America's North Shore Journal

In another bay, Charlene, who is five, hugs a teddy bear she received when she got to the ship. She has a bandage on her left foot, but medics are concerned about her sight. Navy Dr. (Capt.) Terence McGee places eye drops in to dilate her pupils. She is a brave young lady as the doctor looks in her eyes. When he finishes the examination, she begins to cry so he picks her up. He asks if she has an escort – her mom or dad – and is told no.

“Five years old and alone,” he says, and continues to rock her back and forth.

As the hospital ship USNS Comfort continues its race south to Haiti, sailors aboard the vessel race to get the facilities ready for the expected patients.

The Comfort, bulling its way through stormy seas, will receive another 350 medical personnel and support staff when it reaches the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, Navy Capt. (Dr.) Jim Ware, commander of the medical treatment facility. This, he explained, will allow the staff to double the number of operating rooms.

About 80 sailors and another 60 civilian mariners maintain the ship between deployments. The Comfort deploys for scheduled operations about once every two years. The ship came back from a deployment providing humanitarian aid last year.

But the earthquake in Haiti – one of the poorest countries in the world – meant that the ship had to deploy.

Officials from the 1st Special Operations Wing here deployed two MC-130H Combat Talon IIs from the 15th Special Operations Squadron and one MC-130P Combat Shadow from the 9th Special Operations Squadron Jan. 13 in support of humanitarian operations in Haiti.

The aircraft carried medical personnel, a fly-away security team, and a special tactics team composed of combat controllers, special operations weathermen and pararescuemen.