Erebus heroes giving up, dying, while wait for memorial drags on
Sunday, 6 October 2024
Last month, another hero from the Mt Erebus disaster who desperately wanted to see a memorial to the tragedy, died. His colleague can’t understand why nothing has been built, 45 years after the plane crash that killed 257 people, and seven years after they were promised somewhere to gather and grieve. Mike White reports.
Simple things trigger Erich Eggers.
The scent of cold. The smell of diesel.
They take the former US Navy helicopter crewman back to 1979, back to Mt Erebus in Antarctica, and those awful days after an Air New Zealand sightseeing flight crashed into the volcano, killing all 257 on board.
Eggers was just 20, likely the youngest person working on the soot-scarred slopes of Erebus in the aftermath, spending three weeks at the site, ferrying bodies and belongings from the ice so they could be returned to New Zealand.
What he saw and experienced has badly affected him ever since, and he’s never been able to leave it behind.
What he’s always wanted was to come to New Zealand, visit a memorial to the victims, and meet with their families to tell them how much he tried to help.
But as the 45th anniversary of New Zealand’s worst peacetime tragedy approaches, with no agreement on where a memorial should be placed after seven years of bickering and wrangling, Eggers is giving up.
Like so many affected, the process has been so protracted, so frustrating, so bruising, he can’t take it any more.
He simply can’t understand how a memorial hasn’t been built.
He’s tired of getting his hopes up.
He’s pissed off.
Eggers, who was based at America’s McMurdo Station, first flew to the crash site two days after Flight TE901 hit Mt Erebus on November 28, 1979.
Thereafter, his days were the same, filled with equivalent horrors.
With a pilot and co-pilot, the just-qualified crew chief Eggers would travel to the flanks of Mt Erebus, where bodies recovered by the mountain team were loaded into cargo nets, 10 to 15 at a time.
He’d oversee the operation as his UH-1N “Huey” helicopter lifted them from the site, and flew them to the ice runway near New Zealand’s Scott Base, where they were put on planes.
When the accident happened, Eggers understands there were only 20 body bags in Antarctica.
So the victims and body parts ended up being wrapped in clear plastic, nothing censored or spared for those involved in the recovery phase known as Operation Overdue.
He was one of the last at the site, helping erect a heavy wooden cross nearby.
It didn’t take long for the effects of Eggers’ experience to surface.
Hallucinations, sleeplessness, extreme anxiety.
“But with US Navy aircrew, you don’t quit,” says Eggers from his home in Iowa.
“If you decide to quit flying, they will look for the crappiest set of orders they can find anywhere, and that’s where you’re going to end up.
“My entire debrief after it, was a grand total of possibly 5-10 minutes with some psychologist. And the only thing she was interested in was whether I was going to hurt myself.
“Of course, in ’79, nobody knew what PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) was.”
To make things worse, Eggers was sent back to Antarctica the two following years, spending four months at a time in the shadow of Mt Erebus.
“That was my job.”
But after 20 years, 4 months, and 20 days, he finally couldn’t take it any more.
In his last squadron, Eggers was assigned to take a course which, unbeknown to him, included graphic footage of aircraft accidents.
“That was when I decided I was done. Done flying. I just didn’t care any more. I wanted out.”
That was 1998, but the distance from the Navy and Erebus didn’t make things any better.
Only recently has Eggers managed to get into a support group for PTSD sufferers, most of them soldiers from recent wars.
But despite wanting to forget much of what happened on Erebus, Eggers has kept himself informed about plans for a memorial that began in 2017 when then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern promised victims’ families a monument would be built within two years, in time for the 40th anniversary.
What has happened since has been a barely believable litany of painful public hostility, stultifying bureaucracy, and incomprehensible inertia.
After seven years, not only is there no memorial, there isn’t even an agreed site.
The Ministry for Culture and Heritage, which has overseen the project, has settled on two options.
