Published in the Fort Campbell Courier Dec. 19, 1985
Hanger 4 at Campbell Army Air Field stands only a few spaces from where members of Task Force 3-502nd, left six months ago for a peacekeeping tour of duty in the Sinai Desert.
Monday, it was the site of a heart-rending memorial service led by President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, and attended by more than 350 relatives of the 248 Soldiers who never returned home from that mission.
“They were happy. They were returning home to kith and kin,” the President told the Families. “They are now in the arms of God.”
Through his visit, so soon after the Soldiers were killed in an airplane crash at Gander, Newfoundland, Canada, one week ago today, the President reminded the mourners, “You don’t grieve alone. We grieve as a nation, together, as together we say goodbye to those who died in the service of our country.”
The President’s speech, however, did not serve as much to comfort the Family members as did the personal condolences, which he and Mrs. Reagan expressed to each Family member present at the memorial service.
The expressions of sympathy and concern were given after the President’s brief, eight-minute speech.
He and Mrs. Reagan embraced mothers, wives, daughters and girlfriends whose faces clearly bore the pain and stress of their losses.
One young mother clutched her recently-born son, who was born while his father was in the Sinai, as the President gently stroked the baby’s back.
The President and First Lady held the hands of fathers and consoled sons and brothers as they inched their way, row by row, past each Family member.
The scenes were poignant, the moments extremely tender. Sitting near the Families were some 300 members of Task Force 3-502nd who served in the Sinai with the Soldiers killed last week. Dressed in desert camouflage uniforms which symbolized their peacekeeping tour of duty, the Soldiers sat quietly and solemnly as the President and Mrs. Reagan made their way through the mourners.
These Soldiers, explained Chaplain (Capt.) Richard Murdoch suffered a different grief called “survivor’s guilt.”
“Each one of us not on that plane has asked himself, ‘Why wasn’t it me?’,” Murdoch explained.
Murdoch’s insight became increasingly clear after he explained that Chaplain (Capt.) Troy Carter, killed in the crash, replaced Murdoch as 3rd. Bn., chaplain only months before the task force left for the Sinai mission.
“We know that there is nothing we could have done differently, yet we can’t help feeling the way we do,” Murdoch said.
During the memorial ceremony, both President and Mrs. Reagan seemed almost caught up in the grief, which hung in Hanger 4 like a cloud.
Mrs. Reagan several times wiped her eyes dry with a handkerchief and the President’s voice was filled with emotion as he said “I’m sorry,” over and over again.
Some Family members wept openly as they were being comforted. Some held back their tears, but stared blankly ahead, almost numb to the fact that the President and First Lady were present.
Even as the stricken Families were being comforted, the first of their 248 dead loved ones were being carried from Gander to Dover Air Force Base, Del., for positive identification.
As honor guard unit headed by 2nd Bn., 502nd Inf. Rgt., a sister battalion of the 3rd Bn., 502nd Inf. Rgt., is commanded by Lt. Col. Eugene Davis.
Although the 2nd Bn. is heading the honor guard, Soldiers from all across the division and Fort Campbell are included in the unit, which numbers about 190 Soldiers.
Reagan’s speech
We are here in the name of the American people. The passing of American Soldiers killed as they returned from difficult duty abroad is marked by our presence here. At this point the dimensions of the tragedy are known to almost every person in the country. Most of the young men and women we mourn were returning to spend the holidays with their Families. They were full of happiness and laughter as they pushed off from Cairo, and those who saw them at their last stop spoke of how they were singing Christmas carols. They were happy; they were returning to kith and kin.
And then the terrible crash, the flags lowered to halfstaff, and the muffled sobs, and we wonder: How this could be? How could it have happened, and why? We wonder at the stark tragedy of it all, the enormity of the lost. For lost were not only the 248 but all of the talent, the wisdom, and the idealism that they had accumulated; lost too were their experience and their enormous idealism. Who else but an idealist would choose to become a member of the Armed Forces and put himself or herself in harm’s way for the rest of us? Who but the idealist would go to hard duty in one of the most troubled places of the world and go not as a matter of conquest, but as a force that existed to keep the peace?
Some people think of members of the military as only warriors, fierce in their martial expertise. But the men and women we mourn today were peacemakers. They were there to protect life and preserve a peace, to act as a force for stability and hope and trust. Their commitment was as strong as their purpose was pure. And they were proud. They had a rendezvous with destiny and a potential they never failed to meet. Their work was a perfect expression of the best of the Judeo-Christian tradition. They were the ones of whom Christ spoke when He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”
Tragedy is nothing new to mankind, but somehow it’s always a surprise, never loses its power to astonish. Those of us who did not lose a brother or a son or daughter or friend or father are shaken nonetheless. And we all mourn with you. We cannot fully share the depth of your sadness, but we pray that the special power of this season will make its way into your sad hearts and remind you of some old joys; remind you of the joy it was to know these fine young men and women, the joy it was to witness the things they said and the jokes they played, the kindnesses they did, and how they laughed. You were part of that, and you who mourn were a part of them. And just as you think today of the joy they gave you, think for a moment of the joy you gave them and be glad. For love is never wasted; love is never lost. Love lives on and sees us through sorrow. From the moment love is born, it is always with us, keeping us aloft in the time of flooding and strong in the time of trial.
You do not grieve alone. We grieve as a nation, together, as together we say goodbye to those who died in the service of their country. In life they were our heroes, in death our loved ones, our darlings. They were happy and singing, and they were right: They were going home. And so, we pray: Receive, O Lord, into your heavenly kingdom the men and women of the 101st Airborne, the men and women of the great and fabled Screaming Eagles. They must be singing now, in their joy, flying higher than mere man can fly and as flights of angels take them to their rest.
I know that there are no words that can make your pain less or make your sorrow less painful. How I wish there were. But of one thing we can be sure – as a poet said of other young Soldiers in another war: They will never grow old; they will always be young. And we know one thing with every bit of our thinking: They are now in the arms of God.
God bless you.