“Everything is Just Spoiled”

A firsthand account of SIM missionaries during the Doe/Taylor conflict

Like a mighty army

As exhilarating as our Easter had been, we were drained when it was over. Dwight and Dorothy Hazard had offered their house at ELWA for a four day break while they visited Paul and Grace Chang upcountry in Kolahun, and we couldn't refuse. The Monday after Easter we moved in for a four day holiday within salt spray distance of the Atlantic. My study in the children's ministries building was only a five minute walk away, Sheryl loves the ocean, and our kids were rapidly becoming beach bums. What could have been better?

A sudden end to the civil war might have helped. We were largely successful at relaxing and visiting our ELWA co-workers for a few days, but growing fear buffeted Monrovia and put a somber blemish on what should have been a cheery time. Unchecked NPFL advances fueled the always-active rumor mills, and alarm over "rebels'' had reached flashpoint. Workers in ELWA's services division met periodically in Dwight's office for coffee, "deathballs'' (fried donut holes stuffed with Liberian pepper sauce), and to offer candidates for "Rumor of the Week.'' That week after Easter we had more candidates than the American presidential primaries.

One of the better ones hit very close to home on Wednesday. Michael, our lanky, independent, sixteen year old had chosen that day for a visit to the American Cooperative School (ACS). More precisely, he was visiting a girl, his date for the West Africa Christian High School spring banquet. As Michael explained carefully, there were details to be worked out, and the only way to do that was in person.

That was no teenager's rationalization. For those without two way radios tuned to the same frequency, communication in Monrovia almost always meant talking face to face. For example when Gaby (short for Gabriella), our daughter Erin's friend, wanted to arrange an outing, she sent her driver with a note. John would wait patiently in the Pajero or our living room while Erin penned her reply and then return it. (I think he preferred the Pajero. It was air-conditioned. Our living room was not.) Gaby's father was a banking executive and she could afford to send John as a substitute for a phone call. For missionary kids, taking a taxi was the only alternative.

Telephone service from ELWA into Monrovia was non-existent. Even within Monrovia, there were sections where telephones made good paper weights.

Around two o'clock, Michael flagged a taxi for ELWA junction, the first stop on the two part journey to ACS. The whole procedure was entirely routine. Missionary kids tend to be an independent lot, and even with a war raging elsewhere in the country, missionary parents honestly, and I still think accurately, believed their children safer in Monrovia than in most American cities. After only three and a half months, our older children found it perfectly normal to make their way around by Monrovia taxi.

ELWA junction was a terminus for most of the in-town taxis, who usually looped outward from downtown, dropped their fares in Paynesville, and waited for the next fare downtown. Another group of drivers worked the road from the junction to the airport.

Michael paid the first driver for the two mile trip from ELWA and stood by the road to wait for another taxi to carry him the rest of the way into town. Jethro Buttner, a school friend, drove by and offered a ride. A small act of friendship, it was the opening event in one of the more turbulent afternoons of their young lives.

By about 2:30 this little trip, begun without a second thought, had become the subject of dozens of thoughts, ranging in intensity from anxious to frantic. About an hour after his departure, our quiet campus was disrupted by the story that NPFL fighters were attacking the government FM station near ELWA junction. A companion rumor maintained an NPFL force was moving on the city from the other side. It had been seen, supposedly, moving past Hotel Africa.

Our two-way radio crackled with the voices of people trying to locate family members. The best we could do was to ask others on the radio network to be on the lookout for our roving son. We knew only that he was out in the city, and had no other way of locating him.

We also learned, around suppertime, that Michael had spent much of the afternoon in the home of Eric Newman, the son of a US military attaché.

That part was comforting, but there are some adventures it's probably best parents don't know about until they're long past. With his return shortly before dark, we discovered the rest of his afternoon had been one of those adventures.

The three boys listened to reports from around the city on the embassy radio network which warned all foreign nationals to remain indoors until calm returned. There was no danger from "rebels,'' but getting caught in a panicky crowd could be dangerous, too, and the security forces of the government of Liberia were becoming increasingly edgy.

It was good advice, but Jethro's little brother was home alone and without a radio. His football team was scheduled for practice that afternoon and they knew he would venture out into Monrovia before long. The three boys decided they had to run the four blocks to Jethro's house and warn him not to leave. It made perfect sense at the time.

The Congo Town neighborhood through which they ran is one of the nicer ones in Monrovia. A mere seventy five yards from the ocean, the road wound past the heavily fortified Egyptian embassy, houses belonging to embassy personnel from around the world, and the homes of affluent Liberians. Houses are large and comfortable, each surrounded with its own wall, often topped with broken bottles set in concrete or barbed wire, and watched over by guards.

One of the affluent Liberians living in the neighborhood was President Doe's own brother. Their route looped toward the ocean doubled back past Doe's house and continued on to the Buttner residence. They were startled into immobility when a Liberian soldier bolted over the five foot high wall into their path, growling like a portly, glassy-eyed Rambo. In sharp contrast to his full combat gear, he wore a dingy white towel wrapped around his head and tied under his chin with the helmet perched crookedly atop the towel.

His alcohol tinged tirade was all but unintelligible, but seemed aimed at uncovering the boys' political affiliations. The only word that really stood out was, "Rebels.'' He had chambered a round in his rifle when he hit the ground, and during the entire diatribe waved the weapon menacingly in their direction.

Jethro, who had lived in Liberia most of his life, negotiated with the volatile soldier. "We heard the rebels are coming. We really hate the rebels,'' he said diplomatically, but without great conviction. "We need to warn my brother!''

After a few tense moments he decided reluctantly that these expatriate teenagers were no threat and reluctantly released them to continue on their way. He warned them not to come on his road again. If he saw them, he said, "I will flog you.''

Continuing around the next corner at what they hoped would look like a respectful pace, they burst into a run as soon as they were out of sight. Errand completed, they returned by a different road but encountered the same soldier, this time guarding the other side of Doe's house.

"You lied to me. You said you wouldn't come back,'' he snarled drunkenly, and then waved them on with the barrel of his rifle.

Missionaries passing through the ELWA junction debunked the first rumor. The junction was filled with panic-stricken people but there were no soldiers and no fighting. Downtown at Waterside, the second rumor generated a panic that almost became a riot.

Waterside is several blocks of jumbled outdoor market stalls separated by a narrow ribbon of sidewalk from open-front stores selling everything from imported fabric to tennis shoes or crockery.

