Wanting to be a Part of Swiss Air Mission

Video file

Description
Eager to help, Mr. MacEachern tells how he became part of this recovery mission and the inspiration it gave him to continuing serving.

Brian MacEachern

Mr. Brian MacEachern was born August 2, 1975 in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. With his father being a reserve soldier for over 30 years, Mr. MacEachern knew his own destiny at a very young age. Joining the reserves with the Combat Engineers division, he later specialized in combat diving and ordinance disposal. Throughout his military career Mr. MacEachern was part of the Swiss Air recovery mission and credits this exercise as being his reasons for continuing to serve in the Canadian military. In 2004 Mr. MacEachern accepted a deployment to Ethiopia and later that year travelled to Afghanistan and again in 2007 holding rank of sergeant with Combat Engineers. After being released from the military, Mr. MacEachern accepted support through Soldier On and in 2016 became a member of Team Canada Invictus Games travelling to Orlando, Florida as part of the cycling team. Mr. MacEachern continues to stay involved in the sport and now resides in Nova Scotia with his family.

Transcript
It was overwhelming, I remember it happening and being in class and hearing about it. So that night I was supposed to work with the reserve unit and then I showed up at work and nobody was there and I couldn’t find anyone so I went and I talked to the chief and I’m like, “What happened? ” He said, “The plane crashed, Swiss Air and we got people, they’re getting ready to deploy!” And I said, “Well I want to go, can I go? ” and he said, “Yes, go home, pack your kit, get back here and deploy.” So when I got there we were a week late into it so things were ramped up and just seeing how everyone was working and being involved. The community, they were so giving for us. They would show up three or four times a day with food for us. McDonalds, coffee, whatever we wanted we had it. My involvement I just pretty much walked the beach trails picking up evidence after the crash and then I was on call, I was on standby call if anything major needed to be recovered and that was the extent. I didn’t dive on the wreck so that’s pretty much what we did. I think we were there two weeks, maybe three weeks.

It opened my eyes and made me realize that maybe this is something that I want to do with my life, for the rest of my life is be a career soldier. And the professionalism that I seen during that time over on that operation both with the navy and the army it touched me in seeing how these men and women would just drop their family lives in a heartbeat and go help strangers so I wanted to be part of that.

Meta Data
Medium
Video
Owner
Veterans Affairs Canada
War, Conflict or Mission
Canadian Armed Forces
Location/Theatre
Canada
Person Interviewed
Brian MacEachern
Branch
Army
Military Rank
Private
Occupation
Combat Engineer
Recorded
Duration
2:12
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