Page 237 - Demo

233In October we went to a German Tornado that had crashed on Otterburn Range. I was driving the Landrover as we hit traffic in Newcastle. Ok I said, %u201cLet%u2019s put on the Blue Lights and Siren%u201d. My Corporal who was navigating said, %u201cI don%u2019t think you can do that, sir%u201d. I disagreed. I have to say it was fun zipping along past cars getting out of the way, through red lights and so forth and we then made good time out of Newcastle although it was dark when we got to where we thought the crash was. We found a platoon of soldiers sitting on a hill who had been doing some training. They had seen the crash and said that the aircraft had crashed down at the bottom of the hill. We asked them where the crew were and they slowly admitted that they hadn%u2019t been down to look. I wasn%u2019t impressed. So down we went in pitch dark all in a line with our torches searching the ground ahead and of course rather dreading what we would find. In fact in all the Tornado crashes I saw the bodies were usually intact. What usually happened, as in this case, was that the seat straps appeared to have given way and the bodies had gone through the large canopy. Consequently when we found them they just looked like mannequins lying on the ground. Protocol deemed that we had to leave them where they were until they had been examined rather as if it was a crime scene. The next day the German inquiry team arrived. They had booked themselves into a hotel in Newcastle where the post mortem would take place as they had attended a previous crash in that area sometime in the past and thought that would be the case in this instance. A police man had arrived with them and he informed them that the post mortem would take place somewhere else. I can%u2019t remember where but it was further north. It would appear that there had been a boundary change since their last visit and we were now just the other side of it. The Germans were naturally rather annoyed but the police said they would give them an escort there the next day. This is a good example of the mutual cooperation needed between different services and the engendering of camaraderie during these tragic events. The cause of the