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HomeMy WebLinkAboutDavid Coleman Transcription Part 2City of College Station Heritage Programs Oral History Interviewee: David Coleman Interviewer: Jared Donnelly and Brooke Linsenbardt Place: College Station Utilities, College Station, Texas Project: Veterans of Aggieland Transcriber: Brooke Linsenbardt JD: Okay, so Operation. 00:03: DC: Restore Freedom. Restore Democracy was the name of it. It, it was when John Paul Aristide got toppled from power and he had basically ruled the country with a reign of terror with his ton-ton cahoots. They would do the necklacing, where they would take somebody, put an old tire around them, douse them with gasoline, set it on fire. Yeah, they were not, not a very pleasant group. And so when I was at the construction office in Newport, so I’m a lieutenant commander. I got tagged to participate in this Operation Restore Democracy. And so I went to Norfolk and I was the executive officer in this group of people planning for the invasion of Haiti. And so this is when I was actually using what I learned at the war college because we were operating in the WIMIX—the World-wide Material Movement System—where you plan out all this logistics. And so we had a group of CBs, quite a bit of reservists too, that were gonna accompany. They were gonna go in right behind the invasion force to do things like runway repair, road repair, setting up water facilities. All of the support structure that would be necessary following an invasion. And then what happened was Colin Powell and Sam Nunn and there was one other dignitary involved, went down and negotiated a peaceful settlement to the dispute. So we brought the invasion operation to a screeching halt and transitioned into a peaceful operation force. And so what we ended up doing was going in country and signing leases for the facilities that the forces were gonna have to use. Mainly in the airport area. In Port Prince. And. So, and, we were, we were doing some operations with the Department of Justice. They wanted to fund some school projects. They wanted to do all kinds of stuff to, to start to build up you know, the infrastructure in the country. And, it’s one of the most interesting places I’ve ever been because it’s, it’s, talk about haves and have-nots. JD: Right. True poverty. 02:29: DC: You’ve got crushing poverty. These people basically are living in a, a, little space that’s, that’s, that’s defined by three sides of corrugated metal. And then there’s an open sewer running in front that they wash in and, and so m- you know, malaria’s a problem. And dysentery is a huge problem because, because there is no sanitary drinking water. They get dysentery. And, and the infant mortality is huge. And the, the tragedy of Haiti is that they have kind of a, the, the religion is closest to voodoo of anything that you can imagine and so they don’t have any concept of personal responsibility. So if I go and steal your food that you were planning on eating, “It’s not my fault, the devil made me do it.” Right, so there’s no, there’s no you know, all, all of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations conditions that have to exist for a country to be prosperous, just do not exist there. You, you have, you have, there, there’s no private property. You know, there’s no law, rule of law. And, and so you just don’t have the fundamental structures that en-enable the, the country to lift itself up out of poverty. And the, the people that I got to, I didn’t get to know anybody, but that I interacted with. They were wonderful people. They’re trying to sell stuff, little carvings and things, to the, to the Americans, to try to make a little bit of money. They’re trying. But, they’re just, the, the country’s just mired in its own you know, situation that’s just, I don’t know if it’s solvable. ‘Cause you know, the U.S. occupied Haiti in like the 1918 era for, for like a decade. And you just, there’s nothing you can do. And then the weird thing is, you know, the other side of Hispaniola is the Dominican Republic. As prosperous as can be. But you cross that line into Haiti, it’s crushing poverty. There’s a few, you know, what I would see would be these little shanties. But then you’d see a wall with concertina wire and a huge mansion. So there were some people there that had it great. But any, any industry that tried to locate there. You know, we’re looking at these facilities around the airport. And so I was thinking, “Well what, what was this?” He said, “Oh well this used to be owned by I can’t, some sporting goods manufacturer.” Thought this was a great place to get cheap labor and open a plant, but it, it failed. Because the people wouldn’t show up for work, they would steal from the company. I don’t know what all the problems. But it’s just you-you. How do you have any kind of commercial operation, in a situation like that. It’s, it’s a huge tragedy. JD: How long were you there? 05:50: DC: A week. JD: Yeah. And this would have been what, mid-nineties? 05:55: DC: Let’s see. ’92. Yes. Mid-nineties. JD: Gotcha. Wow. I bet that’s an eye opener after spending some time in Italy. 06:04: DC: Yeah. So, so you know, basically we got all the leases signed for all the facilities that we were using. The D.o.J. pulled out of their school project. There was a couple of other facilities that they were gonna build that they pulled out. And we realized, “Okay, we have nothing left to do, so we came back in country.” And. Pretty much dissolved the organization and then the remaining leases were just managed by the staff at the, the outfit there in Nolfolk. So I was gone a total of four months and, was, an incredible experience. Very eye opening. Very sad, in so many ways. JD: And they had the earthquake somewhat recently. Made things even worse. 07:01: DC: Oh god. JD: Yeah. 07:02: DC: Cut. Talking about adding insult to injury. I mean, it’s, it’s just horrible. ‘Cause their construction practices over there. I, I wasn’t surprised when I heard about an earthquake in Haiti, I was like, “There’s gonna be a lot of loss of life because those buildings probably crumbled.” You know, the first shake. There’s no bracing, there’s no reinforcement. None of the construction practices that we have here. JD: Geez. That’s quite the experience. 07:31: DC: Beautiful country. I got to do a helo ride over to the other side because we were supposed to do some work. This is another one of those projects that ended up getting yanked. But we were gonna do a lot of work to a, a pier that was over on the other side. They had a natural deep water port. And so we went to evaluate that pier to see what it would take to you know, get it up to be able to handle commercial ships. And, just, what a gorgeous country. The, the mountains and the vegetation. But. It’s, it’s a tragedy. JD: Yup. You know Haiti is one of the very few colonies, or areas, that slave upraising was actually successful. In fact, it’s the only one. They kicked out the French. Do you remember? BL: Um, late seventeen hundreds. 08:32: DC: Well that’s. And they to this day, they speak Creole. Which is a derivation of French. JD: Right, right. 08:38: DC: Now we had some people that, that spoke French that couldn’t really communicate. I mean it’s, it’s you know, that far removed. But, but that makes sense. I didn’t realize that it was a slave upraising. JD: It was the only one that I know of that was successful. BL: The Haitian. 08:52: DC: Yeah. Well. BL: The Haitian Revolution. 08:54: DC: Yeah. I don’t know how you define success after visiting that country. I would not say that it’s a success. JD: Really, wow. 09:03: DC: Now, I mean I don’t know what they had it like before. You know, so maybe it’s an improvement. But. It’s, it’s, it’s a horrible place. JD: Wow. 09:14: DC: I mean uh, you know, unless you’re one of the one percent that lives in the mansion surrounded with barbed wire. JD: Sure. Then you got to look over the wall and see the rest of the humanity. Yeah. 09:23: DC: Yeah, yeah. Not a pleasant place. JD: Well. Thanks. 09:30: DC: Yeah.