Today is the 36th anniversary of the Ramstein Airshow Disaster. You probably have not ever heard of it. It took me thirty years to process what happened that day. I never spoke about it to anyone, even my family. We used to attend airshows regularly around Europe, but I haven't been to one since 1988.
It was a beautiful sunny day, and my family had spent all day near the runway because we got there early. People nearby were standing on a metal dumpster to get a better view. In the late afternoon, my world suddenly went dark. Everything was purple and I felt death all around me. I was paralyzed with fear like I was in a dream.
When reality returned, I was in a panic and started to run. My parents yelled at me, and I jumped up and down trying to come up with an excuse for us to get as far away from there as possible. I told them I was sick or that had had homework to do. Finally, they agreed to leave so we could beat the traffic home.
And then it happened, the world exploded in fire. Everything was so loud I went deaf momentarily. I remember seeing a man on fire climbing out of the wreckage. Was it the pilot?
It's sort of a blur, but we made it home before sunset.
I stood alone on a swing at the playground behind our building #1111, slowly swinging and letting the inertia take over as the sun went down. I stared at the ground as it went dark, refusing to get off the swing until it became completely still; because I knew in that moment I was still an innocent child forever, but the moment I touched the ground again, my childhood was over.
I was 10 years old.
When we returned to classes the next week, some of our classes were combined because too many students were dead or maimed, so those classes were short. Our school's gym had been turned into a temporary morgue because there were so many bodies. Hundreds of people were permanently injured physically and mentally :despair: