Hello,
The saga of Lorraine and Bob Ham. The completion of the Best of Europe tour.
We have heard from a few about their returns to the good old USA, here is ours;

 
We boarded Delta 15 in Frankfurt at 11:25 AM on  Sept. 11 and promptly were airborne. The plane was a MD-11 with two hundred twenty three people on board, most of them Americans. As we plied our way across the Atlantic we enjoyed our lunch and settled down for a
mid-flight nap.

I was awakened by the food cart serving an ice cream bar to all.  Just what I needed!  I was still trying to recover from morning baloney sandwiches, eggs, bacon,  etc. The Captain keyed the mic and came on with a announcement.

It seems that we had a engine warning light on and although he felt it to be nothing to be concerned about, he had been directed to land at Gander Field in Newfoundland, Canada.  Oh, and by the way----we were to dump 30000 lbs of jet fuel prior to landing, the
captain chortled.  Having been in a similar situation in the U.S. Air Force, I was not concerned.

The jet fuel spilled out of the wing vents like a giant fire hose.  Quite impressive, especially when you are sitting right on the wing. We proceeded for a good 40 minutes and landed without incident at about 11:20 AM Atlantic Time.

We were impressed with the number of aircraft on the ground.  The little bells started to go off in our heads----this isn't right. Sure enough, the captain came on and told us the sad story of the WTC being hit.  At that time we ASSUMMED it to be terrorists from Europe on inbound flights.  Of course with this, we started to look around at all the passengers.  Some of them had long beards, and middle eastern dress!  We were told that NO one could leave the plane. We had been sequestered.

We spent the next 20+ hours on the plane waiting for something to happen.  No news to speak of. We knew the Pentagon had been hit and that there was great concern about other targets.  Rumors flew about the Sears Tower in Chicago and something about Boston.
Nobody entered our plane ,nobody talked to us from the airport.

Sometime during the night we were told that all the planes (39) would have their passengers off loaded and put through security. This would take time as there were only a few customs people and a few school buses. We would be taken to shelters co-coordinated by the Salvation Army.  We ate our Swiss candy bars, trail mix and fruit that for some reason we had bought in Frankfurt.
The passenger were really very good.  Serious, but no panic. We had some children on board and they were wonderful.  We had a great group.  A lot of GI's and their family's, some people from India, and Yemen. The crew was marvelous. We had air conditioning from
our onboard CPU, so we were as comfortable as you could be, on a plane for 27 hours. In the morning they feed us our last meal, Pepsi, potato chips and chocolate!  Yummy. We watched the off  loading operation from the plane next to us.

The passengers were led down the portable stairs between armed RCMP officers on to a yellow school bus. When the bus was full it would move forward and wait for the next one to load and then forward for the next,  When all the busses were full they went off in
caravan to the security, customs and whatever awaited them.  Then it was our turn.

We accomplished our off load about two hours later.  We all passed inspection (Whew), and away we went to a little town called Lewisporte, 40 minutes from Gander.  There were about 12,000 passengers from all the planes at Gander!  Lewisporte has a population of about 5000!  Needless to say we were noticed.

Lorraine and I drew St. Matthew's United Church.  Let me tell you our troubles were over.  If you get a chance to hug a "Nufie" please do so for us.  They gave us everything you could want. love, comfort, shoulders, sympathy and pride. They sang "God bless
America" with us.  They told us how happy they were to return to Americans all the favors that we (Yanks) had done for them and the world. We had marvelous church pot luck suppers, lunches, snacks and deserts. (The blueberry season was in full swing so we had
blueberry everything.) We slept on a church pew that night and it felt good. Well that is a exaggeration.  Every once in a while you'd hear someone fall off.  No cursing though!

The next night we were adopted by Ruth and Art who asked us to spend the night with them at their home.  What a blessing.  We talked all night with them, had tea and (yes) blueberry cake.  The following morning (7:00 AM) we were awoken and told that we HAD to get
going. The bus was leaving ASAP.  We did it and the people were still helping and waving.

The departure from Gander took along time because of a miscount of passengers. First we had missing passengers. Then we had less people onboard than ticketed. Finally we got it right when the crew discovered that small children were being counted incorrectly.

We had a uneventful flight to Atlanta although some were apprehensive.  Our Arrival in Atlanta was heartwarming also. The Delta personnel lined the gate with big "Welcome Home to the USA" signs.  They had big cheers for us as each one of us cleared customs.  It was nice.  It was good to be back in America.

God Bless America!

Lorraine and Bob Ham