You Take the Bad With the Good

December, 1985, Arrow Air flight 1285 crashed Shortly after takeoff in Gander, Newfoundland with a loss of 248 members of the 101st Airborne Division and 8 crew. The division set about putting together a detachment to be at Dover AFB to receive the bodies. I'm the PFC first from the left and the SP4 on the other back corner is John Chenault from Indiana. The top picture is of the first casket off of the plane heading toward the hangar and the second picture is from inside the hangar, where a memorial service was held. Chenault and I went to basic together and remained friends during our time at Campbell. We spent the majority of our time wondering if we were carrying PV2 Melvin Reed from Tacoma, WA, who also was in our platoon for basic. I was roster number 336, Reed was 334.

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The one sad fact about military life, is that we always expect too lose buds durning war, but it is even harder to accept during peacetime.

A sad day for all.

I was at Goodfellow AFB in AIT when the crash occurred. Our relatively small contingent of soldiers had a ceremony to mark the loss of two of our own (as in MOS) - two of the soldiers on board had been linguists and had completed their training the previous year. My first experience with the boots and M16 up ended. The loss of those many bright futures was indeed sad.

I remember watching the ceremony on TV. Very moving.

The singing of RENDESVOUS WITH DESTINY by the Airborne's choir particularly stands out in my memory. Reagan officiated.

Griff, we were on a "break" waiting for the next C-141 Starlifter to arrive with more bodies when the ceremony was on TV. It was an odd feeling watching President Reagan at Campbell with the families while sitting in a holding area at Dover. Also, I love that song! I had it as a ringtone on my old phone. I actually had to manually program in the notes, which required a call to the division band where one of the trombone players helped me.

The first set of caskets were brought in and a memorial service was held, then they were moved to hearses and taken to the mortuary at Dover AFB. After the first set, the transfer cases were taken into the hangar and put straight into the hearses.

Not to get into the "conspiracy theories," but we were struggling with that first box. I don't know about you, but I don't think six infantrymen should have a problem carrying an aluminum box containing burnt remains. From personal experience I know severely burned bodies don't weigh much, but I mean we were really struggling with the weight of that box.

Remember the crash as I was a Flight engineer on a 63 series dc-8 part time ( same airframe as the crash). As I recall the otbd TR bucket was secured / stowed wrong , the TR CB #4 was not pulled and taged...the bucket deployed just after TO...nothing much you can do. I am sure of a eternial life....Those who belive will meet them all some day.