The Marines have Landed – Operation Unified Assistance - Part 1

The USS Duluth (LPD-6) 

At MTNTOUGH, we often use the story of “The Boxing Day Tsunamis” to illustrate and teach our Always Ready Ethos, where people on the beach had 240 seconds to save their lives. Physicality, mental toughness, and readiness were defining for survivors that day. Our Leadership Coach and Military SME, Byron Owen, provided humanitarian assistance following the tsunami. This is his account of the events in 2004 and a deeper look at the mindset that made the difference between life and death:

The USS Duluth cut a steady path through the Indian Ocean, her bow rising and falling as she pushed west toward Iraq. The sea was calm enough to be boring, a wide metallic blue stretching out in all directions, broken only by the ship’s wake and the low thrum of engines working far below the waterline. Inside the hull, life moved on rails. The night watch stumbled to their racks as the morning crew got up and made their way to their stations. It was the kind of morning that barely registered, another day at sea folded neatly into the one before it.

It was time to get to work. I headed into the wardroom for hot coffee, overcooked bacon, and fake eggs.

The wardroom was full of khaki uniforms and green utilities. Mess men moved back and forth behind the counter, ladling eggs and scooping powdered potatoes with the practiced indifference of Marines who would rather be anywhere else. One of them was Lance Corporal Jonathan Hoch, which caught my attention immediately. Hoch had a flair for colorful language and a long-running contempt for authority that no amount of paperwork had managed to cure. He was the kind of Marine who treated profanity like punctuation and showed up to Navy PT hours at the gym wearing green silkies two sizes too small, daring someone to say something about it. Seeing him in the wardroom, serving officers, felt like an unforced error.

That was something I wanted to look into, but it would have to wait. I scanned the room for the senior officer present and spotted the ship’s XO at a table mid-conversation with his department heads. I stepped past the line, paused, and waited. He looked up.

“Permission to join the mess, sir.”

He nodded without breaking stride. “Granted.”

Back to Hoch. I walked over to the counter.

“What’ll it be, sir,” he said, stretching the word just enough to carry meaning.

“Never mind that,” I said, studying him. “They assigned you to the wardroom? That can’t be right.”

He shrugged. “Gunny Oxner must have a sense of humor.” A half-smile crept across his face, equal parts smug and amused. “Shall I get you some coffee, m’lord?”

I rolled my eyes and groaned. “No, thank you, Hoch. I’ll manage on my own.”

I turned toward the coffee pot just as the deck lurched hard to starboard.

The line collapsed in on itself. Trays flew. A chair skidded sideways and slammed into a bulkhead. Someone went down hard, shoulder first. Plates shattered across the deck. A framed painting tore loose from the wall and exploded against a table, glass scattering everywhere. Coffee sloshed out of mugs and across uniforms. The ship rolled again, slower this time but deeper, sending bodies into walls and hands shooting out for balance. Hoch caught himself on the counter, eyes wide now, jaw clenched. No one spoke. The only sounds were breaking porcelain, boots scraping steel, and the low, unfamiliar groan of the hull as it settled back into the water.

I caught Hoch’s gaze. We had the same look on our faces.

What the hell was that?

It didn’t take long to find out. A massive undersea earthquake had triggered a tsunami that tore across the region. We didn’t know it then, but we had been near the epicenter when it happened. The scale was hard to grasp at first. What we felt in the wardroom was only the edge of it. Far from where we stood, the water had already come ashore, and nothing there would look the same again.

By midday the plan had changed. We were no longer steaming toward Iraq. The Duluth was headed south to Sri Lanka to deliver humanitarian assistance. The Bonhomme Richard and the Rushmore would go to Indonesia and the Philippines. The word assistance felt inadequate given the scope of the problem but we would do our best.

Flight operations aboard the USS Duluth 

I wanted to get outside and look around, but the weather decks were secured for flight operations. Helicopters cycled in and out as supplies were brought aboard and stored. pallets stacked where there had been empty space earlier in the day. I packed my rucksack for whatever came next. No matter what happened, or wherever we went, it was clear that we would go ashore. 

We mustered in the well deck as the ship slowed and began to ballast down. The space was dim and cavernous, the air thick with the smell of fuel, saltwater, and hot machinery. An LCU sat low in the partially flooded compartment, its crew moving deliberately across the deck, their heads down as they worked through their checklist.

