Mission of Mercy

Carol Guzy

The Washington Post

The faces of Somalia's starving children haunted the world community. The scope of suffering was of biblical proportions when the U.S. military responded. Lance Cpl. Larry Hilliard, USMC, kissed his boy goodbye at Christmas time and left a wife and a comfortable life in California on a journey to hell. He and thousands of other U.S. marines came to this strange, faraway land called Somalia to save a people from genocide. The unprecedented military humanitarian effort dubbed 'Operation Restore Hope' was especially moving for some African Americans like Hilliard, many of whom had never seen the 'Motherland', yet felt a certain kinship to its people. And its people in Somalia were starving, armed thugs looting the most valuable commodity there, food. A starving Somali child holds a few grains of food in a camp for displaced persons in Baardeere.

Carol Guzy, "Mission of Mercy," in POYi Archive, Item #20453, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/20453 (accessed November 23, 2024).