Sidewalks are so narrow and cluttered that most people walk in the street. A car, with diligent use of the horn and aggressive lurches into the fringes of the nonchalant mob, can make halting, if nerve-wracking progress along Water Street. Pedestrian traffic is almost as trying. The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but straight lines have never been available at Waterside.

In that crush of people shouts of "The rebels are coming,'' ricocheted off taut nerves and thousands of people stampeded. In less than half an hour, Waterside was emptied. Several people were trampled in the melee and merchants who abandoned their fully stocked market stalls returned to find them looted. That night on "Focus on Africa,'' BBC suggested the panic was the work of enterprising rogues who cleared the street to loot at their leisure.

All the news that had shaken the city, of heavy fighting around the FM station and rebels driving by Hotel Africa was nothing but E-L-They-Say at its best. No NPFL fighters came to town, but the mere threat of their approaching presence marked that sunny April day with menace.

The number of refugees in Guinea had increased to 150,000. A town chief in Guinea observed, "We have nothing against the Liberians. They are our brothers. But I wish there were better roads between here and there so they could all go home.''

I was scheduled to fly to Upper Lofa in May to hold a series of meetings with the upcountry missionaries unable to travel to Monrovia for the field conference in February. Don Walker, field director for Upper Lofa, had extended the invitation in January, "Before your calendar fills up.'' Sheryl and I lunched with Don and Mel, Larry and Joyce Allen, and Ron and Pauline Sonius the Friday after Easter to talk about the trip, and, of more pressing concern, how they thought the war was affecting Upper Lofa. The verdict from the field was very little.

As we put away one of "The Best's'' marvelous Chinese dinners, we discussed plans to evacuate other missionaries to Upper Lofa if the situation in the south grew worse. There was talk of moving vehicles upcountry for safe keeping and a general atmosphere of optimism about the work up there, and its future. The benefit of the war, for missionaries, was that some people were thinking about matters that seldom concerned them and we all prayed for a revitalization in the Liberian church.

The week before I left Monrovia in July, we were still praying for a revitalization of the Liberian church. One Liberian pastor, a frequent visitor to my study, expressed a prophetic opinion. "The Lord is purging this land, and he will not stop until it is cleansed,'' he predicted ominously. The events of the past year have proven him a true prophet.

During the weekend following Easter, reports filtered out of Grand Bassa county that large numbers of NPFL fighters were advancing toward Buchanan. Travelers found the road closed an hour north of the port, unsafe beyond that point. According to the BBC's Elizabeth Blunt, large numbers of government soldiers had been seen leaving the battle zone. They complained that they had not been paid and were out of food and ammunition.

The government quickly denied this, insisting that no part of Liberia was in NPFL hands. All soldiers in Grand Bassa and Nimba counties could be accounted for, they claimed. The president urged foreign journalists to stop, "misinforming the world,'' about the state of affairs in Liberia.

That government was in complete control was no great comfort to a large segment of the population which had come to fear the Armed Forces of Liberia more intensely than the NPFL. An unnamed government official told a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor that citizens "are justifiably scared because criminal or rogue elements have recently been incorporated into the military.'' This lent credence to the rumor that the prisons had been emptied and the inmates, usually Liberia's most hardened criminals, inducted into the army. It is certainly true that army abuses were escalating alarmingly.

Meeting with little success on the battle field, Government endeavored to undermine Charles Taylor's forces with accusations that became more rambling and obviously motivated by propaganda purposes. Libya's involvement had come because Qaddafi knew Charles Taylor would "kill Americans.'' Accusing Ivory Coast of helping the Patriotic Front, Doe charged that government with preferring a dictatorship to Liberia's "multi-party system.'' Americo-Liberian exiles were trying to destabilize the country because they would not be allowed to vote in the scheduled 1991 elections. These proved no more successful than the Armed Forces of Liberia.

On April 25th, an SIM internal memo updated home field staff with the information that the NPFL was on Buchanan's doorstep. In its advance to the coast, it had passed through villages, warning people to watch out for government soldiers. They were, the memo reports, treating people well. As the NPFL continued to threaten Buchanan, the imminent threat of interrupted international air service became very real.

Responding to that threat, the British Embassy issued a strong statement on April 24th. In light of the deteriorating security situation, it warned British nationals that, ". . . you should leave without delay whilst normal departure routes are available. It is your responsibility to decide whether or not to act on this advice but I must make clear that there is no question of any subsequent evacuation being arranged.''

The 24th was Tuesday. On Thursday the US Embassy followed with a much more detailed, if less directive, statement. US citizens with "compelling reasons'' would be allowed to stay, but were encouraged to arrange passage for dependents and pets. The paragraph ended with an ominous phrase: ". . . while commercial facilities are still available.''

At the embassy's urging, we packed evacuation bags with important papers, currency, and clothes. Travel outside Monrovia was discouraged and those remaining in the capital were advised to stockpile seven to ten days of food and water. A short period of anarchy was expected to sweep the city when the government fell, but, at the time, no one could have imagined how protracted that period would be. In hindsight, the inadequacy of a week's worth of supplies would be laughable, were it not so tragic.

SIM acting area director, Ed Klotz, began to poll his charges about their response to the embassy pronouncements. Todee and Bomi Hills, church planting points near military bases and dangerously close to natural targets for Patriotic Front attacks, were evacuated.

While foreign embassies reacted to the successes of Charles Taylor's forces by ordering retreats, President Doe responded with an ultimatum. He designated official surrender sites and offered them two weeks to surrender or see his army blast Nimba county. Taylor replied, "I think he is dreaming again.''

Taylor and his men were the only ones in Liberia who realized how empty the threat was. Those of us who listened to the exchange on the radio questioned the army's ability to carry out the threat. The NPFL held Nimba and knew how little was left to blast.

The evacuation of so many expatriates alarmed the Liberian government. Acting Foreign Minister George Wallace called it hasty and accused the foreign embassies of causing unnecessary alarm with their warnings. Emmanuel Bowier assured the international community the airport would remain open. He acted puzzled that anyone might think otherwise.

Government agencies waged a propaganda war, attempting to turn the populace against Charles Taylor and his forces, linking them with the ousted Americo-Liberian elite. They were motivated only by a desire to avenge the overthrown Tolbert regime, the Liberia News Agency reported. The situation remained normal around Gbarnga, another report contended.

The President himself entered the fray with thinly veiled threats against journalists who "listen to false rumors'' and report, "The rebels are taking this area and the rebels are taking that area. We are,'' he continued, "fighting many wars.'' One was against Charles Taylor, the other against journalists, most notably the BBC. He appeared to consider the "rumors'' carried by BBC to be as damaging to his cause as the assaults by rebels.

