Those Who Want to Help

The killing of six Red Cross workers in Chechnya was appalling but not surprising to Mission Viejo resident Terry McElroy, a psychiatric nurse who served with the International Red Cross in Kuwait at the close of the Persian Gulf War.

The potential for harm and even death is the risk that most Red Cross workers willingly accept to fulfill the humanitarian ideals that inspire them, McElroy said.

“Red Cross workers are dying all over the world, not just in Chechnya,” said McElroy, 48, a registered nurse at UCI Medical Center in Orange and a 14-year Red Cross volunteer. “The politics of the situation are not important. If you see people who are starving and suffering and need medical care, you want to help them.”

McElroy has participated in numerous relief efforts, including the 1986 Cerritos plane crash, the Northridge earthquake and the Laguna Beach fires. In January 1995, he joined a contingent of U.S. volunteers who paid their own way to reach Kobe, Japan, to help survivors of the earthquake that killed 5,500 people and devastated the once-thriving metropolis.

“Red Cross workers are faced with life-threatening situations around the world,” he said. “It’s just a fact of life.”

In Kuwait, McElroy was part of an international group of relief workers providing medical care to those who returned to Kuwait City after the Iraqis were driven out by U.S. ground forces.

But he was faced with violence from an unexpected source. The Kuwaiti police had engaged in a campaign of retaliation against those who had remained in the city during its occupation by Iraqi soldiers. Those who had remained were suspected by Kuwaiti police of collaborating with the enemy.

“It was not uncommon to hear machine gun fire throughout the night. I saw a body that was strapped to the bumper of a Jeep. The Kuwait police were driving around town, exhibiting this body as a warning.”

At the Al-Abadali Refugee Camp, just 100 yards from the Iraq border, McElroy and others heard constant rumors that Iraqi forces were regrouping nearby for a counterattack. But the threat of attack was secondary to the daunting task at hand: trying to relieve the suffering of 15,000 refugees in an oppressive desert environment where temperatures often reached 125 degrees.

“We clearly understood that the element of risk was always there. Kuwaiti police would come into the camp and take some of the refugees out, and we would never see them again. There was very little security that was provided.

“Most of us take a very unprejudiced view of the world; we are there because we feel like we’re doing something for humanity. But not everyone understands our mission. Things get confused in the psychology of war, with people who are oppressed and who they think the enemy is.”

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It is the concept of neutrality that came under attack in Chechnya, said George Chitty, chief executive officer of the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross, who has had experience in overseas relief efforts.

“For some of these rebel groups and terrorists, we have a situation where if you are not on their side, regardless of whether you’re helping them or not, then you are their enemy,” said Chitty, who has two friends working in Russia to establish a Red Cross organization there.

“It’s important to understand that this is not a whole government speaking, this is a few people who care only about their individual cause.”

Chitty expects the slaying of the six Red Cross workers in Chechnya to strengthen the resolve of those who place themselves in harm’s way to help relieve human misery.

“There will be a deeper dedication to helping humanity from this,” he said. “If we give up in the face of calamity, then we have not fulfilled the role we intended to play.”

McElroy agrees that the killings will not discourage most Red Cross workers he has known.

“It does not deter me from the desire to do this kind of work,” he said. “It just makes me sad that there are those who would do this terrible thing to people whose sole intent is to relieve suffering.”