Goodbye, Hello

Today I spent the entire day with the Marine Corp in Yuma, starting and ending at the base.

My first assignment began at 6:30 a.m. and included an hour-and-a-half drive.

Taken from our 12 Passenger Van


We went out past Imperial Dam for a memorial service to honor three Marines and a Navy crewman who lost their lives in a helicopter crash. The chopper, part of Search and Rescue, was on a training mission. There was one survivor.




MCAS had a stone built a quarter mile from the crash site, which was unveiled today. The wives of the four men where there, with their kids. One of them had twin girls, who couldn't have been more than five months old. The crash happened Aug. 16 of 2007.







After the service, some of the crewman for SAR left their wings on the stone.



We then took the 1/4 mile hike (Sarg, are your sure that was a 1/4 mile?) to the canyon where the chopper crashed. Someone had built a cross with some of the area rocks and left a rose. An SAR helicopter circled the area while we were inside.





You could still smell the fuel and oil that once covered the rocks

When we left the canyon, just about everyone had left. A few Marines, two TV crews and us were left. The SAR helicopter landed and the crew went over to the memorial stone to honor their friends. No one else captured this moment.





James, our military beat reporter, got back to the paper, put the photos, story and video on the web.

After some Wienerschnitzel I headed back to the base for Marine Homecoming - a group coming back from a seven-month deployment.



Most of the men had women waiting for them ...



Some of those women were running late and had to wait ...



Others had children ...




Today, some said goodbye. Today, some said hello.