"If you quote any news that is not true, we will check it. If you say the rebels have taken a village, you and the soldiers will go to that village because you have got a way of telling lies to the people. . . . If you write anything that will do with rebel activities in Nimba, be prepared that we'll escort you there to Nimba. If you cannot prove it, you yourself, you are a rebel.''

In Liberia in April, we all understood that rebels were executed without trial and without appeal. The phrase, "You will be considered a rebel and you will be treated accordingly,'' became a familiar threat in the mouths of government officials.

A significant number of missionaries shared Minister Washington's opinion that the embassies had panicked and that the evacuations were premature. Throughout Liberia SIMer's resisted mounting pressure to leave. Even though the notion that we had little to fear would prove false, that false sense of security ranked low among our reasons for staying.

The ongoing ministry of ELWA radio was a far stronger reason. For thirty six years it had never missed a day of broadcasting the Gospel. Its voice, pushed by two 50,000 watt and three 10,000 watt transmitters spoke over forty five languages across an area far larger than the continental United States, with up to 128 million potential listeners. Many of those listeners belonged to people groups resistant to traditional church planting efforts. One of four partners in World by 2000, a campaign to reach every major language group on earth with radio by the end of the millennium, ELWA's plans to expand programming in existing languages and add more were well along the way to fulfillment.

In the crisis of war in Liberia, the Liberian language broadcasts were proving a lifeline for thousands. With over 150,000 refugees already in Guinea and more in Ivory Coast, and 135,000 people displaced within Nimba county, daily life had been disrupted already beyond imagining.

Tiny villages, swollen to ten and twenty times their original population, relied on ELWA for information. Special programs taught about making water safe for drinking, about sanitation practices and simple public health procedures, and presented the word of Hope in a hopeless situation. ELWA's Liberian newsmen continued to be the most widely trusted voices in the country. "If they say it on ELWA, then we'll believe,'' people would say. Separated families used messages on ELWA to locate one another.

Letters from refugees and displaced people painted a picture of a Good Friend Station reaching into lives made receptive by suffering. "Thank God for how he is using you to advise us and to admonish and encourage us in His Word,'' one correspondent wrote. Programs drew refugees together in their places of exile, and there they worshipped with the help of radio. The messages gave them thoughts from God's word to read over and over, to meditate on, to pray about.

How could we abandon such a ministry?

An even stronger reason for hanging on could be found in the people of Liberia themselves. From the outside, Sheryl and I had looked at this country and seen overwhelming needs that drew us there. Once there, those generic needs acquired faces and names, personalities and families, and soon became colleagues and friends.

Each SIM missionary in Liberia, from elementary age children to veterans of a lifetime, had become enmeshed in the lives of a people not our own, and treasured our connection. That bond with people, more even than an allegiance to an institution as vital and beloved as ELWA, is what kept so many there past the point of personal safety. Speaking for myself, and I know many of the others who were there until the bitter end, we would do it again. To leave, as we were all eventually forced to do, felt like abandoning family.

With the NPFL sitting just outside Buchanan, pressure on Roberts field increased. Foreign embassies increased pressure on their nationals to leave while commercial air service was still available. British Air scheduled two special flights for Sunday the 29th of April, and SIM booked passage on it for 39 missionaries and children.

While the word evacuation is sometimes used when referring to this and following flights, the word conjures images of disordered flight that don't really fit. Most SIM missionaries who left during the first week or two were scheduled for furlough or were at the end of a short-term assignment and would have been leaving soon anyway. While our missionary force in Liberia was reduced drastically at this point, it was through a nearly natural process of attrition, with incoming replacements put on hold.

Departure plans had begun to snowball earlier that week. First, the US Peace Corps announced it would be evacuating all its volunteers on Monday, the 30th. The Assemblies of God in Liberia followed that bombshell with one of their own: they had formulated tentative plans to have all their personnel out of the country by May 4th. If that plan were finalized, it would remove over half of West Africa Christian High School's teachers. We all hoped that when the furor over the Peace Corps evacuation had passed the Assemblies would reconsider.

The other shoe dropped on Thursday, the 26th when the principal of the American Cooperative School announced to a gathering of expatriate principals from Monrovia that they would hold graduation ceremonies that day and be out of the country the next. That disclosure sent the rest of Monrovia's expatriate schools tumbling like dominoes. The other principals had been instructed to follow the leads of either WACHS or ACS. Now they would all close. ELWA Academy would shut down with the high school. Without school to hold them, families with children prepared to leave.

All this hit with the force and suddenness of a thunderbolt.

We were staggered by the enormity of events that swirled around us and watched, not wanting to believe, as practically every aspect of expatriate activity in the country ground to a halt. For those in the commercial sector, livelihoods and fortunes were threatened. For the large missionary contingent in the country it marked the disruption of ministries that had taken years, even decades, of laborious faithfulness.

Our nightmares proved too tame. What we were watching was more than just disruption. It was the death of a nation and the end of a way of life.

As I drafted a message for the morning of the 29th, I knew the congregation was fragmenting suddenly and traumatically. Liberians lived in daily fear of the word that their village or their family was gone. Those leaving were burdened with tremendous guilt and confessed to feeling terrible that they were "running out'' in a time of such deep need. Those who remained were burdened by the anticipated loss of friends and colleagues. Their sorrow was heightened by the usually unspoken question, "Who will be next?''

I was burdened with the preacher's perennial problem: what to preach on Sunday, and this Sunday the question had assumed a far greater magnitude than I could have imagined five months earlier. What do you say to 500 people who are watching their world fall apart? I didn't realize it until late in the week, but the Lord had been laying the groundwork for that sermon for some time.

My first Sunday morning messages came from Mark's Gospel, but at a chapter a week the series would be finished by early in April. Around the middle of March, I decided to follow with a series on the lives of the Patriarchs. A month and a half later, on 29 April Genesis 12:10-20 came up as the text for the second sermon in the series. The text tells the story of Abraham fleeing a potentially life-threatening situation for a place of sanctuary.

It's fairly common to indict Abraham for faithlessness in leaving the Promised Land for the safety of Pharaoh's court in the face of prolonged famine. But I wonder: have those so quick to moralize about Abraham ever faced such a life or death decision themselves? Studying the passage early in the week, I realized Moses never bothered to record God's often assumed moral outrage at Abraham's decision! The fact is that God never condemned him at all. The one verse recording that decision functions only as an introductory summary statement to get the narrative underway. The story is not about the decision to leave, but on Abraham's behavior when he got to Egypt.

