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20 years later, pain of crash that killed 248 troops lingers

The words still turn stomachs 20 years later: "No survivors."

Malinda Parris was preparing to welcome her husband home for the holidays from a mission in Egypt when she first heard them. She had decorated the house, baked wildly to fill the kitchen with his favorite foods and was dressing to go to a homecoming ceremony at Fort Campbell, Ky.

All that stopped when the television flashed with news that would change her life.

A plane carrying her husband, Rudy, an Army pilot, and 247 other soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division home from a peacekeeping mission in the Sinai had crashed in Canada.

Fully fueled, the plane burned on impact. It was two weeks before Christmas.

"It wasn't a gradual let down. It was like jumping out of a helicopter or airplane. The fall was endless," said Parris, 61, of Herndon, Ky., just outside Fort Campbell. "To go from that peak to the depths of hell was more than devastating."

Soldiers from 28 units at Fort Campbell were killed instantly when the Arrow Air DC-8 crashed seconds after taking off on Dec. 12, 1985, from Gander, Newfoundland International Airport, where it had refueled for the final leg of its return to Fort Campbell. An eight-member civilian flight crew also died in the crash.

Most soldiers on the plane were with the division's 502nd Infantry Regiment returning from a six-month deployment to Egypt, where they had been sent to ensure compliance with the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

The peacetime crash resonates decades later as the Army prepares to honor the soldiers with military and civil memorial ceremonies Monday. The anniversary comes as the 101st is grieving new deaths in Iraq - 19 Fort Campbell soldiers died in November.

Retired Lt. Gen. Hubert Smith, then commander of division support, recalls waiting with families in a heated gymnasium that winter morning for the soldiers to return.

The day was excited, filled with laughs and infectious smiles as the clock ticked nearer to the plane's arrival. Many wives had spoken with soldiers on the telephone just hours before.

None was prepared for the plane not to arrive, he said.

"We're used to dying in battle," said Smith, of Clarksville, Tenn. "But to lose that number of people in peacetime, it was a waste."

President Reagan consoled families at a memorial service days later as the nation's sympathies turned to the families in anguish, awaiting word their loved ones' bodies had been identified in the charred remains. Letters flooded in from across the country from strangers reaching out to families at Fort Campbell and neighboring communities.

"It was like they had been hit in the stomach with a baseball bat. It was just terrible. And I'm talking about people who didn't know any of them," said Ted Crozier, a retired Army colonel who was then mayor of Clarksville.

The crash remains among the worst aircraft disasters in Canadian history. Families were consumed with questions when there was no immediate word on the cause of the crash. Was it ice on the wings as the reports said? Had there been an error in the cockpit? The crash occurred while kidnapped Americans were being held in Beirut. What ties were there to terrorism?

In the end, an investigation completed three years later by the Canadian Air Safety Board and the National Transportation Safety Board determined ice on the plane and excess cargo compromised the plane during takeoff. The findings were contentious and have been disputed through the years.

Fort Campbell dedicated a memorial to the fallen soldiers. A monument in Gander, Newfoundland, and a tree park and monument in Hopkinsville, Ky., where 248 Canadian maples line the landscape, also were erected. The trees in Hopkinsville were struck with disease, died and have been replaced. But the names of all the soldiers who died remain in deep engravings on black marble.

Names like Chief Warrant Officer Rudy Parris.

While it took years to find closure, Malinda Parris is remarried now, to another Fort Campbell soldier who is preparing to leave for Iraq.

She said the bitterness that followed Rudy's death has subsided.

"I have been upset. I have been unhappy. I have cried. And I'm tired of doing that," Parris said. "You can't change it."

[Last modified December 8, 2005, 21:53:22]