POPE AIR FORCE BASE -- The cargo planes the Army sent to Haiti on Friday were stuffed with pallets of supplies and people who can help organize the relief effort that will take shape in the coming days: communications specialists, lawyers, and Sgt. 1st Class David Conolly, a mortuary affairs specialist trained in how to prepare mass graves.
Conolly, 38, also helped with remains after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, in which 168 people were killed. That was horrific, but not on the scale of Haiti, where the International Red Cross has said 50,000 people may have died.
With him was Lt. Col. Patrick Campbell, who will be a liaison among the United Nations, the Red Cross and the Haitian government.
Campbell, who has been in the Army 17 years, has been deployed twice to Iraq and once to Afghanistan, but said Friday he had never seen this kind of devastation.
"I'm kind of apprehensive," he said. "This is just a magnitude I've never seen before."
Campbell has a 5-year-old son at home, and said he knew it would be painful to see the suffering of children.
He said soldiers had been cautioned against taking trinkets or candy because of the number of needy children.
"You give something to this child," he said, "but then you run out and you don't have any for the child behind him, and it just breaks your heart all over again."
Capt. Robert Delancy, a physician assistant with the 18th Airborne Corps, also was waiting at Pope's Green Ramp, where tens of thousands of soldiers have gathered before loading onto planes for deployments.
There were no tearful goodbyes. Most troops said they had been told to expect a stay of no more than 90 days.
Delancy was ready to go.
Soldiers see what's happening in Haiti on the news, he said, "and wish they could be there. I'm given my chance to do my part."