On that Sunday, many in my congregation were people like Abraham. They'd left family and homeland beyond to follow God's call to a place He would show them, and now, like Abraham, were facing an agonizing decision If, in inspiring the writer of Genesis, God had not seen fit to condemn Abraham for his exile, modern day Abrahams should be able to follow his example with no sense of guilt.

That's what I preached to this tribe of missionaries preparing for exile from their promised land. If there was to be guilt it should come, as it had with Abraham, for misusing the opportunity this exodus offered. They could go as refugees, defeated and on the run, or as an army on assignment, dispersed throughout the world with the word of God's love for the people of Liberia and their desperate need.

"There has never been a time in the history of missions in Liberia when the ears of the world have been so tuned to this nation. Yours is the privilege of filling those ears with what God wants the world to hear.''

It was a message the congregation, both Liberian and expatriate, needed that morning. Liberian Christians and missionaries embraced and wept together at the end of the service. The Lord, and their Liberian brothers and sisters, had given those departing missionaries their release. "Tell the people to pray,'' was the Liberians' parting plea. Many of those same Liberians would testify, after the worst of the war had passed, that the prayers of God's people around the world, awakened by the testimony of those departing missionaries, had preserved them through the horrors they'd witnessed.

I've never been a preacher who assumes my every message is a special communication from the mouth of God, but on that Sunday I couldn't help feeling it was His message, and not mine. People ask me today why God put us through the ordeal of two years of preparation for six months of service. It may have been for that one sermon. I will probably never again preach to a congregation more unified in their need or in a more momentous hour. It was a rare privilege.

A withdrawal no one expected had begun that morning. In a matter of days our stimulating, multi-national missionary community was reduced to a handful and almost all of those Americans. Accustomed to the richness of an inter-denominational, international community united in the cause of the Kingdom of God, those of us who remained at ELWA felt incomplete, somehow flawed without them.

Ours were not the only departures, and British Air not the only airline with special flights scheduled. Lee Sonius had been at RIA that Sunday and said the place was a madhouse. He told the ironic story of two Middle East Airlines planes, packed with almost a thousand refugees, fleeing to safety in Beirut, Lebanon.

Randy Wildman's was the first SIM family split by the war as he put Adena and little Anna Beth on one of the special British Air flights, and returned to an empty and lonely apartment in Sinkor. For Randy, it was to be a lengthy and burdensome separation, recorded in a series of letters, never sent, to Adena.

In the best of times the Liberian mail service could be depended upon for one thing: its unreliability. By the beginning of May, its usually low standards had declined noticeably. To make matters worse, the steady flow of departures from Monrovia, on which most expatriates relied for predictable mail service abroad, slowed to an unreliable trickle by mid-month. It was not until his return from Liberia early in August that Adena would read Randy's letters.

Speaking harshly and carrying no stick at all, on May 1st, President Doe gave the NPFL two weeks to lay down its arms and surrender. Charles Taylor laughed at the idea. "We're marching on Monrovia. Why should we surrender?

The US embassy's advisory was changed the following day. It no longer addressed "non-essential'' American personnel, but "all'' Americans. None of the diplomatic observers had any fears that expatriates might become specific targets of armed aggression. There was fear that, with every day the conflict dragged on, the unavoidable period of anarchy between governments would become more severe.

No one thought the period of anarchy, for which we had instructions to stockpile one to two week's food supply, would last more than seven months after President Doe's death on September 9th. Only the introduction of a West Africa "peace keeping'' force into Monrovia brought it to an end that soon, and then only in the capital.

Because circumstances in Monrovia were deteriorating so rapidly, Sheryl and I had made arrangements with Steve and Judy Jay to move into their house at ELWA when they left for Great Britain. Offering more security, we thought, than our house in Congo Town, Jay's house also brought us closer to our Paynesville congregation. ICM had been without a pastor for over four years, but we thought now it would be important to be close at hand during this time of crisis. We moved in on Monday, April 30.

West Africa Christian High School graduated its first Senior class on Wednesday, May 2nd. It was a bittersweet time. Founded only three years earlier, WACHS had grown from an initial student body of thirteen to a robust group of about fifty. I remember visiting that first year and looking through a window opening in an unpainted block wall to watch LaVerne Tischer and a single student working on a math lesson, the top of a barrel for a desk. But the growth of the tiny school had been steady and promised to continue, until the war struck. The first WACHS seniors left a month prematurely in such a flurry there was no time for adequate farewells.

An international school, especially an international missionary school, quickly becomes more than just an educational institution. For everyone involved, a school like WACHS, or ELWA Academy, feels more like a family than a school, and the hurried goodbyes were like the painful parting of brothers and sisters, not just classmates.

The environment at ELWA was becoming increasingly glum. Fear escalated in the neighborhoods across ELWA road. Liberian staff had already begun housing family members in their homes on campus. Nocturnal visits by "armed men in military uniforms'' were beginning to set a pattern that would only escalate in coming months. Faculty and administration of the Liberian Baptist Seminary just down the road from ELWA were standing pat, but most other missions were pulling their people out.

ELWA hospital was Dr. Bill Ardill's big concern, and he was noticing a sharp drop in patient load. People's fear of travelling was intensifying and they were choosing the ambiguous safety of homes over the risks of travel, even for medical treatment.

Jungle Aviation and Radio Service (JAARS) pilots, under the direction of The Institute for Liberian Languages (TILL) continued flights on a need basis into May. With reports that NPFL had special units designated to shoot down airplanes, and the increasing possibility that planes might be commandeered at out-of-the-way airports, that vital service became too risky to continue. The pilots stored one of their planes in the hangar at Spriggs-Payne Airport, and the other at the Sinoe Leprosy Hospital far to the south and, like so many others, left Liberia for the duration.

With the last JAARS flight on Monday, May 7, our upcountry missionaries were cut off and on their own. Surface travel was still possible, but with many of the country's roads already unsafe, we assumed it would be only a matter of time until that link with Monrovia was cut also. On that score, we assumed correctly. We also assumed our people in the north would be in no danger. In that, we couldn't have been more wrong.

"Your container's in. Are you interested?''

It was Dwight's voice on the phone and his message should have been welcome. For four months our house had been stocked with borrowed furniture, borrowed lamps, borrowed beds, borrowed kitchen utensils. For the first three and a half of those months we'd dreamed of hearing those words. They meant the "outfit,'' all those boxes we'd consigned to the unknown that chill day in December had cleared the port.

