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Description
Eager to help, Mr. MacEachern tells how he became part of this recovery mission and the inspiration it gave him to continuing serving.
Transcription
It was overwhelming, I remember it happening and being in class and hearing about it. So that night I was supposed to work with the reserve unit and then I showed up at work and nobody was there and I couldn’t find anyone so I went and I talked to the chief and I’m like, “What happened? ” He said, “The plane crashed, Swiss Air and we got people, they’re getting ready to deploy!” And I said, “Well I want to go, can I go? ” and he said, “Yes, go home, pack your kit, get back here and deploy.” So when I got there we were a week late into it so things were ramped up and just seeing how everyone was working and being involved. The community, they were so giving for us. They would show up three or four times a day with food for us. McDonalds, coffee, whatever we wanted we had it. My involvement I just pretty much walked the beach trails picking up evidence after the crash and then I was on call, I was on standby call if anything major needed to be recovered and that was the extent. I didn’t dive on the wreck so that’s pretty much what we did. I think we were there two weeks, maybe three weeks.
It opened my eyes and made me realize that maybe this is something that I want to do with my life, for the rest of my life is be a career soldier. And the professionalism that I seen during that time over on that operation both with the navy and the army it touched me in seeing how these men and women would just drop their family lives in a heartbeat and go help strangers so I wanted to be part of that.