The Foreign Service Journal, May 2008

I decided to go back to my bed- room. However, I soon began hearing machine-gun fire and bombings in the background, fol- lowed by a burst of gunfire omi- nously close to the housing com- pound. Immediately, we all received orders by radio to consolidate at the assistant regional security offi- cer’s home right next to mine. With bullets flying around us, we each ducked and ran there. Once we were all inside, the ARSO did a head count. He ordered all 11 of us to get down on the floor in his bed- room as incessant machine-gun fire broke out around us. We soon realized that we were caught in a crossfire between the rebel forces heading toward the Presidential Palace and the government forces trying to stop them. Soon thereafter, a Chadian Army tank drove up to the boundary wall of the compound, barely 50 meters from where we were hunkered down, and started lobbing artillery shells. The rebel forces were armed with rocket- propelled grenades and kept shooting in our direction, trying to take out the tank. The sound of the shelling and the heavy machine-gun fire was truly deafening. As we kept low on the cement floor with our heads covered to protect ourselves from stray bullets and shrapnel, I prayed that the shells would not land on us and everyone would get out safely. God was watching over us. While my home and the one on the other side were both hit by RPG shells, losing part of their roofs, the ARSO’s home where we were gathered stayed intact, despite violent shaking as bombs went off. Heavy fighting continued all day Saturday, but it was only sporadic at nighttime, so we could grab a little shuteye. Assessing the Damage We learned that the chancery had taken several hits and one RPG had penetrated the upper offices but, thankfully, no one was hurt. The regional security staff, Marines and the DOD folks at post all did a great job of protecting us. However, several embassy homes were looted and many of us lost everything. Accordingly, post management decided to destroy all classified material and shut down the embassy as soon as possible. Conditions were even worse elsewhere. There were bodies scattered all around the embassy housing complex and throughout the city. Many of the offices and restaurants along Charles De Gaulle Avenue, the capital’s main thoroughfare, were destroyed. Early Sunday morning, Feb. 3, I got a call from Sandy, who was safely in Yaoundé with the kids. She had heard reports of the fight- ing and was very worried about all of us. Then she mentioned that if I evacuated, she want- ed me to get the kids’ pictures and my daughter’s special snow globe that I had given to her as a gift. Since there was a lull in the fighting, I asked for permission to run out to my home and was allowed to go back for just five min- utes. Once inside my home, I saw the hole in the ceiling from the shell that had come through the roof, piercing my graduate diploma from the University of Virginia that, amazingly, was still hanging on the wall. As I hurried to gather family pictures, I was flooded with memories from our 10 years of marriage and the birth and life of our two dear children. There was no time for decisions about what to take and what to leave; I simply grabbed what I could fit into my small backpack. On to Yaoundé The fighting resumed soon thereafter, and it was another miserable morning. Later that afternoon, we got the order to evacuate and boarded armored cars for the perilous drive to the French military base. There we were reunited with the rest of our colleagues who had stayed in the embassy over the last two days, before being airlifted in a helicopter. After spending the night in a tent, we left for Cameroon in a C-130 early on Monday morning, Feb. 4. There I was reunited with my wife and kids. My son saw me from a distance at the hotel entrance and came out running to give me a hug; it was the best welcome I could have gotten. I arrived in Yaoundé exhausted and without even a change of clothes. But I had made it out alive and was able to enjoy dinner with my family, and for that I am grateful. We stayed in Yaoundé for a few days before depart- F O C U S 42 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 8 We were caught in a crossfire between the rebel forces heading towards the Presidential Palace and the government forces trying to stop them.