One is near the Michael Joseph Savage memorial on Auckland’s Bastion Point/Takaparawhau, which is owned by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei.
The other, as revealed by the Sunday Star-Times in July, is at Pukeahu, the National War Memorial Park in Wellington.
This is despite the Erebus memorial always being planned for Auckland, because that’s where Flight TE901 departed from, and most of the passengers and crew came from.
The sudden shortlisting of Pukeahu has distressed many, who point out the Erebus disaster has nothing to do with war, and the site sits beside a major three-lane road from the capital’s airport, and is already peppered with numerous war-associated memorials.
The Ministry for Culture and Heritage says the memorial could be built more quickly at Pukeahu, given it controls the land.
But this has led to some Erebus family members saying the Pukeahu “solution” smacks of a quick fix to a lingering and awkward political problem.
Glenis Philip-Barbara, the ministry’s deputy secretary of Māori Crown partnerships, says they are still engaging “with relevant stakeholders regarding site selection”.
But in her most recent email update to families, in August, Philip-Barbara made it clear the choice for a memorial site was either Bastion Pt, or Wellington’s war memorial park.
While they remained open to exploring other sites, Philip-Barbara said “opportunities of this nature will only be presented in the event that the current two sites are unable to deliver the memorial to families in a timely manner, or, are unavailable to us.”
The ministry wasn’t planning any commemoration or event to mark the 45th anniversary of Erebus in November, but said families “may choose to recognise the day either privately, publicly, or with other families.”
Philip-Barbara didn’t answer a question from the Star-Times whether an Erebus memorial site would be chosen by this November’s anniversary.
On September 13, one of Erich Eggers’ US Navy colleagues on Erebus, fellow crew chief Joe Madrid, died of a heart attack, aged 69.
It was Madrid who is believed to have helped recover TE901’s flight and data recorders.
Like Eggers, Madrid suffered badly in the wake of Erebus, eventually having a breakdown, and being diagnosed with PTSD.
And like Eggers, Madrid always wanted to return to New Zealand.
“Joe’s death hit me pretty hard,” Eggers says.
“I know he had high hopes of going back to New Zealand and visiting the memorial. And now he’s never going to be able to do that.”
Eggers and Madrid had been room-mates on the ice and back in the US, and they’d kept in touch over the decades.
Madrid became a blacksmith, living in Three Points, Arizona, Eggers says.
“It’s not Mexico, but you can probably see it from there.”
In his last years, he’d bought a new Harley-Davidson trike, passed his pilots’ licence, and got a plane, Eggers says.
“He just wanted to live his life.”
That Madrid didn’t get to realise his dream of returning to New Zealand, visiting the long-promised memorial, and gaining some solace from the journey, made Eggers, 65, reflect about his own hopes for such a trip, and seeing a memorial.
“I’m kind of at the point where I’m ready to give up.
“It’s been very frustrating to keep watching - I just don’t understand it. What seems to be people’s issues?
“Actually, I’m kind of pissed off it hasn’t happened. I can’t for the life of me imagine why it should be such a controversy - it makes no sense to me.”
On a cold day in Iowa, if Eggers pulls into a gas station and somebody is filling their pickup with diesel, the smell can take him right back to Erebus and its nightmares.
One day, he’d like to escape that.
One day, he’d like to return to New Zealand.
Stepping back from the current memorial debate and division is partly for self-preservation, Eggers says.
But if the opportunity did arise to visit New Zealand and see a memorial, he’d come.
“Absolutely. No hesitation.”
Maybe on the 50th anniversary of the disaster, they’ll have a memorial built, he thinks.
Even if they haven’t managed it by then, he’d like to be there for the commemorations.
“I’ve always wanted to just meet some of the family members of the people that were lost on that mountain, and let them know it wasn’t ideal, but we did the best we could with what we had - and we didn’t have much.
“I want to let them know that their loved ones were very much respected, and treated with dignity, as much as we possibly could.”
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