Bodies of four Marines killed in NATO exercise returned to U.S.
DOVER, DEL.
The bodies of four Marines who died in a military aircraft crash during a NATO exercise were transferred back to the U.S. Friday.
The U.S. Marine Corps said an Osprey aircraft crashed on March 18 in a Norwegian town in the Arctic Circle, killing the four Marines. Officials with the Marines said Saturday that hundreds of U.S. Marines, sailors, service members and civilians rendered final salutes to the fallen Marines in Bodo, Norway, early Friday.
The bodies of the Marines were then placed on board an Air National Guard military transport aircraft and flown to
Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Marine Corps officials said. The remains of the Marines will ultimately be moved to their final resting places according to their families’ wishes, officials said in a statement.
The crash killed Capt. Ross A. Reynolds, 27, of Leominster, Massachusetts; Capt. Matthew J. Tomkiewicz, 27, of Fort Wayne, Indiana; Gunnery Sgt. James W. Speedy, 30, of Cambridge, Ohio; and Cpl. Jacob M. Moore, 24, of Catlettsburg, Kentucky.
The men were all assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 261, Marine Aircraft Group 26, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing stationed at Marine Corps Air Station New River, North Carolina. They were taking part in a longplanned NATO exercise called Cold Response, which authorities said was unrelated to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
So intense is the siege that some of those trapped cannot even muster the strength to be afraid anymore, Kazmerchak said.
“Ravaged houses, fires, corpses in the street, huge aircraft bombs that didn’t explode in courtyards are not surprising anyone anymore,” he said. “People are simply tired of being scared and don’t even always go down to the basements.”
With the invasion now in its second month, Russian forces have seemingly stalled on many fronts and are even losing previously taken ground to Ukrainian counterattacks, including around Kyiv. The Russians have bombed the capital from the air but not taken or surrounded the city. U.S. and French defense officials say Russian troops appear to have adopted defensive positions outside Kyiv.
Previous bombings of hospitals and other nonmilitary sites, including a theater in Mariupol where Ukrainian authorities said a Russian airstrike is believed to have killed 300 people last week, already have given rise to war crimes allegations.