helped prevent attack.
On another front: The SF units included a range of foreign-language experts, yet not one spoke Kurdish. The troops had to rely on Kurds who spoke English, sometimes surprisingly well, sometimes haltingly. Since the refugees included a number of doctors, lawyers, schoolteachers, and other professionals, they often served as translators.
THE SUPPLY EFFORT
U.S. Air Force Hercules transports had been dropping supplies to the Kurds since April 7, at first aiming to provide the refugees with a thirty-day supply of food, water, and other necessities. But the difficult flying conditions and the unfamiliarity of the refugees with airdrop procedures had led to waste and tragedy. Harsh winds in the mountains and foothills blew ordinary parachutes off course; high-speed parachutes could defeat the winds, but often meant the pallets would smash on landing and ruin the contents.
The Kurds were so desperate to get the supplies, they would often run under the falling chute, not realizing that a pallet could crush them. An unknown number of civilians died this way. Other Kurds were killed when they tried to retrieve the supplies from minefields.
SF troops began organizing the supply effort from the camp site, clearing roads for trucks and establishing helicopter landing zones. The first few helicopters in were mobbed by anxious Kurds, creating unmanageable chaos. The SF troops ended that quickly.
'We figured out where the LZs were that we needed to create and then we barbwired them off,' Flofer remembers. 'That was the way to start to bring order.' The Kurds' leaders, meeting in camp councils with the SF commanders, helped allocate supplies, so resources could be distributed in a somewhat organized fashion.
Coordinating the supply pipeline was more difficult. As the relief operation got into high gear, supplies from thirty nations had to be processed and shipped to the front line. The Military Traffic Management Command off- loaded cargo at three Turkish ports, shipping cargo and pallets to a string of bases that supplied the camps. But even as a routine developed and more roads were opened, the sheer size of the operation and the involvement of nearly one hundred relief agencies with their own agendas complicated the effort. Getting any supplies to the camps in the first few days was difficult, but getting the right supplies to the right places was for a while nearly impossible, a classic case of catch-22s complicated by misinformation and a lack of resources.
Kershner's SF unit took to setting up 'air guards' to spot approaching helicopters. They'd contact the aircraft, find out what they were carrying, then direct them to the camp that needed that particular supply, often countermanding the pilot's original orders. They also diverted the helicopters for medical transports. And they convinced civilian organizations to give supplies to those who needed them, rather than to the people originally intended.
'Somebody will show up representing some church organization with food or something, with instructions that it goes only to a specific group,' Carl Stiner recalls, 'when you're trying to treat everybody equally. Our troops had to try to redress the imbalance. The charitable groups all had the best of intentions, but preconceptions and conditions on aid added greatly to the chaos and delay.'
The first wave of food rations came from the military in the form of MREs. Though this prepackaged food had been designed for American palates, the Kurds were so hungry they ate it gratefully. As days went on, food began arriving from donor countries that seemed inappropriate at best and bizarre at worst. Large two-gallon-sized cans of corn were plentiful — but to Kurds, corn was animal food. They would open a can, discover what it was, and dump it. Chcesc balls were everywhere. And then there was the plum pudding — tons of the stuff were delivered by airplane, helicopter, and truck. Not even the Americans would eat that.
Packaging of the food presented another problem in the mountain wilderness. 'Can openers were not supplied, so the Kurds used large rocks to open the cans,' Shaw reports. The smashed cans — and in many cases the ruined contents — littered campsites for weeks.
Lentils, rice, flour, and other staples were preferred by the refugees, who could turn them into foods with which they were familiar. As these arrived in bulk, diseases caused by malnourishment ebbed.
THE HEALTH EFFORT
Water and sanitation were no less concerns. When the troops arrived, most camps had no latrines. 'Everyone had amoebic dysentery,' Shaw recalls, 'and would go to the bathroom wherever they wanted. The river and creeks were used for a water source, bathing, dish-washing, cleansing the dead, and, worst of all, as a depository for dead animals. Our medics took water samples and found the microorganisms too numerous to count.'
'In late April,' Dick Potter recalls, 'the press was hitting us hard about our inability up to then to stop what appeared to be cholera in Cukurca Camp. A lot of children were dying.
'We had sent samples to Louis Pasteur Hospital in Paris and to Landstuhl Military Hospital in Germany, with the same findings: no cholera, but what I would call acute dehydration and diarrhea. I was reminded of the rice water diarrhea we had in Vietnam, and the resultant child mortality. I traveled to Cukurca Camp, and by this time the camp's Is medical systems were organized: The Free Irish Hospital, Doctors Without Borders, Medicine Lamonde, German Red Cross, and Red Crescent Tent Hospitals were in the center of the camp. SF medics were in the surrounding hills and subcamps, tending to the sick; anyone requiring advanced treatment was sent to the center of the camp and one of the IO field hospitals.
'When I arrived, about six hundred infants had been triaged in three areas, and the doctors believed they could probably save two or three hundred of them.
'To Americans, leaving the others to die was completely unacceptable.
'Bill Tangney organized the response: He sent for six hundred cots, cut holes in the cots so the children could defecate through the hole without reinfecting themselves, brought in IV apparatus for all of the children, and convinced the elders to have the wives and mothers attend the children with Special Forces soldiers present.
'We called Landstuhl and had them send us powder to mix with water; it locked up the kids tighter than Dick's hatband.
'Bill ordered the battalion commander to reinforce the troops on the ground. After receiving a quick refresher on the use of IV apparatus, a Special Forces soldier was assigned to about three sets of mothers and children.
'Bottom line, the powder worked, the IV worked, the cots worked, the constant attention to the children by the wives, mothers, and SF worked; and I believe only two infants were lost.'
Gradually, order was imposed. The security provided by the SF troops, as well as the Marines and other units closer to the Iraqis, allowed civilian relief agencies to set up makeshift hospitals. Latrines and trash piles were established; dead animals were removed from water sources. Clean water was air-dropped and trucked in. Hastily dug graves were moved from the main camp areas to better ground. New camps and hospital areas were established along roads where they could be better supplied and maintained.
Doctors Without Borders helped provide emergency medical care throughout the region; the doctors would simply show up at a camp and get to work.
There was occasional friction with (or among) the volunteer groups, or with Turkish officials, or the UN, but this tended to be generated by administrators. On a personal level in the camps, people tended to get along to get things done — though at times this came after initial distrust. 'At first there was a great distance, particularly with Doctors Without Borders and some of these more liberal organizations,' Florer recalls. 'But it only took a matter of days and the typical SF soldier, or the officers, or whatever, would schmooze their way into their hearts, because we were really making things happen.'
Now and again, working with civilians turned out to be pleasant from the start — especially when the civilians were female. One group of Irish nurses showed up in a camp just secured by SF personnel. 'Fellows, could you give us a hand?' one of the women asked when their truck pulled up. Twenty men fell out, tents were up quickly, and generators were soon humming.
