The Cross and Total Loss

In September 2018, I was dispatched to New Bern, NC in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence. Assigned to Strike Team Delta, I spent my work days – beginning with lights-on and morning briefing at 0600 hrs and ending at 16.30 with decon and debriefing – mucking out affected homes with my five teammates and trying to locate other residents in need of help.

The City of New Bern is situated about an hour away from Camp LeJeune; accordingly, it is home to a fair number of US military families and US Marine Corps retirees. Area properties had sustained varying amounts of damage from the storm. Sometimes it was cosmetic. Sometimes it was a total loss. There was a lot of “in between.” That said, what “total loss” looks like to you and I is not what “total loss” means to a United States Marine. If I didn’t realize that when I arrived at our Forward Operating Base (FOB) at the start of my deployment, I certainly knew it as I headed back to the airport for my return flight on the last day.

One such Marine had moved to North Carolina a year or so before. He had purchased an old church building that he planned to renovate. Then Florence came and flooded the structure, it was a while before the waters receded, and then everything had to dry. We found him perched on a twelve foot ladder pulling sheetrock, huge fans operating below.

Ordinarily, we would check things out, get the homeowner’s information and ask him to sign some forms, and then generate a work order to send back to the Operations Section Chief for review and assignment at a later date. This time, we sent the Order back and requested assignment to this job right away. Permission was granted.

The amount of work this man had done, and imagined he would continue doing alone, was amazing. Meticulously, one section of the structure at a time, he pulled down rotting interior walls, pried nails, ripped up flooring, dragged debris to the curb. The tenacity was inspiring. Infectious. When it was time for us to move on there was still a great deal more to do, but we certainly put a dent in the job. More importantly, we left this hard-charging warrior with the reassurance that he was not in it alone.

On the final day of the deployment, Delta came to a ranch-style home with a huge front lawn. This was to be the final work order of the day. At the end of the property’s driveway sat a truck, and an old man stood on the only dry section of gravel, beneath the open, passenger side door. We approached and verified the man as the homeowner, and his wife was anxious to get out of the vehicle.
Her husband, an 85 year-old retired USMC Drill Instructor, was eager not to allow it. His wife suffered from a progressed stage of dementia. The rest of the driveway was under several inches of water and the grass of the lawn hid a couple of feet of mud beneath. The home was uninhabitable.

There was not much we could do for this couple. As the man tended to the needs of his wife, who desperately wanted to get back inside the remains of the house, we donned our PPE and made our way inside.

The man on point had to sound the floor in every direction as we proceeded forward. Chunks of ceiling obscured what should be beneath it – namely, the floor – but we had no way to know which parts of it were still there and stable enough to walk on. So, it was a slow process.

We had a list of what was most important to the elderly couple, but a lot of that was obscured, too - beneath saturated materials fallen from above, pools of stagnant water, and deformed after sitting in a condition of constant humidity for some time. Still, a few family pictures and some jewelry survived. We hoped that these precious items would occupy the attention of the wife long enough to establish her in a safe area.

Then I saw it. On top of one of many book cases that contained the water-logged volumes of high school year books from decades long ago. It wasn’t on the list, but I took the thin red volume gently in my gloved hands, held it in the crook of my elbow, close to my tyvek suit, and walked outside.

On our last full day of disaster response in New Bern, at our last work order before calling it a day, I found, “The Glories of the Cross.”
I presented it to the old DI, who smiled broadly and said to me as he offered a firm and confident handshake, before turning back to his wife, "That's number one."

Yes, it is.

Thank YOU for the reminder, Marine. OORAH!
Let us endeavor to embrace the Cross as we each continue along our way, rebuilding and salvaging what we can by God’s grace. In this month of November dedicated to the Holy Souls, remember them as they travel that same royal road beyond our sight.