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When desperate refugees storm the U.S. Embassy or rocket-armed fighters attack it, Horacio "Hersh" Hernandez guards the gates.

He is a private contractor who has been in charge of protecting the embassy compound since 1995. He's seen nine of his locally hired guards killed and 43 wounded as wave after wave of Liberia's wars lapped at the razor-wire-topped walls, but never breached them.

As rebels fought their way into the heart of the capital this summer, thousands of civilians ran through zinging bullets and exploding shells to besiege the embassy's gate. Piling corpses of family and friends outside the walls, they angrily screamed demands for U.S. help.

"They didn't want to attack us -- they were frustrated that others were being evacuated and not them," said Hernandez, a 49-year-old retired Marine lieutenant colonel. "They wanted us to intervene, to stop the slaughter. But we were not in a position to do that."

Mortar shells also hit in the sprawling, oceanside compound during the fighting that finally drove warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor into exile in August.

Hernandez was responsible for keeping the mobs at bay, while deciding who to let in, and who to leave outside at the mercy of the fighters. He said his Liberian guards "were filling the sandbags, working to have dead bodies removed, organizing food -- that stuff is not in the contract, but it's defusing a volatile situation."

Hernandez runs African operations for Inter-Con, an American security company with 18,000 employees worldwide. It has its Africa headquarters in Monrovia, and its employees also guard U.S. embassies in Ghana, Guinea, Togo, Benin and Tunisia.

"The only time we're going to have 30, 40, 50 Marines here is in a crisis," Hernandez said.

Not always.

In 1996, when Liberia's 15 years of bloodshed also battered Monrovia, employees of a different U.S. firm that delivered supplies to the embassy had to scrounge guns from dead Liberian fighters and help hold the compound until Navy SEALS arrived.

A blister cracking the window at the embassy's main gate is a reminder of yet another round of war.

On the morning of Sept. 17, 1998, Hernandez walked outside to find 300 fighters surrounding the embassy, pointing their AK-47s and rocket-launchers at the Americans. One of Taylor's rivals, Roosevelt Johnson, had just scrambled inside for sanctuary with some of his militiamen.

Taylor's troops stormed the front barriers at the embassy gate, and started executing rival fighters on the spot.

Hernandez, knocked to the ground by a rifle butt that shattered five teeth, held the gate with three other guards. They were the front line for the small force inside the embassy -- six Marines, and U.S diplomats who put on flak vests and picked up assault rifles.

The defense held. Hernandez estimates 300 Liberian civilians and fighters, but no Americans, died during the standoff, before Johnson could be flown out from the compound's helipad into exile.

Hernandez, a native Cuban who served 20 years as a Marine, was asked why he works in one of the world's most dangerous places, why he isn't back home with his wife and four children in Virginia.

"I've had four kids in college, with one of them in law school," he said with a laugh. "But it's not just a money thing: It's my profession. It's what I know."

He said he tries to make a difference in life.

"Because of their valor, this country is getting another chance," Hernandez said, pointing to the embassy's guards. "It allowed others (aid groups) to stay here -- and food, water and medicine to be delivered."

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"I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. . . . . .
They've experienced pain and bought jewelry."