Word: bucher
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Then Captain Lloyd Bucher came to the microphone. A gentle man with a faint voice, Bucher was still crying as he began to speak. Reagan's daughter and two Navy officers standing behind Bucher began to cry as he spoke. He was sorry, Bucher said, for the trouble he caused the country by "losing one of its very fine ships." "We had been unfortunate by being in the wrong place with too many of them and too few of us to do anything about turning over a United States ship...
...Bucher stepped away from the stand momentarily, and then returned wiping his eyes. "Several of our men were wounded during the loss of the ship," he said. "One of them was mortally wounded. His body has accompanied me on the plane since we left Korea yesterday...
During the speeches, few people had been watching the planes. The crowd now turned toward the planes, and saw six sailors bearing out a flag-covered coffin. "His last words," Bucher continued, "were that he was proud to have served in the United States Navy.... He was a hero in every sense of the word...
...Bucher asked for a silent prayer and slipped back from the microphone. The ritual of bearing the casket from the plane to a hearse continued. It has become a familiar airport ritual, one that most Americans have shared on television. As each of the caskets has flown in--from Dallas and Los Angeles, and now from Korea--there is the same sense of numb rage against violence. There were 82 living people to go along with this casket, but the feeling was the same...
Throughout the ordeal, said Bucher, "we were trying to tell you we'd been had." The most famous example: a North Korean photograph of the crew, with some of them visibly giving the photographer what was variously interpreted as the word "help" in sign language and the well-known U.S. sign of disrespect (TIME, Oct. 18). One crewman wrote his family that his captors were gentle people, the nicest he'd seen since his last visit to St. Elizabeth's-a U.S. mental hospital in Washington...