PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Cpl. Harry Milbin returned to Haiti just as he dreamed he might: as a U.S. Marine.

“I always wanted to come back, and when I did, I wanted to be in this uniform,” said Milbin, who lived for 17 years in the impoverished Carrefour mountain district near the capital before his mother put him on a plane bound for Brooklyn — a trip that would insert 11 years before the two would again embrace.

Milbin, of India Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, combined financial forces with his sister to send $100 a month to his mother, and more when he could, but didn’t have the cash to fly down for a visit.

Fluent in his native Creole, Milbin, 28, is one of a few dozen U.S. military personnel of Haitian descent deployed to Haiti to quell unrest as rebels fought to unseat former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, ousted from power on Feb. 29.

Army Spc. Roowdolf Charles, a 23-year-old Haitian-American also fluent in Creole, said he didn’t exactly “volunteer” to come to Haiti, but didn’t balk at deploying to the country on the western side of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, shared with the Dominican Republic.

“I was on my way to Airborne school when they said ‘You’re from Haiti. You speak Creole. You’re going to Haiti.’ So here I am. But I wanted to come back.”

The soldier, with Company B, 9th Psychological Operations Battalion, lived in Haiti until he was 6 years old, when his family moved him to Newark, N.J., in search of a better life, he said.

Charles’ childhood memories mirror those shared by other American troops — stories of poverty and families migrating “in shifts” to America in search of better opportunities.

“We didn’t have money to pay for everyone. So one goes ahead and makes the way.”

First, his mother left. More than a year later, his father and sister joined her, leaving Charles and two brothers with their grandparents in a town, whose name he does not remember, about an hour’s drive northeast of Port-au-Prince.

“I remember living with my grandparents on a farm. I remember running around, half-naked, doing yard work and planting rice.”

He understands the poverty, understands the filth in which the Haitians live.

And in 17 years, little has changed.

“It’s a little sad because it’s all the same,” he said.

With Haitian-American troops, it’s not just the language skills for translation that prove invaluable, said Col. David Berger, commanding officer of 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines.

The 3,000 peacekeepers in the country, more than half of them American, must learn to read the body language and understand behavior not seen in the United States, Berger said.

The Haitian-American troops educate military leadership about the culture, a “wealth of knowledge on the ‘why’ part,” Berger said. “Like why do they drive like maniacs?” Why do they dump garbage and excrement on the streets, or why do little children beg for chocolate?

The typical answer has been: “They’re not rude, sir, it’s just the way it is,” Berger chuckled.

With the improved security and force-protection status in Haiti, Berger said he is working on plans to let some of his Marines spend time with their Haitian relatives.

On this deployment, Marine Sgt. James Beauvais, 26, is seeing Haiti for the first time, again. Though he lived in Port-au-Prince until he was 6½ years old, he remembers nothing of his childhood.

“But my parents told me stories of how bad it was. But I didn’t realize how bad until I stepped foot in this country,” said the radio operator with the Corps’ Chemical Biologic Incident Response Force Headquarters and Service Company in Indian Head, Md., and deployed because of his language skills.

He is fluent in Creole, one of the two primary languages spoken in Haiti. French is the other.

Army Sgt. Boris Boisson, 25, had hoped his native Haiti would have gone through a grand metamorphosis during his 12-year absence.

“I expected it to be different, but things are still the same,” said the Army reservist who, much to his wife’s disappointment, volunteered to deploy to Haiti a mere month after returning from a six-month deployment to Djibouti.

“I wanted the chance to help here. The situation here sucks, and I’m hoping to make a difference.”