On Wednesday, May 3rd, our collective response was, "Oh, no!''

In some ways, Monrovia was a soft assignment. Grocery stores carried many of the items shoppers from both Europe and North America were used to finding at home. Liberian English, while difficult to decipher at first, is still English, and missionaries from the US and the British Commonwealth could get along quite nicely without language training.

Because ELWA was such a large enterprise, receiving containerized shipments almost monthly, missionary household goods could hitchhike on those shipments. We were able to send things like appliances that never quite fit in the traditional missionary barrel or the more up-to-date airline packing box.

Our shipment contained everything we had been able to think of, from a portable generator to a dehumidifier, ice chests, and ceiling fans, to make our life in Liberia comfortable. Once in Africa, it became obvious we didn't really need some of the things that had seemed so essential in Ohio, but we really longed for the rest.

There were hand-made quilts for each of the four children, going away presents from Aunt Janilyn and Grandma. A supporter had given us a stack of beautiful and elaborate jigsaw puzzles, a favorite family activity in a country where visiting and reading aloud together are among the most popular forms of evening recreation. Some sixty boxes of books made up almost a fourth of our 507 cubic foot consignment.

As the NPFL crept closer to Monrovia, though, all the families with containers in transit had hoped to have them delayed, at least until the battle lines had passed ELWA and things returned to normal. In an occasional burst of dark humor, we suggested that if the boat sank, at least we could collect the insurance. Any way you cut it, a container on, or in, the water was worth two in the hands of looters.

Looting is something we were beginning to think about. Since before written history fighting men have considered it their right to take what they want from conquered territory. In a third of a year's fighting, both sides had established a track record of honoring that tradition. While we still had no fear for our lives, we did feel our computers and sewing machines, dolls and quilts were definitely in jeopardy.

Past history seemed on our side, though. During the rice riots of 1979, the coup of 1980, and the attempted coup of 1985, ELWA had weathered some very stormy times without damage. In 1985, soldiers slept on missionaries' porches, and in the palaver hut at the north end of campus, but no missionary had been "embarrassed.'' There was a high level of confidence that, as in coups past, we would be spared the major devastation of conquest.

It would be hard to overestimate the authority of the four letters, E - L - W - A., in Liberia. Since its first broadcast in January of 1954, the nation had learned to tune to the voice of their "Good Friend Station'' for news, music, and gospel programming. The reception area of the studio building was a hub of activity where people came regularly with personal and community announcements to be broadcast.. ELWA stenciled on the doors of your car was often all it took to avoid the usual humbug at checkpoints.

Even our most optimistic scenarios accepted as almost inevitable the unpleasant prospect that one side or the other would commandeer the oldest gospel radio station in Africa for their own political objectives. Revolutionary forces have always targeted the media for that purpose. Until only recently, though, we had expected life to go on roughly as usual. As long as we were there, living in our houses, working in our offices, going about our business, we had expected to remain unmolested.

But now ELWA was becoming a ghost town. There had been a hundred and thirty two adults in Liberia at year's end and by May 4th, we had lost forty one of those. By May 23rd, we would be down to 53 adults, only twenty seven of them at ELWA. After those first few weeks of flights out, an evening stroll down the beach road was no longer lit by cheery lights from rows of houses filled with friends. Instead, eerie, darkened windows of vacant houses looked out into a night that seemed darker for their unilluminated stares.

So I arrived at the carpenter shop with very mixed emotions to wait out the glacially slow routine of customs officials and help with unloading. The arrival of a family's "load'' is normally a little like the barn raisings of the American frontier. Workers from the services division, people with goods in the shipments, and anyone else in the neighborhood congregated on the loading dock in an almost festive mood. It usually took over an hour to muscle the tons of official ELWA materiel and the personal treasures wedged in between into the warehouse.

Helping with the last two containers had provided fellowship, exercise, and the chance to be out of the study. This time I was there to say hello to all the things we'd sent off into the unknown that chill morning last December. For four months, we'd looked forward to cooking on our own stove, working the jigsaw puzzles, reading the books in those boxes, but they arrived too late for that. Sheryl and the four children were already booked to fly back to Bowling Green, Ohio. We were too busy planning for their flight even to think of unpacking our boxes.

At the warehouse, I divided things into three stacks. One stack, my pastoral library and the family's books, I hauled to my study. Another we stowed in the ELWA warehouse. The third went to house J - 6 on the beach road. (Steve, a computer programmer and soccer player extraordinarily, coach of the ELWA Electrons, and Judy Jay have four boys. They signed their prayer letters, "The six Jays from J - 6.'') The appliances all settled into Dwight's empty garage for a brief stay.

I had hoped, naively, that one of those places might survive if the looting were limited. As it turned out, I only succeeded in distributing our goods among a more diverse group of looters.

The news that week was filled with a hodgepodge of items.

Tuesday's Daily Observer bantered the headline, "BUCHANAN TURNS GHOST TOWN.'' It chronicled the closing of schools and markets and the disappearance of taxis and money buses. A Buchanan resident told the reporter people were so afraid any loud bang would send them scurrying for cover in the bush. By seven in the evening, he said, everyone but the soldiers had gone to bed. Soldiers, it was reported, have been seen shooting their rifles at random on the streets.

They had been seen shooting their rifles at random in Monrovia, too. The back page of the same paper carried the tragic story of an eleven year old girl, sleeping in her own bed, who was shot and killed by an army Private using his rifle to try to intimidate a taxi driver. The soldier, eyewitnesses said, appeared confused.

The Melvin Pyne murder trial reached its long awaited conclusion, with the conviction Watta Allison, wife of the former Defense Minister, and two others for ritual murder. Gray Allison had already been convicted and sentenced to die by firing squad for murdering Pine, a policeman, to make "medicine'' for a planned coup.

In the meantime, President Doe had flown off to Togo and Nigeria for a one day visit to "brief'' the leaders of those two countries on conditions in Liberia. It was widely rumored, although not reported, that the trip had been a desperate attempt to wring more armaments from the two presidents.

May 8 will not be remembered as a slow news day in Liberia.

Doe had cancelled plans for a nationwide festival, "Birthday '90,'' planned to celebrate his own fortieth birthday, but the May 10 editions of all Monrovia's newspapers were little more than newsprint birthday cards, paid for by every major business in the country. It was Doe's last birthday, but almost certainly not his fortieth. Liberia scholars make a convincing case that he had aged by two years overnight in 1985 in order to be old enough to run for president under the nation's new constitution.

