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Local Marine works on disaster relief

By PHILLIP WILLIAMS
A U.S. Marine who graduated from Harmony High School and is stationed in Thailand is pleased to be helping victims of the recent major cyclone in Myanmar (formerly called Burma). In a telephone interview recently with The Mirror, Lance Cpl. Zachary Freeman detailed how he is helping with disaster relief. Freeman, who is 21 and a 2005 graduate of Harmony, is the son of Danny and Pamela Freeman of Ogburn community near Winnsboro. He is with the CLR 3 (Combat Logistics Regiment) some two hours south of Bangkok, near Pattaya. The Mirror interviewed him after receiving an email from the military saying that an unidentified Marine would like to speak to his “hometown newspaper.”

Other than being asked not to pose any ”political” questions to Freeman, no restrictions were put on the newspaper for the interview.

A Marine since Sept. 2006, Freeman was deployed April 23 from Okinawa, Japan for an annual operation called “Cobra Gold.” It involved working with Thai soldiers, showing them “how we operate in the field,” he said.

Freeman and his fellow soldiers “were in the middle of an off-load” of military equipment from a ship when they received word that a cyclone was supposed to hit their area, he said. However, the storm missed Thailand and went straight to Myanmar, he said.

Since they were on the Cobra Gold operation, Freeman was in the initial force of coastal Marines which responded to provide relief. It wasn’t certain whether they would go into Myanmar or remain in Thailand. So far, they have stayed in Thailand, and his outfit is the “main supply point for all U.S. relief,” Cpl. Freeman said.

“To be honest, I didn’t see this coming,” he said. “When the opportunity came up, I saw it as a chance to do my part.”

Saying he was “enjoying” his work, Freeman added, “Actually, I volunteered to stay behind and help with the relief effort...We’re over here to help, and that’s what we’re doing.”

The relief effort, dubbed “Caring Response,” began May 13, he said.

The Harmony graduate finds the work demanding, though rewarding.

“Every day, I work a 12-hour shift,” he noted. “It changes from morning to night.” (That is, he works from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. one day; then, after 24 hours off, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., he said.)

Freeman’s day starts in what troops call “Thunder Dome...a collection of warehouses.” This is where relief supplies are loaded.

He and his fellow soldiers get pallets from the U.S. Air Force, and “we load those pallets with U.S. relief,” he said. The contents include “eveything from first aid kits to simple ground tarps,” which are probably utilized for “construction and some sort of housing purposes,” Freeman said.

Among the supplies are “hygiene kits,” which include deodorant, toilet tissue, toothpaste, and toothbrushes—but “food is the main priority that we’re sending over,” and water is also included.

After loading the pallets, soldiers put cargo netting on them. They work daily with Thai workers, and Freeman said the interaction with a different culture is “pretty interesting.”

“Pretty much, the Thai people are really friendly...They work really hard,” the lance corporal said. But the language barrier is “hard to get past sometimes” when trying to tell the Thais what pallets need loading, and what doesn’t need loading, he said.

After applying the cargo netting, “we move those pallets to a staging lot, where they’re put in” flight order for flights to Myanmar. “Then we load those (supplies for those) same flights onto trucks...like 18-wheelers every day, and we drive to the airfield right next to the Thunder Dome” to load C-130 cargo transport planes, he said.

He said the 12-hour shifts “can get demanding at times, but for the most part, it’s not too taxing.” Asked if constantly switching from shifts that begin at 10 a.m. to shifts that start at 10 p.m. was affecting his sleep, he said, “No, I’m usually tired when we get done with work, so I just fall right asleep.”

The weather is “pretty much humid all the time,” resulting in sweaty, “hard work all day.” But one learns to deal with the heat somewhat, Freeman said.

The lance corporal, who received basic training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot and at Camp Pendleton (all in San Diego, Calif.) enlisted for five years. He also went to 29 Palms in southern California for schooling for about a year before going to Okinawa.

He said he will be in Thailand “till the job gets done, pretty much.” He’s unsure how long that will take.

“I’m overall enthuasiastic and excited to be able to take part in something of this magnitude,” he said. “It’s not (an) everyday experience that most people in America will ever get.

“It’s an overall good feeling to look back and think I was there. I did that.”


Courtesy Photo
LANCE CPL. ZACHARY FREEMAN, a Harmony High School graduate, stands in front of a crate of relief supplies. He has worked with disaster relief for Myanmar.

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