Virginia Guard remembers tragic plane crash

Courtesy Photo | Airmen with the 203rd Red Horse Squadron listen to their chaplain March 3 at Contingency Operating Base Speicher during a remembrance ceremony for 18 Red Horse comrades killed in a plane crash on March 3, 2001.  

TIKRIT, IRAQ

03.19.2007

Courtesy Story

5th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment   

By Staff Sgt. Antonieta Rico
5th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

TIKRIT, Iraq - Six years after a plane crash that claimed the lives of 18 of their fellow comrades, tears are still fresh on the eyes of some of the airmen with the 203rd Red Horse Squadron.

The squadron members gathered March 3 at Contingency Operating Base Speicher, near Tikrit, Iraq, to commemorate their fallen.

On March 3, 2001, the airmen were flying back from annual training at Hurlburt Field, Fla., to their squadron's home station at the Virginia Air National Guard, Virginia Beach, Va., when their C-23 Sherpa crashed in Georgia, killing the passengers and crew.

Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Robert Laws said his life changed the day of the crash.

"The world that I knew had just come to an end," said Laws at the remembrance ceremony.

Laws, who was with the 203rd Red Horse Squadron at the time of the crash, had trained for years with all of the airmen killed in the crash. He said the Red Horse community is small and tight knit, and that those killed were like family to the rest of the squadron.

Tech Sgt. Tyrell Scott, also assigned to the squadron, said that even after unit members retire, they continue to be an active part of the unit.

"We are Red Horse," Scott said. "We are family."

That is why, he said, members of the squadron take time every year to remember their fallen comrades. Even though the 18 airmen are dead, they are still part of the Red Horse family.

"They were a big influence on us," Scott said. "Those guys are missed a lot, on a day-by-day basis."

Laws said he knows that all of the airmen who were killed would want to be deployed here in Iraq if they were still alive, working beside their fellow airmen.

He also said that no matter where Red Horse Squadron members are stationed, they will always take the time to remember their lost brothers.

"I don't think that...March 3 will ever come by - no matter where we are at - that we will not stop, collectively or privately, to remember these guys," Laws said.

• Date Taken: 03.19.2007
• Date Posted: 03.19.2007 11:34
• Story ID: 9485
• Location: TIKRIT, IQ