Chapter Twenty-Four
Lisa was able to get Musa a ride to the Episcopal Church Emergency Relief Station that was set up to process church members and for feeding refugees.
Once there Musa spoke with a weary aid worker in a blood-stained white Red Cross uniform. “I want to volunteer to help the people suffering in this war in any way possible. I have done bad things and pray God that you will forgive me and give me a chance.”
Musa’s words were like a refreshing breeze to the bedraggled relief worker. She then said to him, “Please come in, young man. If everybody was as determined as you are, the war would end soon. We need you bad.” Taking heart, she smiled.
Musa turned to Lisa. “I want to thank you so much, Teachuh Lisa. I wil do my best to make up for the things I have done. Now I know better
Lisa fought tears, “Oh, Musa, I know you are so grieved. Honor me by serving the best you can. Maybe someday I can help you in your service to humanity."
Lisa took one of the few taxis that dared to risk the deadly mortar rounds and rockets that were now slamming in increasing numbers into the streets and houses at random in Monrovia. She drove fast to the American Embassy gate where the Marine Corps guards stood.
Lisa presented their identification cards, and the guard cranked his field telephone to the guard shack inside the compound. They had moved all communication equipment out of their usual building when they received word that one of the factions had it marked as a target on their maps. He called Lisa's name aloud and checked it against their authorized roster of Americans in country.
“I am so sorry your husband was wounded,” said the guard. “I remember when you were here to take care of all of the paperwork a year ago over your getting married. Is this your daughter?”
“Yes,” David answered with difficulty.
The guard spoke again on his field phone to his guard and then hung up. “They would have accepted your baby anyway without the redtape. We’re loosening our regulations on Europeans who request asylum during the emergency. Just follow the Marine private to the receiving area.”
Lisa held Sarah, and guards provided a strecher for David.
It took two days for them to settle in while waiting for an available helicopter to evacuate them to an offshore ship and then to the states.
Word came that the primary warlords were Charles Taylor and an unknown fighter called Prince Johnson. The stalemate of the last few days had just ended.
Prince Johnson had done the unexpected. He had taken a force across the river and secured a beachhead on the peninsula where Monrovia stood. With Johnson holding a large chunk of Monrovia behind President Doe, he tried to thin out his forces facing Charles Taylor and to shift soldiers to face Prince Johnson. He hoped discourage to Johnson’s from an all-out attack. It failed. It was only a matter of time before Prince Johnson and Charles Taylor would squeeze President Doe’s forces at the isthmus. President Doe would be captured and executed.
During the night President Doe tried to slip out of the mansion and sneak across one of the bridges. He was captured and tortured at first light. He cried for mercy as they tore him apart. Soon after he was dead, they burned his body.
With Sarah and David at her side, Lisa bided her time in the embassy’s holding area, a building safe from direct-fire weapons. Now and then some projectiles and stray machine gun rounds flew well overhead. Lisa and David werer given a cots and another for their few belongings and for Sarah to lie on. Other refugees were only too glad to help her take care of them. Sarah had little trouble taking the formula provided by the embassy. Lisa was already handy changing her diapers. Embassy personnel changed the trash containers often to prevent the spread of disease. Meanwhile David had requested a visit by the US Ambassador.
An aid worker came by and stopped. “I wish to check your names against our list of evacuees. Now I see that your name is David Rasmussen.”
“Yes,” David answered.
“Where is Lisa Rasmussen?” Lisa stood up.
“Then is this your child?”
“Our daughter Sarah. We have registered her birth already, but write her name down just in case you cannot get through the embassy red tape before a helicopter comes for us.” David paused. “She was born just eight weeks ago at Bolahun up in Lofa County. Do you need to know anything else before you can get a hard-copy update of your passenger manifest?”
“No, I am making the manifest up now. It may yet be inaccurate, but we believe it is more important to get people out of here first. They can sort our mistakes out on the ship.”
“So what do we do now, and where is the ambassador? Will he see me before we go?”
“I’ll try to get him for you. You realize he is dealing with a lot just coordinating relief effort messages back and forth to the navy and DC. Then he has some observers in Monrovia keeping him in touch with the continued fighting there. It’s a real free-for-all now. The factions are fighting each other just as hard as against pockets of the late President Doe’s forces.”
“The people are caught in the middle?” Lisa asked. She already knew the answer.
“Unfortunately as always.” She stood up to go when another man in camouflage came up.
He was about forty and a little gray around the temples. His name tag read Ambassador Cary. He was carrying a small memo book and pen when he stopped by the assistant speaking to David.
“Are you Lisa Rasmussen?”
“Yes,”she answered.
“Let me offer my sympathy on your husband's wound.” He looked at his memo book. “Forgive me, I had to look again. His name is David.”
“Thank you, Ambassador Cary.”
“Well, Lisa, we’re awaiting visual contact with the Navy’s all-purpose support ship before we evacuate people by helicopter. Your chalk will be coming up to fly your family off within the hour. Now, how can I help you?”
