Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

"We have an Angel on this Flight"

When Delta Flight 1880 landed late Saturday at Logan International Airport, the pilot went on the intercom to make a request of the passengers preparing to grab their carry-on bags: Sit for a moment and honor a fallen soldier.

''The pilot said, 'We have a hero on this flight and sadly, he isn't with us, but his mother is escorting his remains,' " said Barbara Bell, sister of Sergeant Pierre A. Raymond, 28, an Army reservist from Lawrence who died Tuesday in Germany after being wounded in Iraq.

The normal bustle of an emptying airplane immediately ceased, she said.

''He went on to say that 'a sergeant from the Army is escorting them as well', and then [the pilot] thanked him for doing what he did and for keeping us safe and free."

As Raymond's mother, Santina, got up to walk off the plane, her fellow passengers gave her a standing ovation.

''I was thankful that he was remembered like he was angel," said Santina Raymond, who spent yesterday at her Lawrence home preparing for her son's funeral on Wednesday. ''He was a hero, so everybody cheered. It was wonderful. He was wonderful."

Pierre Raymond died from injuries sustained after a Sept. 15 attack near Ramadi, Iraq, where he was hit in the chest and neck with flying shrapnel while in his sleeping quarters. Immediately after he was wounded, Raymond was talking and even flirting with the nurses who treated him, said Bell, who lives in Palo Alto, Calif. But military doctors in Iraq couldn't stop the bleeding and sent Raymond to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for emergency treatment, where he was kept alive until his family arrived.

''We were all flown out on military orders," said Bell, also a former reservist.

The family stayed at Raymond's side during his last hours.

''Pierre just had this capacity that very few people have. . . . This capacity for life," said Bell, 30. ''Even as a kid, we don't have many family photos of him because he was always running in the park." Godspeed SGT Raymond.

Passengers aboard plane salute fallen 'hero'

Lawrence reservist remembered for service to country

(Editor's note: A headline in yesterday's City & Region section on a story about the return to Logan Airport of the body of an American soldier who died of wounds suffered in Iraq used quotation marks around the word hero. The headline should have made clear that quotation marks were being used because the pilot of the plane had announced to passengers that a hero was on board. Without that context, the headline appeared to call into question the soldier's heroism.)

When Delta Flight 1880 landed late Saturday at Logan International Airport, the pilot went on the intercom to make a request of the passengers preparing to grab their carry-on bags: Sit for a moment and honor a fallen soldier.

''The pilot said, 'We have a hero on this flight and sadly, he isn't with us, but his mother is escorting his remains,' " said Barbara Bell, sister of Sergeant Pierre A. Raymond, 28, an Army reservist from Lawrence who died Tuesday in Germany after being wounded in Iraq.

The normal bustle of an emptying airplane immediately ceased, she said.

''He went on to say that 'a sergeant from the Army is escorting them as well', and then [the pilot] thanked him for doing what he did and for keeping us safe and free."

As Raymond's mother, Santina, got up to walk off the plane, her fellow passengers gave her a standing ovation.

''I was thankful that he was remembered like he was angel," said Santina Raymond, who spent yesterday at her Lawrence home preparing for her son's funeral on Wednesday. ''He was a hero, so everybody cheered. It was wonderful. He was wonderful."

Pierre Raymond died from injuries sustained after a Sept. 15 attack near Ramadi, Iraq, where he was hit in the chest and neck with flying shrapnel while in his sleeping quarters. Immediately after he was wounded, Raymond was talking and even flirting with the nurses who treated him, said Bell, who lives in Palo Alto, Calif. But military doctors in Iraq couldn't stop the bleeding and sent Raymond to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for emergency treatment, where he was kept alive until his family arrived.

''We were all flown out on military orders," said Bell, also a former reservist.

The family stayed at Raymond's side during his last hours.

''Pierre just had this capacity that very few people have. . . . This capacity for life," said Bell, 30. ''Even as a kid, we don't have many family photos of him because he was always running in the park."

Bell said her brother joined the Army in 1998 and spent 13 months in Bosnia as a military mechanic. He was discharged in 2001, she said, and spent some time traveling before being called back in the National Guard to serve with the 228th Forward Support Battalion, 28th Infantry Division, which supported a Marine Expeditionary Force. Raymond was dispatched for retraining and arrived in Kuwait in June. He'd barely been in Iraq a week before he was wounded.

For two weeks prior, he called his mother nearly every morning at 6 a.m., Boston time, his sister said. ''He'd even sent letters saying Kuwait was kind of boring," Bell said. ''He was waiting to be attached to a unit."

Raymond had been a student at Salem High School in New Hampshire and attended Northern Essex Community College for a short time. He enjoyed fixing cars and joined the Army in part to use his skills as a mechanic. In Iraq, he was maintaining Bradley fighting vehicles.

A funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Wednesday at St. Patrick Church in Lawrence.

Besides his mother and sister, Raymond leaves his father, David, of Londonderry, N.H.; and two brothers, Joseph, 26, and Alfio, 32.

Adrienne P. Samuels can be reached at asamuels@globe.com.

© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

David L. Ryan Globe Staff Photo: Lawrence,MA., 9/28/05