Mercy 10 Fallen Angel

Mercy 10 Fallen Angel

The Air Force flight Chrome 24 took off before we had even landed, which was annoying but 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 and 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 thing‘s 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 the “angel” is going home.

In moments of reflection we think of very golden images and I swear that if prophecy has an angel then as I climbed on board the C130 thru 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 and at the end is a coffin tied down with a flag covering the coffin, then add a beam of sunshine coming thru only window on the side of the plane and the beam ending on the coffin exactly. Above the coffin is another flag hanging proudly and lit up by the spill of the beam on the coffin.

I stopped, just plainly stopped and realized that a young soldier was going home a “ Fallen Angel” and that I thought of a wife, mother, father, brother, sister were going to 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 TV News pictures, we have heard words of bravery as the flag draped coffin is carried of the back ramp.

Some people use the image of dead soldiers being “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 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 slow 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 from Iraq to Kuwait.