The Marines have Landed – Operation Unified Assistance - Part 3

USS Duluth offshore of Sri Lanka – author photo

Once the water site was up and running, there wasn’t much else for us to do. The water dogs had their system dialed in, the line moved steadily, and the engineers were already pushing farther inland, clearing roads and opening space faster than we could keep up with on foot. At that point, we were far less useful than the Marines running heavy equipment, and we all knew it.

Captain Perera seemed to reach the same conclusion. He watched the operation for a few minutes, then turned to me. “There is a school nearby,” he said. “It was badly damaged by the water and debris. The children have nowhere to go right now.”

He gestured inland, toward a low concrete building partially hidden by trees. “If you have Marines available,” he added, “we could use help clearing it.”

Author with some local children

That was an easy decision. We gathered a small group and followed him off the road and toward the school, stepping around fallen branches and chunks of masonry as we went. The building came into view slowly. Parts of the roof had collapsed, and debris filled the classrooms almost to the windows in places. Desks lay overturned and broken, books soaked and scattered across the floor, their pages stuck together with mud and silt.

A handful of locals stood nearby, watching quietly as we approached. A teacher stepped forward and spoke briefly with Perera, then nodded and moved aside. We set our packs down and started clearing debris by hand, passing broken desks and chunks of concrete out through shattered doorways and windows.

The work was slow and physical, the kind that leaves your hands raw and your back aching. Dust hung in the air, mixing with sweat and the smell of damp wood and mud. Every so often, a child would edge closer to the doorway to watch, lingering just long enough to be noticed before being pulled back by an adult.

Perera and I with a teacher – author photo

We worked until the rooms began to open up again, the floor visible beneath the mess. It wasn’t clean, but it was usable, and that was enough for now.

That felt like the right place to be.

HM3 Levin and I – author photo

By the time the sun began to sink, the pace of the day finally started to slow. The roads we could open were open. The water site was running steadily. Supplies were moving inland instead of piling up at the beach. Everyone was coated in dust and sweat, the heat still clinging even as the light softened. It felt less like an ending than a pause, the kind you take because your body insists on it.

Captain Perera found me near the edge of the road as the last of the engineers shut down their equipment for the day. He looked even more tired now, the sharpness worn off by the hours, but his posture was the same.

“You and your Marines should come with us this evening,” he said. “There is food.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Food?”

He nodded. “A feast, of sorts.” Then he added, almost as an aside, “This area is mostly Muslim. They will not eat pork.” He smiled, his grin wide. “I am not Muslim. We find ourselves… with a surplus of pork.”

Koggala Air Force Base sign – author photo

We followed him a short distance inland, past a line of trees and into a clearing in the Koggala Air Force Base where several pits had been dug into the ground. Filipino workers from the embassy stood nearby, tending them patiently, the smell of roasted meat thick in the air. The pigs had been cooking for hours, buried beneath banana leaves and earth, the way you cook when time is not the limiting factor. A few of the men waved us over, smiling easily, wiping their hands on their shirts.

Perera opening coconuts for the Marines – author photo

Perera walked over to a cooler resting in the shade and popped the lid. Inside were rows of cold beers packed in ice.

“Courtesy of the Sri Lankan Army,” he said, handing one to me.

I glanced over at Sergeant Elliott. He shrugged, a hopeful smile spreading across his face.

“Well,” I said, taking the bottle, “one or two beers is probably okay.” 

Elliott turned slowly and fixed Hoch with a stare. “Just coconuts for you Hoch,” he said flatly. “Did you hear me?”

Hoch nodded solemnly. “Loud and clear, Sergeant.” His devilish grin did not inspire confidence.

Corporal Nick Lavoie and Lance Corporal Jonathan Hoch – author photo

We settled in as the light faded, plates passed hand to hand, conversations overlapping in a dozen accents. For a little while, no one talked about roads or water or helicopters. The work would start again in the morning. Tonight, there was food, cold beer, and the brief sense that we were exactly where we were supposed to be.

And that was enough.

A few days later, the advance party from III MEF arrived and began to take control of the operation. What we had helped stand up was handed off methodically, one responsibility at a time, until it no longer belonged to us. Our role was finished. We returned to the ship, watched the shoreline recede, and turned back out to sea. The Duluth resumed her course west, the same steady rise and fall beneath our feet, and we continued on toward Iraq. What we left behind would keep moving without us, and what waited ahead was already coming into focus.

The events that followed the earthquake were not confined to a single coastline or country. The 9.1-magnitude undersea quake that struck the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004 generated a series of tsunamis that impacted fourteen nations and ultimately killed more than 227,000 people. Entire coastal communities were erased in minutes. Infrastructure failed almost immediately. Roads, ports, communications, and local emergency response collapsed under the scale and speed of the flooding.

Tsunami damage in Indonesia

What makes the tsunami particularly instructive is not simply its scale, but the speed at which ordinary life transitioned into catastrophe. In many of the most affected areas, there was little to no institutional warning. Sirens did not sound, authorities did not intervene in time, and there were no clear signals telling people how to respond. For many, the first unmistakable indication that something was wrong was not the water itself, but the sound of screaming, carried inland ahead of the surge.

In the absence of prior exposure or mental rehearsal, many people defaulted to inaction, not because they lacked intelligence or courage, but because their internal models of how the world worked had not yet caught up to what was unfolding in front of them. Faced with an event that fell outside normal experience, hesitation became a rational response, even as it proved catastrophic. The delay was often brief, measured in moments rather than minutes, but in an environment where time compressed violently, those moments were enough to determine the outcome.

The Indian Ocean Tsunami impacting Thailand

The footage captured that day offers an unusually clear window into how people respond under sudden, extreme stress. It shows crowds exposed to the same stimulus reacting in markedly different ways. Some people began moving immediately, heading for higher ground or climbing whatever vertical structure was available. Others froze in place and watched events unfold in front of them. That split-second divergence often determined who lived and who did not.

The people who survived did not rise to the occasion when the water appeared. They were either prepared to act under stress, or they were not. Those who had trained their bodies and minds to function in difficult conditions retained a larger margin for action, not because they were fearless or unusually composed, but because their baseline capacity was higher. When confusion and panic compressed the available time to respond, that extra margin mattered.

Author at TOUGH FEST 2025

Physical fitness provides a buffer against fatigue and panic. Familiarity with discomfort reduces hesitation when conditions deteriorate. A mental bias toward action shortens the gap between perception and response. None of these factors guarantee survival, but each increases the likelihood that someone will recognize the need to move and possess the capacity to do so. In a crisis measured in seconds, marginal advantages matter.

Living ‘Always Ready” is a practical framework that can help you navigate uncertainty. It emphasizes sustained physical capability rather than seasonal fitness. It prioritizes adaptability over optimization. It treats readiness as a condition to be maintained rather than a goal to be achieved once and set aside. Most importantly, it acknowledges that crises rarely announce themselves in advance, and that the moment when readiness is required is almost always earlier than expected. Maintaining a baseline of physical and mental preparedness expands the range of options available when fear arrives uninvited. 

The tsunami remains one of the clearest modern examples of this dynamic, not because it was unique, but because it was documented so thoroughly. It exposed, in real time, the consequences of delayed recognition and constrained capability. It also demonstrated that survival under extreme conditions often depends less on what people know than on what they are able to do, physically and mentally.

Author and MTN TOUGH founder Dustin Diefenderfer after completing TOUGHFEST

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 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