My name is SSG Tom Murphy and I am with the 747th Military Police Company of the Massachusetts Army national Guard. When we arrived in Louisiana with 140 MP\'s we flew into Belle Chase NVS. We stayed there for 3 days and then we boarded buses and our own military vehicles for the drive into New Orleans. What we saw was total and utter devastation. Nothing was left untouched. Every tree, bush, sign post, vehicle and building had some sort of damage. Some damage was obviously caused by looting but the rest was hurricane damage. As we drove through areas where the water had receded we could see the marks left by the water sometimes 6\' or better up from the ground. The smell of rot and decay everywhere cannot be explained in words. You\'d have to smell it for yourself to believe it. When we arrived in New Orleans proper we staged at the Army Reserve center on Lakeshore Drive. From there we moved out to the campus of the University of New Orleans. The campus was beautiful but abandoned. Not a soul in site. Cars in the parking lot but an errie silence from the deserted campus. We immediately set up \'housekeeping\' to make this our base of operations. We commandeered the gym and the athletic building as our \'home\'. Everyone slept on the gym floor with our cots and personal items. Once we had secured the campus to ensure there were no stranded people looters or other potential victims we began to patrol the Elysian Fields neighborhood and the surrounding area. We patrolled on foot and in vehicles. We even located the bicycles belonging to the UNO campus police and used them as well. It was fun in 100+ degree heat!! Seriously, it was fun. After a few days we opened a Civilian Assistance Center at the UMO forum on Lakeshore Drive. We helped people get back to thier homes and validated the ID\'s of contractors working in the area. We ate MRE\'s and drank gallons of bottled water. We were able on occasion able to avail ourselves of a hot meal at the Coast Guard Station where they were filling the huge sandbags to be droped into the levee breaches. We were at UNO until the end of September when we redeployed home in the face of Hurricane Rita.