Alan C. Mack

But we're doing what's called a dignified transfer practice.

So to send the bodies of our fallen home, you take a casket with a flag and you march it over to the C-17.

There's a ceremony that happens.

Yeah.

So we're practicing this.

And one of my good friends, Master Sergeant Trey Ponder,

So I was the senior MH-47 pilot in the entire regiment.

He was the senior non-commissioned officer.

So he and I were the guys that were responsible for making sure the air crews were always up to standard and always up to date in their techniques.

And we did their evaluations and all that kind of stuff.

And so I sat this far away from him for...

uh, six years, you know, and he was the one kicking the ropes out the back and he was killed.

So I'm carrying his casket and, uh, our officer in charge comes running.

I say, hell, someone's going to take your place.

I'm like, sir, you know, we're doing dignified transfer.

And he's like, come on, we got a survivor.

So somebody takes my place, we come back, we're in the rescue operations center, and we get presented with, okay, somebody walked into a little Marine Corps patrol base with the correct information that we need, that it's likely to be him.

We had his beacon location from his radio.

Because it's a specific... Yeah, each person...

in a threat theater like that gets what's called an ISO prep, isolated personnel report.