A few minutes later, as we were leaving the motor pool, the boy called out. He walked over and held out a live cartridge, shiny and brassy. "American?" I asked. "Somali," he said, then turned away.
Suddenly, the boy stopped, held up the shell, and yelled, "Two years!" Then he disappeared around the corner.
The civil war had lasted that long. For two years, it ravaged his life and pummeled his city. I didn't know if the boy was saving a gun to go along with that bullet. I hoped he would never have to use it.