27 March 2007

Overdue recognition

Two former Army Corps of Transport personnel who went above and beyond the call of duty to send victims of the 1979 Erebus disaster home to their families, have finally received official recognition for their efforts.

Warrant Officers (retired) Ray Symons and Dennis Nathan were among the 21 recipients gathered at Parliament recently, to receive the New Zealand Special Service Medal (Erebus) for their contribution to “Operation Overdue”, the inter-agency response to New Zealand’s biggest single tragedy.

Senior officers from the Police and Defence Force, including Chief of Defence Force Lieutenant General Jerry Mateparae, diplomats and members of Parliament, were at the ceremony to honour all those involved in the exceptionally difficult operation to recover and identify the 257 passengers and crew killed when Flight TE 901 crashed on Mount Erebus, Antarctica, on 28 November 1979.

SSM (Erebus) recipients WOs (Rtd) Symons and Nathan represented 18 Army personnel involved in the physically and mentally challenging task of moving the bodies from Antarctica to Auckland.

Personnel from many different organisations and nationalities worked together on the Police-led operation to collect the bodies, transfer them to Whenuapai, and return them home to their loved ones.

“It was only through the work of Operation Overdue personnel that individuals, families and the nation were able to fully come to terms with the tragic deaths of so many people”, Police Minister Annette King told those gathered.

She said the medal recognises the “extreme circumstances” faced by the personnel who helped successfully identify 214 of the 257 victims.

“The circumstances were indeed extreme: a hazardous physical location, extreme climatic conditions, dangers presented by the wreckage, the psychological strain of recovering the victims, and highly demanding physical work.”

NZDF personnel, including those from the Army’s Corps of Transport and the Air Force, were involved in “Phase Two” of the operation to move the bodies from Antarctica to Auckland. The personnel joined US Navy personnel to process, pack and load all 348 body bags at Williams Field, the ice runway at McMurdo Station.

The work was thoroughly unpleasant; the clear plastic bags meant that the contents were in plain view, while the heat of the sun caused the bodies to partially thaw.

Under the physically and mentally challenging circumstances, the Army personnel worked tirelessly, 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

The two RNZAF body flights from McMurdo to New Zealand took some seven hours. The police report on Operation Overdue records that the flights “caused few problems for the flight crews, but logistic difficulties were many and varied”.

Police Commissioner Howard Broad said the inter-agency and international collaboration in response to the crash, the world’s fourth largest air disaster, “truly represents how, in times of adversity, people rally to help each other”.

The NZSSM was last awarded in 2005 to recognise New Zealanders, including many NZDF personnel, who were involved in rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts in areas devastated by the Boxing Day 2004 earthquake and tsunami.

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