He celebrated his birthday with a news conference announcing the recapture of Saniquellie, and made an "unofficial'' statement saying Charles Taylor had been shot by one of his own men and was hospitalized in Cote d'Ivoire. When asked if he would agree to talks with Taylor to end the war, he ruled out any possibility of such talks. "If the only way to resolve the crisis is to talk to Charles Taylor, then it will not be resolved. If you cut my throat, I can't talk to Charles Taylor.''

For expatriates waiting for scheduled flights at Roberts field, BBC's May 9 "Focus on Africa'' was cause for concern. A British engineer, snatched by NPFL forces, told the world the push to Monrovia had reached as far as Owensgrove, about ten miles from the airport. The government quickly, and probably accurately, denied that the Patriotic Front had gotten that far, but all of us at ELWA were sure it was just a matter of time until that announcement would be true.

After a week of disturbing news and a flurry of packing and goodbyes, Sheryl, Michael, Erin, Catie, and Meaghan joined the growing number of women and children in exile, separated by thousands of miles from husbands and fathers. Friday night, May 11, Larry and Linda Tiedje hosted a farewell picnic supper for Rod and Laura Magg, the Bruners, and us. We sat together in the ocean spray for one last time saying goodbye to friends who were now as close as family. Our somber little caravan left well before dark to avoid checkpoints watched over by soldiers growing more excitable as night deepened.

The airport was quiet. We strolled around or sat together in a melancholy cluster and marveled at the absence of "charlies'' hawking their wares. Roberts field, which always offered a captive audience, was usually alive with them, but this night they had been replaced by bands of heavily armed soldiers.

When the time to board the jam-packed Air Afrique plane arrived, we hugged for a long time and said one last goodbye. Mark Bruner and I watched wordlessly as our families disappeared through the door marked "passengers only,'' then rushed to the outside balcony to wave them across the tarmac and into the plane.

Clinging to an ephemeral sense of time and space still shared, we waited another hour and a half while clumps of men labored half invisibly in the darkness to disengage the truck bearing the passenger ladder from the plane.

We occupied ourselves with watching another Mideast Air flight, bound for the safety of Beirut, lumber heavily into the night sky. We also watched, by the almost constant flashes of lightning slicing through the downpour, military trucks drive slowly to a darkened airliner far off to the side and unloaded what we took to be cases of munitions for the war effort. Scuttlebutt said President Doe's visit to Togo and Nigeria had paid off in armaments. We thought that might explain all the soldiers.

Finally, the Air Afrique flight taxied to the end of the runway for takeoff, hesitated for what seemed too long a time, and lurched suddenly upward into the night.

It was not just that mysterious plane and the watching soldiers that made us feel the nearness of the war. At May's beginning, expatriates had begun evacuating Buchanan, some sixty miles down the coast. Since then battles and counterclaims had raged back and forth around that port city with no apparent advantage gained by either side. It had become obvious by this time in the war that the NPFL was capable of taking to the bush, avoiding roads and centers of population altogether, and appearing unexpectedly miles away from their last known position. On the dark road back to ELWA that night, sixty miles didn't seem far at all.

Suddenly a part of the ELWA bachelorhood, my life settled into a monotonous routine. It seems odd, I suppose, to that time spent under the menace of war was monotonous, but the very fact of military threat created the monotony. With the near future so overwhelmingly uncertain, anything but the immediate and compelling became all but impossible to bring into focus. Two weeks before, the International Church's elders were talking about plans for expanding the building. Now the future went on hold, and we lived one day at time. Long term projects were unthinkable, and, as our population declined, meaningful things to do declined with it.

We waited and had no idea what we waited for. After a relentless advance to the outskirts of Buchanan, the Patriotic Front had, for no apparent reason, bogged down, the war going into hibernation for almost a month. The waiting had been bearable when we could track Charles Taylor's advance and make a reasonable guess at his arrival in Monrovia. With no action for almost a month, there was no way to make a reasonable guess. Randy wrote that not knowing how long he and Adena would be separated was the hardest thing about those weeks. The rest of us separated from wives and children shared that sentiment.

Gasoline was becoming scarce. Sugar and flour had disappeared from the stores and markets, and with them, bread. I joked with one of the Lebanese owners of the Paynesville Supermarket that even with no bread, I would stay as long as they could sell me Coca Cola. My cache of Coca Cola lasted until I left, almost two weeks after the Paynesville Supermarket had been blown open and looted.

Tony's wife had been one of those on the Mid East Air flight to Beirut. One day near the produce cooler we talked about the how hard it was to be separated. He said it was particularly hard for him because his wife had delivered their first son the day before. I congratulated him and he gave me a cigar. He also had one of the stock boys go to the back and bring out two hoarded loaves of bread which he put in my order.

I took the bread home, put a loaf and a half in the freezer, and carefully rationed the remaining ten slices to make five days worth of sandwiches. Those two loaves of bread lasted until almost the end of June. At that point, desperate, I got out the ELWA cookbook and baked my first bread ever, two loaves just slightly more edible than the Tupperware from which I'd taken the flour. The next two loaves followed in a week or so, and by the time those were finished, I was preparing to leave.

The long lull in action came to a crashing halt in mid-May. Yekepa fell to NPFL forces, according to the BBC, on May 13. Three days later, the Washington Times expanded that story with an eyewitness account of government atrocities in the AFL retreat. At least thirty two civilians were known massacred by government troops. Patriotic Front forces were moving south along the road from Yekepa toward Gbarnga, the last major town until Kakata, and threatening to move on Monrovia any day. Diplomatic sources in Abidjan were claiming other contingents were moving within striking distance of RIA and the capital.

Stan Bruning received a phone call on the morning of Saturday, May 14 with the unnerving information that a tank had appeared at ELWA's main entrance. At the gate, he discovered an armored personnel carrier stalled with two soldiers resting in the shade beneath the vehicle. They were waiting for a tow. The Lord continued to keep ELWA free from the ravages of marauding soldiers.

Diplomatic sources in Monrovia were reporting the fall of Buchanan, and the BBC's Robin White reported a Charles Taylor news conference in Tappeta. Their Ivory Coast reporter, Gerald Burke, confirmed that the NPFL was in complete control of the road from Yekepa to Tappeta. The noose tightened noticeably.

