The other side of the coin

  • Published
  • By Maj. Ted Anderson
  • 39th Air Base Wing Chief of Safety
INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey --  A young United States Air Forces in Europe Airman had just returned from the worst leave in his life. He had flown back to the US with his wife to set her up in her mother's house as they prepared to divorce. While he was in the US he visited his own mother who lived nearby and then made his way back overseas.

Less than a week later he consumed enough alcohol to have a Blood Alcohol Count three times the legal limit and entered a British highway on the right side--that is the wrong side--of the road at 3 a.m. The car carrier coming the other way never saw the young airman until it was too late and collided with his car head-on. The truck driver was ok but the young airman did and was so badly burned that it was hard to identify his body.

Rather than dwelling on the young airman's decision to drive drunk, let's jump over to the other side of the world. A middle-aged C-130 Hercules pilot, and future Incirlik Chief of Safety, was at his desk after an early morning flight with Formal Training Unit students. In case you haven't guessed, that was me.

Several months earlier I'd almost nonchalantly volunteered to be a casualty notification officer because I knew the chances of a C-130 crash were slim. When my phone rang at 2 p.m. on that Friday afternoon last year, I found out I had really volunteered to notify family members in the local area for any airman who died anywhere in the world.

In less than two hours I met with the other notification officer and picked up a Government Owned Vehicle from the wing. We fought our way through the traffic to the last known address of the airman's mother-in-law so that we could notify his wife. After several knocks on her door and failed attempts to verify who lived there, we decided to start looking for the airman's mother. Unfortunately the airman hadn't kept his vRED up to date and we were unable to locate his mother the day of the accident.

Just as the sun was going down and we were about to call it quits for the night, a car pulled into the mother-in-law's driveway. We gave the two women time to get inside and then knocked on the door. At the time the young airman's body still hadn't been positively identified, so we notified the woman that her husband's duty status was unknown but that his car had been involved in a serious accident that left someone dead. She took it about as well as you could expect, and we excused ourselves and made our way home.

On Saturday morning the call we were now expecting came: the airman's body had been identified and the Air Force Casualty Center had located the airman's mother. We were ordered to re-notify his wife and then his mother. Two hours later, when we made it to the wife's residence, we saw that she had a rough night to include a visit to the hospital. She was sedated to the point that the second notification didn't cause much of a reaction, and we left shortly after arriving.

Next, we traveled to the address supplied to us by the AF Casualty Center to visit the airman's mother. As we pulled up to the house, we saw his mother through the open door talking and crying into a phone. Her ex-husband had received his notification the night before and had told her why we were coming. She saw the official car and the two of us in our service dress with wheel caps. She put down the phone, without hanging up, and as we approached the door she started saying, "I know what you've got to do. It's O.K., it's O.K." As the tears streamed down the mother's face, the Lieutenant Colonel next to me started to cry, but cleared her throat and managed to power through the notification: "The Secretary of the Air Force regrets to inform you that your son was killed in a car accident last night in England." Although the mother knew it was coming, hearing it from us made her break down. We practically insisted that we stay until someone could come look after her, but she assured us that she wanted us to leave. We drove away and left the airman's family with their grief.

I've done a lot of challenging things in my career, but walking up that driveway towards a crying mother was probably the hardest thing I've ever faced. When her son made the decision to join the military, the thought had crossed her mind that he might die in combat one day. However, I doubt that she never expected him to die in a car crash in England at the age of 24.

Don't make your parents, spouses or kids get that visit from the staff car and officers in service dress. Wear your seatbelt. Don't drink and drive! Don't drink and drive! Don't drink and drive! I'm sure you would not want to be the reason your loved ones had to hear "The Secretary of the Air Force regrets to inform you..."