THE VERY FIRST REPORTS FROM ANTARCTICA HAD indicated that there would only be about 40 bodies recovered, so the initial plan was to use military ambulances and hearses to transport them to the mortuary at Auckland Medical School. However, as the recovery operation progressed, more bodies were recovered than first anticipated—many more. That first homeward flight alone carried 114 bodies and 27 part-bodies. A new plan was needed.
Relaying ambulances back and forth would be time-consuming and inefficient but, as Michael Guy would later write, ‘the feelings of relatives of the dead had to be considered’ so ambulances were used for the first few loads of bodies. After that, though, the police called upon a trucking firm to provide a refrigerated container. Once the media and families had dispersed from the gate at Whenuapai, our loved ones were loaded on to a refrigerated truck provided by Refrigerated Freight Lines, driven by Dennis Duncan.
I meet Dennis at a cafe in Tauranga one wintery afternoon. We set ourselves up at a corner table, hiding away from prying eyes and flapping ears, sheltering from the bitter cold over steaming mugs of coffee. I leave my jacket on to ward off the chill that inevitably creeps in when conversations turn to Erebus. My meeting with Dennis has become but one in a long line of interviews, each story adding to the burden of truth, each one slightly heavier than the last. I can’t help wondering what the other patrons would say if they knew what we had come to discuss.
‘I was asked to do it. I had the option of saying no, but I was happy to,’ Dennis tells me, mentioning that one of his childhood neighbours was on the flight. (Everyone knew someone …) ‘They had no idea how big the operation actually was until they got the bodies back to New Zealand. They called on us because we’d done work with Civil Defence and the police in the past.
‘After they brought [the bodies] up on the first Hercules, I went out to Whenuapai with the truck, and they had the police there already. The bodies came in a big crate, but we had to unload the crate because it didn’t fit in the back of the truck. I remember when they opened one of those crates … Jeez. I couldn’t handle it. I had to walk away.
‘After a while, I came back. We had to carry on. There were body parts just lying there, and the plastic body bags were see-through. It was a lot to take in. We had to lay them all down one by one—that was a police and air-force job—and we laid them out in the truck and I drove them to the morgue, and I plugged the truck in until they could deal with it.
‘I was in a team called “body movements”, and they were the ones who unloaded the bodies from the truck on to trolleys, then they’d take them either downstairs to the fridges or upstairs for the post-mortem. But the fridges were pretty full, so that’s why the truck was there. It just kept them cold, not frozen.
‘My job was to stay with the truck, on the dock, and help there. It took a long time to do them. One by one by one. When the second flight arrived, I had to go back and help unload that one as well.
‘I think all the gear they used down there [on the mountain] went down the bottom of Whenuapai and they burned it. I remember a big tray full of these tents and all this gear, but it was all polluted [with aviation fuel and human remains]. They couldn’t do anything with it, so they burned it.
‘It took a long time for me to forget about it.
‘The trailer, the semi we used, it was one that had been refurbished. It had never done a job. When I took it back to the yard in between [the flights] it had to be parked and plugged in so it would stay cold. Then, when the next flight arrived, I hooked [it] up and took it again. At the end, they weren’t sure what would happen to it, if they’d ever use it again, so I took it to a place with these hot-water blasters. Then the health department or whoever came and hooked up all these sensors to the floor and the walls, and we blasted it with all this steam and whatnot, but it didn’t get up to a high enough temperature to be sterilised or whatever—the smell and the fuel had permeated it—so we ended up taking it back and it just sat there and never did another thing. Because of what we carted—bodies, fuel—we just couldn’t use it again. The company didn’t want to use it, but we had to go through the process, then it went to skid row and got demolished.
‘The main thing I learned was the way they tried to identify people. So, they’d do what your grandmother did—they’d cut some material off the clothing, and then they’d wash it all because it was covered in all sorts of muck and smells. Then, they’d show it to the families. And they did that with rings and watches, too. They didn’t just accept that if you found Joe Brown’s passport in a jacket on a body, that meant the body was Joe Brown. I heard one cop ask, “What if Joe Brown gave his jacket to Fred Smith because he was cold?” They’d cross-reference everything to be sure.