Retired officers and enlisted men of the Armed Forces of Liberia were ordered to report for duty. The President called on citizens to take up "cutlasses, single-barreled guns, and get in the bush in pursuit of the rebels.'' Presidential Affairs Minister G. Alvin Jones called on Liberia's Christians to pray for the government. While Christians had been praying for the country all along, the President's call for the use of cutlasses and single-barrels produced the most dramatic response to these desperate calls

Some time during the night of Monday, May 21, three Gio soldiers were taken from their homes by "armed men in military uniforms.'' The next morning their bodies were found in Gardnersville, stripped and arms strapped behind their backs, and decapitated. The Daily Observer ran the headline, "3 Headless Bodies Found,'' over two three column photographs of the bodies, as they had been found, and the severed heads displayed on a table at JFK hospital. The full horror of brutal ethnic violence we had heard of in rumors from Nimba County had come with full force to Monrovia, confirmed by those stomach wrenching photos.

The photos were placed on the page below the fold. When I picked up my copy of the paper that morning, I saw the masthead and the headline. I unfolded the paper, expecting to see the story on the bottom half of the page. Instead there was this picture of three Liberian faces, almost peaceful in repose, propped against towels on a table. Until that moment, I'd never understood the expression, "His blood ran cold,'' but shock I felt at the moment of recognition could not be described in any other way.

As the story percolated for the next few days, and additional headless, or almost headless, bodies were discovered, it became apparent that members of the army were killing other members of the army for no reason other than their tribal origins. All the bodies were Mano or Gio soldiers. Families of the deceased soldiers were encouraged to report to JFK to claim the bodies, but the widow of one of the first three men told a reporter from the Daily Observer that all the survivors were to frightened to do so. In Liberia, where the proper burial of the dead is of vital importance, it took a powerful fear to keep family members from fulfilling that obligation.

On May 18th, the New York Times had run a story by Kenneth Noble under the headline, "War in Liberia Unfolds Without World Attention.'' Five days later, the grisly wave of ethnic murder had grabbed the attention of an uninterested world by the throat.

I talked to Sheryl a few days later. Her first questions were about the killings and the stories the international press had run on the incidents, and was glad that the children were in Ohio, sheltered from such ferocity. A stack of Monrovia Observers was among the treasures packed in my solitary carryon bag when I left the country. The May 22 edition was among them, and to this date I have not allowed the children to see the pictures. Unfortunately, a generation of Liberian children have not enjoyed that kind of tender care.

On Wednesday, May 23 I was scheduled to preach in the chapel at Liberian Baptist Seminary. The Observer's headline that morning was "Fear Grips Monrovia . . . as six more bodies discovered.'' When I arrived, John Mark Carpenter, a courtly southern gentleman who headed the school, met me with the news that this was to be their last chapel. Unable to assure security for the students, they would dismiss classes the following day. I joke today that my sermon closed the Liberian Baptist Seminary, but at the time I felt little to joke about.

My text was Jeremiah 1, and I tried to encourage this group of future Liberian church leaders with the message that God calls people for the worst of times, as well as the best. If they had been called by God, He had called them with full knowledge of the events they were living through and they had His promise, as did Jeremiah, that He would honor His call with His presence.

I found myself encouraged, whether the message helped anyone else or not.

With our freezers and generators, the missionaries left at ELWA were managing fairly well during this time. We'd all laid in stocks of food, much of it canned, some of it frozen, and we developed some traditions that made life in Monrovia palatable. Dwight Hazard was on tap one night a week for some stir-fried concoction or another, always spicy enough to please a Liberian weaned on peppers. Another night I'd contracted to provide stew and biscuits, until the dwindling flour disappeared. We ate a couple of other meals at the ELWA guest house, where Victoria Morris, a remarkable Liberian cook, kept our calorie counts up.

Otherwise, I was finding myself forgetting to eat. A quick slice of bread with peanut butter eaten over the sink in the morning got me started for the day, and frequently I would remember I had missed lunch just close enough to supper to make it preferable to wait.

One of the EHBIites (Larry Dick christened the men whose families were across the Atlantic the ELWA Husbands Batching It, and we liked the acronym for its biblical flavor) had mentioned to his wife that we got together once a day for a meal. Somehow that became a frantic rumor that we were eating only once a day. I can guarantee that we may have been tired and sun burnt when we all returned to our home countries, but we didn't suffer from a shortage of food.

As the populace at large became more terrified at the prospect of another night filled with the grim work of these armed men in military uniforms, government assured those of the Gio and Mano ethnic groups that they had nothing to fear. Liberia's war was against the invader, not the Gio or Mano. At the same time, Information Minister Washington was busy explaining that the President had not meant this when he called on the citizens to take up cutlasses against the enemy. Unfortunately, no clues to the cutlass murders had been discovered.

The widows of the slain men thought otherwise. One appeared at JFK to identify the body of her dead husband. He was taken away, according to his widow, by men dressed in the military uniforms from the 72nd Military Camp. According to her account, the men had told her husband "the Chief'' wanted to see him.

Another woman, in tears, told an even more graphic story to a reporter from the Daily Observer. Three armed men in military uniforms had come to her house in search of Manos and Gios. The men told her, "Don't cry on our name, cry on Charles Taylor's name. Before the rebels come, we will eliminate you.'' She begged the men to spare her husband, offered them money to spare him. Pointing to her eight children she pleaded, "Look at my children. if you kill us, who will take care of them.'' In spite of her pleas, she was sexually assaulted by the men, who then took her husband.

An economically hard-pressed nation in the best of times, Liberia's economy began to show signs of disintegration. With the evacuation of thousands of expatriates, and the isolation of large segments of the country through military conquest, access to foreign exchange evaporated almost overnight. Without foreign exchange, neither business nor government were able to conduct business outside the country.

Roadblocks, usually signaled by the appearance of an empty oil drum or section of Palm trunk, appeared everywhere around the city. Presided over by nervous teen-age boys who stopped traffic with the menacing twitch of an automatic-rifle barrel, they became an instant source of tension and hindrance to travel.

On Thursday, May 24, bus loads of Mandingo and Fula groups left Monrovia for sanctuary in Guinea. Citizens complained that, with the Mandingo population leaving, taxis were no longer available. Transportation, which had grown difficult, was becoming almost impossible for the average Liberian.

So was eating. Rice was in short supply. People had begun to accuse rice distributors of holding rice off the market to create an artificial shortage justify a price increase. The official price for a hundred kilo bag of rice was $35.00 Liberian, but retailers were complaining of prices running from $40.00 to $50.00 at the docks. I was able to buy six bags, which I distributed to Stephen Cheor, Johnson Willy, and Richard Geah, our house help and watchmen, but only because I could pay in US dollars. No one was hungry yet, but they were edging over from worried to desperate. Most had rice for today, but where it come from for tomorrow?

