Army service honors
crash victims

At Bagram, Afghanistan, Air Field's chapel Sunday, Schofield Barracks soldiers remembered members of 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment who died Nov. 27 in the crash of a privately contracted small plane.

Killed in the CASA 212 crash in the mountains southeast of Bamiyan were Lt. Col. Michael McMahon of West Hartford, Conn.; Chief Warrant Officer Travis Grogan, born and raised in Oklahoma; and Spc. Harley D. Miller, who spent most of his childhood in Spokane Valley, Wash. Also killed were the plane's crew members -- Noel English, a native of Emory Miss.; Loren Hammer of Redmond, Ore.; and Melvin Rowe of Tontagony, Ohio -- employees of Blackwater aviation.

Maj. Monty Willoughby, executive officer of 3/4 Cavalry, remembered his commander McMahon: "I can tell you more than once he was the man who championed the cause of the underdog or the less fortunate."

Willoughby recalled a conversation he had with McMahon's wife, Jeanette, also an Army helicopter pilot, who flies CH-47 Chinooks rather than the 3/4 Cavalry's OH-58D Kiowa Warriors. He said she told him that her husband was somewhere smiling, knowing a Chinook was coming to carry him from the mountainside.

At an earlier memorial service, Chief Warrant Officer James Galendez talked about Grogan's quirks -- his propensity to mumble when he was excited and his ability to sleep "for 18 hours in 100-degree heat in a crowded tent less than 500 feet from a runway" -- and his drive to excel.

Chief Warrant Officer Kevin Knight said Miller was a soldier who had grown up in adversity but never used his childhood difficulty as an excuse. "Harley Miller came to this unit and constantly strived to do his best," Knight said.