A crewman waved us forward. We stepped onto the LCU, boots clanging against the ramp as we moved aboard and took up positions along the sides. One of my squad leaders, Sergeant Robb Elliott, stood near the front, steady and unremarkable in the way that always seemed to matter most. He looked exactly like a Marine was supposed to look. Tall, fit, squared away. Elliott scanned the space without urgency. If he had any thoughts about where we were headed, he kept them to himself. Marines clustered in loose groups along the bulkheads and near the ramps, packs at their feet. There was nothing left to do at that point but wait. 

An LCU departing the well deck of the USS New York

Eventually the ship’s stern gate lowered, revealing a flat gray-blue ocean beyond it. The engines came up and the LCU eased backward, clearing the well deck. As it left the ship, there was a brief, weightless drop as the hull settled into open water, followed by the steady push of the engines as we pivoted away and headed toward shore.

The transit was short. Once the LCU cleared the ship and settled into open water, the shoreline came up faster than I expected. Spray kicked up along the sides and drifted back across the deck, coating our gear and faces with salt. The wind felt clean and refreshing after being stuck inside a ship for weeks.

There was debris in the water ahead of us. It was hard to make out but I could see broken pieces of wood and furniture. The farther in we went, the more crowded it became. An old table bobbed past the bow and rolled once in our wake before slipping under the hull. A refrigerator floated upright for a moment, absurdly intact, then tipped and disappeared behind us. A heavy and sour smell came with it, carried in the spray. 

Remains of a house floating in the water – author photo

Bodies drifted among the wreckage. They rolled slowly as the LCU passed, lifted and lowered by the same gentle swell that carried everything else. No one said anything. The engines held their rhythm and the craft continued forward, indifferent to what it was pushing through. Sergeant Elliott stood near the front, his eyes forward. He adjusted his stance as the hull rose and fell beneath his feet. 

The shoreline came into clear focus moments later. Boats sat hundreds of yards inland, tilted at odd angles, their broken hulls resting against buildings. Palm trees were snapped or bent over, their trunks tangled together like they’d been swept aside without resistance. The beach itself looked scraped raw, churned up and littered with debris. People moved along the waterline, stopping and starting as they picked their way through what was left.

LCU landing on the beach in Sri Lanka – author photo

The LCU slowed as it approached, the pitch of the engines dropping as the hull shuddered lightly and the ramp came down. We stepped off into soft sand layered with splintered wood and trash. People stood nearby and watched us arrive, nervous but quiet. Two Caucasian men stood out among the Sri Lankans farther up the beach. Their rumpled civilian clothes, pale skin, and short haircuts marked them as Marines, despite a few days of beard growth.

I walked up the beach and addressed them. “I take it you’re with the advance party?”

“Staff Sergeant Blonder,” one of them said, offering his hand. “I’m the freefall team leader with the Force Recon platoon. We have a beach survey and a threat assessment for you.” He paused for a beat and gave a subtle nod. “Sir.”

The other man stood a few feet behind him with his arms crossed, his eyes moving across the beach. He didn’t offer his hand.

“You can call me Jim, or Snake,” he said, glancing away. “We’re trying to keep a low profile.”

I rolled my eyes and looked at Blonder. “Snake? Is this guy for real? He one of yours?”

Blonder shook his head and laughed quietly. “Hell no.” He tilted his head toward the other Marine. “I’ve been stuck with this dork for two days. He’s with HET.”

Snake didn’t react.

Blonder’s expression changed as he looked back toward the shoreline and the people moving through the wreckage. “We’ve been looking for any indication the Tamil Tigers might try to take advantage of what’s happened here.” 

He shook his head. It was a small, almost imperceptible movement. “There’s no threat,” he said. “These people are just trying to deal with what they’ve lost.”

 Blonder gestured toward the road leading inland. “Honestly, the biggest problem so far is traffic. People here drive like maniacs.”

I looked past him at the beach and the slow, deliberate movement of people among the debris. Nothing about that assessment seemed off. 

Tsunami damage in Sri Lanka

The story of Operation Unified Assistance continues in part II of this series. 

Author Bio:

 Byron Owen is a Reconnaissance Marine with tours as both a platoon commander and commanding officer at the elite 1st Force Reconnaissance Company. He also had the honor of commanding several intelligence and cyber units to include Combat Mission Team One, Cyberspace Warfare Task Group 1, and 3d Radio Battalion. He writes about influence warfare and cyber at keyterraincyber.com, and about leadership at broadswordsix.com