As soon as we hit the ground,
it was a palpable feeling of despair that you walked into.
And we knew that this will, we were not going to be there for two days and
turn around and leave.
Because the impact of that on the Liberian people,
whose origin was from the United States.
Who looked at us as partners and brothers.
The imagery that that would have sent was we showed up, looked around and said, hey,
this is too hot for us, we're leaving.
So we stayed and we started to engage.
Remember, I said the DOD does three things.
They can assure, deter and compel.
What I will tell you is most importantly,
what the DOD brought to the fight against Ebola was hope.
The look on people's faces when they saw a 14 people wearing uniforms and
I was in my fatigues, what we call the army combat
uniform with the US patch on their shoulder was powerful.
I mean, it was palpable and powerful.
I saw smiles starting to come to people's faces, right?
And they were waving us, at us with five fingers not just one finger.
[LAUGH] That's a very good line, sir.
And it wasn't just among the people.
[COUGH] So when we walked into the embassy, so the lead representative for
the US Government in the country is the ambassador.
And the DART team that was handing out money to NGOs were there were no NGOs were
working out of the embassy.
And engaging with those people as well,
you felt this overwhelming sense of despair.
I did.
I'm an emergency medicine physician.
I just, let me just correct that,
I just happen to be an emergency medicine physician.
As Ken told you, I'm a soldier, who happens to be an officer,
who just happens to be an emergency medicine physician.
But that's one of the skills that, and I picked up on there very quickly.
In that embassy, the personnel normally come with their families and
they live there.
But they had an ordered withdrawal out the embassy, because of Ebola.
An ordered withdrawal doesn't mean a very well synchronized, efficient withdrawal.
It means, you will send your families home, because the risks is so great.
[COUGH] So now they had been three or four months without their families there,
compounded by the fact that President Sirleaf in order to help prevent
the spread of Ebola said, there will be no touching in the country.
There's no handshakes.
There's no hugs and this is in a very gregarious nation.
So you had an embassy that saw the numbers going up,
ordered withdrawal and no human contact.
I don't need to be a doctor to know that there's a concern there.
It didn't take a well trained soldier to figure that out.
It took a human to just engage people as a human and you felt that.
You can feel that from people when they're having difficulty and
just as an example of that hope that we brought.
One day, Ambassador Malac came off the elevator [COUGH] and as she stepped off,
I said, Ambassador, I know that we're not supposed to be touching or
giving hugs, but I'm a hugger and I really think that you could use one.