President Doe back-peddled on his infamous "Cutlasses and Single-barrels'' speech. He acknowledged, in a backhanded way, that his statement had triggered the wave of cutlass killings in the capital that had claimed its eighteenth victim by Thursday. He warned people it, "Should not be taken as license by certain people to get even with their rivals or those they may have had some misunderstanding with. Liberians are at war with rebels, not with Gios and Manos.''

The President called for the people of Monrovia to gather for an anti-rebel rally on the following day. Apparently as a propaganda coup timed to coincide with the rally, government announced on the 25th the recapture of Buchanan and the deaths of three hundred and fifty NPFL troops at Gbarnga--a claim quickly repudiated by both diplomatic and other sources. A wildly pro-government crowd greeted the President as he offered to step down if that would bring peace. "I can go into private life while continuing my education at the university here,'' he said. His announcement was greeted with predictable shouts of, "No, no, we want Doe!'' Western journalists at the rally noted the absence of the President's inner circle, hinting that they had already deserted the sinking ship.

That night, another trip to the airport reduced the ELWA contingent even further. Their sendoff was dramatic. At the airport, waiting in the lower lobby by the front entrance, departing missionaries scrambled for cover when they heard gunshots just outside. It was no attack, though. A soldier, angered in some way by a moneybus driver, resorted to the use of armed force to win the argument. With his M-16 rifle, he shot out all four tires of the money bus as the driver made an unsuccessful attempt to flee. SIM missionaries awaiting flights inside the terminal building used the occasion to practice vaulting rows of chairs into shelter behind piles of luggage.

Travelers trying to reach Kakata by road on Friday found themselves turned back far short of their destination by soldiers. They reported seeing wounded people travelling toward Monrovia, but could not say if they were military or civilian. Saturday, the NPFL captured a checkpoint near Kakata, a mere thirty five miles from Monrovia.

Our Sunday evening service on May 27 was pitifully small. Liberians, afraid to come out at night, were staying away in droves. We had moved the starting time up to five o'clock in order to dismiss long before dark, but few wanted to brave the roads, even by the fading light of early evening. Missionaries in attendance were mostly from ELWA. Henry Hungerpillar from the Carver Mission compound, not more than a quarter mile down the road, had travelled farther than anyone else at church that night.

Liberians who could afford the luxury flooded their government offices in search of passports and exit visas. On Monday, the 28th of May, six hundred Nimba citizens swarmed the United Nations Development Program offices in Congo Town, protesting the indiscriminate killing of Gio and Mano people. They complained that their homes were no longer safe, that the armed men in military uniforms were ransacking them in their relentless hunt for rebels. Government gave its assurances that they would be safe in their homes, to which they were encouraged to return.

On the same day, former Justice Minister in the Doe government "Chea'' Cheapoo called on Justice Minister Jenkins Scott, Defense Minister Boima Barclay, and the heads of internal security to resign for their failure to control their men. Soldiers had harassed him at his house the night before. Cheapoo remarked, "Most of these soldiers do these acts under the pretext of searching for rebels. If they want to see the rebels, let them go to Buchanan or Nimba, and stop killing innocent people.'' He warned the marauders he would shoot them himself if they returned.

Lack of discipline in the Liberian army was rampant. During one of my last visits to the Paynesville Supermarket, three armed soldiers walked into the store and went from shopper to shopper demanding money. One carried an Uzi, which he twirled on his finger by the trigger guard like a wild west gunfighter. One of the soldiers, so drunk he needed my shopping cart for support, tried to panhandle me. I played dumb, although with his Liberian English slurred almost to incomprehensibility, it didn't take much of an act. He was so far gone he eventually forgot what he'd come for and simply staggered off.

Government issued a call for all the loose soldiers in Monrovia to report to Barclay Training Center downtown for reassignment. They "would be treated as rebels'' if they failed to respond. Desperation was apparent in the call.

In the meantime, NPFL forces were tightening the noose around Monrovia. With their capture of the crossroad at Kakata, their movement around the Firestone plantation, what a spokesman called "definitive control'' of Buchanan and Gbarnga, and a planned movement on Roberts Field, led by Charles Taylor himself, Monrovia was fast becoming a city without law. What restraints on behavior there were, were disintegrating with the Patriotic Front advance. Checkpoints were springing up throughout the city, shopkeepers and business people were staying off the streets after dark, roguings by armed men, something unheard of as recently as April, were reported, and panic gripped at people's hearts.

The New York Times, on May 18, printed an article about the Liberian situation under the headline, "War in Liberia unfolds without world attention.'' Within two weeks, Liberia had grabbed the world's attention with a vengeance. In the early morning hours of May 30, a group of armed men in military uniforms, acknowledged to be Liberian soldiers by all observers except the Liberian government, committed an atrocity that violated both international law and the humane sensibilities of the world at large.

The six hundred or more Gio and Mano refugees were sleeping in the open in the compound of the UN Development Program that night. Rejecting what they saw as the government's empty promise of safety at home, they remained crowded inside the walls. If there was safety anywhere in Monrovia, they thought, it should be on property owned by the United Nations.

Around three in the morning, they were awakened by the sound of trucks, military trucks with army license numbers, screeching to a halt near the gate at the rear of the compound. Men dressed in military uniforms piled out of the trucks and demanded entry to the locked area. The guards courageously refused and the men forced their way in, shooting two guards, killing one, and bayoneting another.

Official sources could confirm only one refugee killed in the compound itself, but it was not because the invaders had not tried. Eye witnesses reported bayonetings, shooting, aggressive pursuit of anyone seen trying to flee. A large number of men, women, and children were loaded in the trucks, but in an unusual act of mercy, the women and children were then returned to the compound. Thirty or forty, mostly men and teenage boys, were hauled away in the trucks.

Most of those taken were never seen again.

One truckload of victims were driven to Paynesville, where they were unloaded not far from the entrance to West Africa Christian High School. Lined up to face a firing squad, a few escaped in the dark to tell their story. ELWA security men found four bodies in the bush near WACHS the next morning.

As unnerving as that was, it was only the beginning.

One of the intended victims, shot through by a bullet that entered his back and passed through his body, survived the attack. Critically wounded, he lay still in the grass until the attackers were sure all were dead and left. Over the next hour or two, he dragged himself the two miles to ELWA hospital early on the morning of May 30.