As always, I remain eternally grateful that the 84th Congress legislated that the USMC “Be the most ready, when the nation is least ready.” The Haiti earthquake relief operations vindicated that wise legislation once again.

Earlier today, USNI Blog participated in a Bloggers Roundtable with the 22nd’s Public Affairs Officer, Captain Clark Carpenter, USMC. The 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit expects to depart for Haiti on 16 January 2010. I asked Captain Carpenter about partnering with the NGOs and bridging the language gap once they arrive in Haiti. Captain Carpenter’s response is as follows:

…We have pulled in a lot of interpreters, Marines who speak the language down there, whether they’re native or whether they happen to speak that language. We’re pulling those in that went out across the Corps to pull in as many bodies as possible. I’m not sure how many we have, but we asked for about 40. So we’re in the process of getting those guys. In fact, you’ll see them checking in on a regular basis here at the unit as we begin to prepare to leave tomorrow.

So we will be able to bridge that language gap. I’m confident about that. And I think the aid, providing aid and providing relief, that is an international language. People will be able to understand what we want them to do or what we can provide for them.

The first part of the question was about working with NGOs. During our pre-deployment workup period, which began September 18th, 2008, we conducted a number of training exercises, a six-month-long workup period. During these training exercises, we actually rehearsed and trained two humanitarian relief operations and working with non- governmental agencies or organizations and USAID, those types of organizations. So we train to work with those guys. We actually have role players in those exercises acting as those that need the aid. We’ll have role players acting as the NGOs. So we do a lot of coordination and training to support these.

The NGOs and those relief organizations are very well-equipped to support relief operations. That’s what they do. So definitely we will want to support them in their efforts. But until we get on the ground and until we can make contact with them, exactly how we’ll do that is yet to be determined.

Full transcript of the informative interview here.

God Speed to the 22nd MEU!