"WE ONLY FLY THE LIVING"

An up close look at the Chinook crash.

It is not for the faint of heart.

The rescuers have piled the rucksacks and helmets of the men who were on board into neat rows, which stand in stark contrast to the smoldering, sprawling pile of metallic rubble. Air Force search-and-rescue teams are crawling over the wreckage with acetylene torches, cutting through metal, looking for anything human...

Capt. Hannam later tells me that a medevac had been requested but that on arrival it became clear there were only dead bodies. Part of the reason for the tension, Capt. Hannam explains, was not just my presence, but his refusal to remove two bodies from the scene.

"We only fly the living," he later tells me. "We can't have bodies on board, we might get a call and need the space. We can only help the living, and those guys didn't like it."