US marines undertake "gut-wrenching" clean up in Sri Lanka (Yahoo! News)

excerpts from article...

GINTOTA, Sri Lanka (AFP) - Despite their training and combat experience, the US marines working in tsunami-hit Sri Lanka admit that picking through the shattered remains of peoples' lives has been a heart-rending exercise. --snip--

"There was rubble everywhere. It was like the Twin Towers," in New York destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks says Private First Class Damon Carr, describing the scene when he arrived.

"I didn't know where we were going to start from; everywhere you looked, there was rubble."

He found a photo album with a family snap of half a dozen people and says he handed it back to the mother pictured in it. She was the only one still alive.

"I almost cried," he says. "We're marines, we've been trained, but I never thought I'd be standing here, picking up the pieces of someone's whole life." -- snip --

Amid the mess, the occasional piece of torn cloth -- perhaps once someone's dress -- and pieces of household items still peak through.

Hospital Corpsman First Class Tim Dittlinger, who normally provides medical care to the marines from the 9th Engineers Support Battalion here, scrunches up a piece of material and tosses it into the bulldozer's jaws as he admits it's been tough.

"It's been heartbreaking and gut-wrenching. It's hard to come here and do what we've been doing, dumping what people have built up their whole lives," he says.
"Picking up people's lives, it's not what we've been expecting to do."

Yahoo! News - US marines undertake "gut-wrenching" clean up in Sri Lanka