‘And the morticians did their job so well. I’ve never seen anything like it. They had viewing rooms—they’d fix some of the bodies up so well, and get the families in. I can’t believe they worked on all those people. It was a pretty horrific crash. I was surprised at the number of people who were recognisable, though—who didn’t have that many marks and still had their clothes on.
‘They had a model of Erebus [the crash site] upstairs, and it was graphed [the grid]. Every body had a number tied on their toe. They then tried to work out who was accounted for, and even tried to see if where each body was found was where they were supposed to be sitting in the plane.
‘All up, I was there about four weeks. Each night, the police would drive me home, because I had to leave the truck at the morgue. Then, the next morning, they’d pick me up and we’d go back. Things were moving along pretty quickly—they’d try to get them identified, then call the funeral directors to come and get them, then move on to the next one. That was a brand-new mortuary back then, but it still wasn’t big enough.
‘I think about those guys [at the mortuary] sometimes. Some of them got a bit tired, and it affected a lot of them. I remember one guy—he was getting married, I think, and he had a dream that the bodies in the fridge were the guests at the wedding. I think that’s when they realised they had to change their people around a bit and get them help. It was really tragic, now that I think about it, when you see all those bodies and … I saw a lot too. They were all mixed in there, the parts and the burned ones.
‘Another guy was such a staunch policeman—the kind who would arrest his own mother! That’s how he did his job. Most of them were quite friendly, but not him. I spoke to him about it one day—that’s how he got through it, so it wouldn’t affect him.’
Harden up, son.
‘On the second week after the second flight had [arrived], I remember there got to be a terrible smell. I don’t know if it was in the fridges or on the dock or just generally. One time, I had the gear on that they gave me, but I had a hole in my glove, and a little spot of something got on my hand. No matter how hard I washed it, that smell wouldn’t come off. The bodies arrived in good condition. They had been frozen, but after a few weeks it was terrible. The smell … They used to clean it a lot, but it didn’t make any difference. Since then, I’ve been around different people who have passed away. At the end, you go to the hospital, and I’d smell that smell again. It’s not a smell I’ve smelled a lot, but it’s definitely one you won’t forget.
‘At the end, they had a debriefing with a meal and drinks. They talked to everyone, discussed it right down to what it was. I never dreamed about it, but what got me was: how could you kill all these people in one go?
‘With all my work in the body-movement team, and this connection to a passenger, I paid attention. I thought about my old neighbour a lot. He was a great young fella, but I never saw his body go in. I’ve had no ill effects. What was on the telly at the time, it prepared you for one thing, but what I saw was totally different. When you’re driving on the road, you have a lot of time to think, and I’d often go back to it. My kids know about it. I think I didn’t dwell too much because I was busy.’
At the time of the Erebus Disaster, there were union troubles simmering in New Zealand. Dennis remembers someone telling him he could claim more pay for carting bodies, that it was worth good money, that he should put in for it.
‘But I didn’t do it for the money.’ He stumbles over his words, angry tears misting his eyes as he wipes them away with broad hands. ‘I couldn’t believe he even brought it up. I felt proud to do it, I felt honoured.’
Dennis never received the New Zealand Special Service Medal (Erebus). ‘I was only driving the truck. I wasn’t down on the mountain. I didn’t handle heaps of bodies, like the police and them did. I got a letter thanking me for what I did, which I still have. Everyone put their hundred and ten per cent in because it was a huge disaster.’
Given all that he did, I think it’s strange that Dennis never received a service medal. He deserved one. He, too, cared for our dead. I store the thought away for later.
I thank him for being so respectful, for doing a job that no one else wanted to do.
His story shares the same thread of humility that is woven through the stories of Rex and Stuart. The sense of duty to the victims and to their families, the notion that they felt honoured to serve.
I was only driving the truck.