Redux: Angel Flight - Remember those that gave all

From Maj Pain at onemarinesview.com

You may have heard of an “Angel Flight" before. I had seen this video during a previous deployment to Afg but didn’t post because I thought it was kinda taboo. Kinda like getting me into a hospital when there is nothing wrong with me (or when there is) I don’t like the places and its damn near an act of congress to get me into one. Some of the most talented and underpaid people work there, I just don’t like the places, call me funny . You can see why then I thought at first this was bogus to post before due to my location but I have to say as Ive always said, “when it’s your time, it’s your time" and there isn’t anything you can do about it so you might as well go forth and do great things! Below is a previous post I did that I thought worked well with this video. A subject many on the front see every day but want to avoid it 100% of the time. Get a cup of coffee and read the below then watch the video and remember the “Angel Flights”.

Don’t forget to read the rest below …

Mercy 10 Fallen Angel
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
By Mal James
December 20, 2006
Ramadi, Iraq

The Air Force flight Chrome 24 took off before we had even landed, which was annoying, given that it taxied past 14 other people without bothering to stop and pick them up, and had left them stranded in Iraq along with us. Welcome to Air Force Air. Such is life in Iraq — you do not worry or even bother to complain, because it basically just happens.

Things like this happen, and all it means is that people work very hard to then make more things happen, and we got word last night that we were manifested on a C130 flight named Mercy 10 — an angel flight.

An angel flight is the saddest way to end our time in Iraq, because “angel flight” means that the plane is carrying a “fallen angel” — a young man or woman who has died and is going home.

In moments of reflection, we think of very golden images. I swear that if prophecy has an angel, then, as I climbed on board the C130 through a narrow door wearing body armor and carrying two bags, the scene inside the hold of the plane truly took my soul away.
Imagine an empty plane, stripped bare. No seats, nothing. At the end is a coffin, tied down, with a flag covering it. A beam of sunshine shines through the only window on the side of the plane, and the beam lands on the coffin exactly. Above the coffin, another flag hanging proudly, lit up by the spill of light on the coffin.

I stopped, just plainly stopped, and realized that a young soldier was going home a “fallen angel,” and I thought of the wife, mother, father, brother, or sister who would watch their angel carried off the back of a plane in the next few days.

We all know the image. We have all seen the pictures, and have heard words of bravery as the flag-draped coffin is carried of the back ramp.

Some people use the image of dead soldiers in body bags to describe how bad the war is going, and how the pundits in Washington do not want to talk about war casualties.
These people have never sat alone in the hold of a plane looking at the rays of sunshine reflected on a coffin. As we flew back into Kuwait, the rays of light changed and altered, but in the entire flight of just over an hour, the sunbeam rarely left the angel.
In the last minutes of daylight, we landed in Kuwait, and an honor guard lined up and slowly saluted as the coffin was carried out of the plane.

I do not know the name of the soldier, sailor, or Marine who was in the coffin. I do not want to know; it would of not made any difference. The respect a son was paid defies my words.

But an angel did cast a sunbeam on a fallen angel the whole way home.