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Post Hosts Gander Ceremony
Posted: Thursday, December 9, 2010 3:44 pm | Updated: 3:50 pm, Thu Dec 9, 2010.

Post hosts Gander ceremony by Megan Locke, Courier staff

This Sunday marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most devastating losses in 101st Airborne Division history the Gander crash.

On that cold winter morning, 248 Soldiers and eight crew members died upon takeoff of an Arrow Air flight in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada.

The service members, mostly assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, were en route to Fort Campbell after a six-month peacekeeping mission to the Sinai, Egypt.

Fort Campbell’s annual remembrance and wreath laying ceremony will be Sunday, starting at 1 p.m. All community members, whether personally impacted by the crash or not, are invited to attend the ceremony at Fort Campbell’s Task Force 3-502nd Memorial Tree Park, located between Normandy and Screaming Eagle boulevards.

Retired Maj. Gen. John Herrling, 2nd Brigade commander at the time of the crash, is scheduled to speak, along with the Army’s Chief of Chaplains Maj. Gen. Douglas Carver, a Fort Campbell chaplain in 1985.

“It’s been 25 years but I haven’t forgotten as I’m sure they surely have not forgotten,” said Herrling about surviving Family members in an interview earlier this year. “Their sons and daughters did a wonderful job, and they really need to be proud of their service.”

For Family members of the fallen and the rest of the Screaming Eagles, the tragedy is one that is memorialized in hearts and minds year round.

“Once you go through a tragedy like that, you realize that this can happen at other places and other times,” Herrling said.

Current Installation Chap. (Col.) Roger Heath, 101st Airborne Division DIVARTY chaplain 25 years ago, remembers that December day vividly.

Heath deployed on a similar peacekeeping mission to the Sinai in 1984 with the Rakkasans, and he said many of these same Soldiers were reassigned and deployed with the 3-502nd in 1985.

The battalion’s chaplain, Maj. Troy Carter, was killed in the crash. As a result, Heath was one of the many 101st Airborne Soldiers cross-leveled to fill his position.

Even before Heath became the battalion’s chaplain, he remembers the despair from survivors that winter day.

“It was a tradition that many of those who deployed the previous year met their counterpart at the [Campbell Army Airfield] when they returned the following year,” he said. “After hearing that a military aircraft crashed at Gander, many feared it was our plane.

“We made our way to the 2nd Brigade gym to be with the Families awaiting their return. Many were gathered in the gym with lots of welcome home signs, flowers, yellow ribbons.”

Heath recalls a chorus of screams and crying when the commander came to the microphone with the official announcement of no survivors.

“One young Korean wife did not speak English,” he recalled. “A Korean-American chaplain assistant interpreted the situation to her. She kept saying, ‘no, no,’ in Korean and calling her husband’s name.  She was alone in this country with no one, and didn’t speak the language. I believe the Korean community helped her with many of the details of a survivor.”

The Screaming Eagles are known for their sacrifices in combat, but it is Gander that taught Heath what being a Soldier really means. The 3-502nd Soldiers tasked to help keep the peace between Egypt and Israel serve as an example of a job well done, he said.

“It was the first time I felt the cost in human terms what our nation pays for peace in the world,” he explained. “It takes more than beans, bullets and money. It often takes lives to keep our world safe. Taxpayers pay some expenses and bills, Soldiers pay the ultimate price.”

Hopkinsville will also host a memorial service at the city’s Gander Memorial Park, Sunday. The ceremony is from 3 until 4:30 p.m.

Additional remembrance ceremonies are scheduled at Arlington National Cemetery, where several of the fallen Soldiers are buried, as well as at Gander.