CONDOLENCES

Our sympathies are extended to Police Director Carl Riley and his family. His son 21-year-old Pfc. Jamie R. Riley died due to injuries he incurred when two U.S. Army military training vehicles crashed in southern New Mexico. 

What can be worse than the premature loss of a child? Unimaginable!!

Additionally, non-battlefield deaths in the military   are nothing more than a needless waste of life.  Combined  it is a tragedy of extra-ordinary magnitude.

This training accident led me to reflect how lucky I have been in life.  I too was involved in a training accident in 1945.  Shortly after Normandy our Division had been moved from the USA to Camp Chisledon at Ogden-St.-George, a small village in Wiltshire. which had been a British army base for further training before being inserted into the continent. We were still there during the “Bridge to far” fiasco although we had been alerted. 

During this time some brainy individual at Army headquarters thought it a good idea if we trained on the British Horsa glider which carried more men than ours.  They were made of plywood and had been out of the open ever since the Normandy invasion. 

There were to be two separate groups of flights.  We all want to get on the first flight and get this bother over with.  Fortunately, I lost in a drawing to be in the first group from Headquarters Co. to go.  Their glider lost its tail in flight and all 30 men aboard were killed.  I was sent down to identify the bodies.  Many killed in the crash were my friends including my commanding officer and the section dentist. 

30 lives lost for no reason, we were never going to use those gliders.

We are not masters of our own fate

Our  pipe framed canvassed covered CG4A carried a pilot and co-pilot plus 8 men, or a jeep with 4 passengers.