“Mr. Ambassador, as corrupt as President Doe proved during his administration, it was not enough to explain why all these atrocities I have witnessed in but a few days. We have known for months even up in distant Bolahun that armies were being raised. There wasn’t enough money in Liberia to finance such a popular uprising of this magnitude. Liberian forces have not had enough resources to face such aggression.”
The ambassador wrote as Lisa spoke. “Go on, please.”
“They are organized, well supplied with old Soviet weapons. Not only that, they have organized support and supply replacements for weapons and ammunition. They’re better supplied than the Presidents forces ever were. Every warring faction fighting Doe should have run out of petro and ammunition long before now. But they keep at it.”
The ambassador kept writing.
“They have endless help. This is a war bought and paid for by wealth from somewhere else. Warlords are not here to establish a just government, they are here to rape the land of its wealth.”
“Why? How do you know this?”
“I saw well-fed, uniformed mercenaries, not these young rag-tag fighters, standing guard in the forest. They paid the warlords to clear the area of soldiers and anyone else. They are harvesting this country’s precious resources while the Liberians are picking up the tab in their own blood.”
“I know,” the ambassador said. He lowered his head. Lisa’s eyes got bigger. “I have piles of reports citing troop buildups. I even risked my own life just to see planes landing in nearby Sierra Leone. Weapons and materiel are pouring in to anyone who can raise an army.”
“Why didn’t you do something!” Lisa was outraged.
“I did. Nobody believed me. President Doe denied what was happening. I tried to reach him by first talking to his Vice President Harry Moniba. He’s an honest man, but he couldn’t do all that much. President Doe asked Harry to join his government as window dressing. He’s a smart guy, but Doe stacked the deck against him. If he pushed him too hard, he’d be as dead as every one of Doe’s soldiers, who helped stage the coup against the Late President Tolbert.”
“What about DC?” Lisa demanded. “Wouldn’t they do anything?”
“It was hard to justify doing something as long as President Doe was fooling himself. He’d never ask for help. He didn’t. Now we got this. It’s a damn shame.”
“Didn’t they investigate arms and materiel shipments? You can’t supply an all-out war without somebody seeing something.”
“I spoke with the Secretary of State myself. I couldn’t make anybody believe me. For true, now they believe me!” The ambassador’s bitterness increased as he spoke. “But I guess they don’t think Liberia is that important now to our strategic world position. There is still an official Soviet Union still with vast armies in East Europe, although defanged now, I suppose.”
“Well, Mr. Ambassador, thank you for hearing me out.”
“I am so sorry, Mr. Rasmussen. Since I also represent the United States Government, I can only confess, whatever you think of me personally, that we are without excuse for not preventing those fighters from having the means of creating such terrible havoc on other humans.”
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Ambassador. I don’t hold this against you personally.” Lisa said. She wiped a tear from her eye, looked over at Sarah and David who were both asleep. She offered her hand to the ambassador.
They shook hands Liberian style.
Lisa and David wiht Sarah waited in the holding area for his designated chalk to board the UH 1 (Huey) helicopters that made trips back and forth to the waiting ship. She now had a small pack for their possessions on her back and Sarah in her arms. When the choppers landed, they kept their rotors going to facilitate an instant liftoff. Evacuees had to approach the choppers from the front and keep low to avoid being sliced by their rotating blades in event of wind shifts causing dangerous tilt. One unfortunate man in his excitement ignored David’s warning to watch the chopper’s rotating blades. Before Lisa’s eyes the blades sliced him in half.
A marine corpsman rushed with care to him mangled body to see if there was any life in him. Dripping with blood, Lisa managed to continue while holding Sarah tight in his arms. Marines placed David in a sitting position. Lisa placed her pack at her feet and squeezed in to make as much room for as possible for other evacuees.
When everybody was on board, a crew member wearing his flight helmet checked everyone for secure seatbelts and then closed the sliding doors on both sides. Last, he boarded and signaled the pilot. The Huey tilted forward and soon lifted up above the embassy compound and toward the ship.
But from his vantage point, Lisa could see the small figures of the combatants below, many standing without cover in the middle of the streets, firing without regard to personal safety. She could see tracers going nowhere in particular over makeshift shacks and well-built houses. Miniature vehicles resembling HO- size toys were burning, filling the sky here and there with black smoke. Lisa’s heart went out to the innocent Liberians, suffering down there. All Liberians ever wanted was to take time for life and enjoy life. To be left alone. They loved peace, but now some impersonal evil monster brought them this hell.
Lisa leaned over to David while holding Sarah tight.
“Oh, David, the whole civilized world looked the other way long before this happened. This time the socialists and capitalists both let this happen. And the holocaust is only beginning.”
She kissed Sarah and looked back down at the hell below. “David, I swear by those who will die in this war to bring some good, some kindness, and some forgiveness to this land we love so much.”
“It has to end someday, we have to rebuild. These people deserve better.”
Just as David passed out from exhaustion, Lisa uttered a short prayer and sat back.
Minutes later David and Sarah were aboard ship.