 Ladies and gentlemen, please rise and join me in singing a hymn of faith, Amazing Grace, found printed in the inside of your worship folder. Please be seated. Please bow your heads with me now and join in a prayer of memory. O God of amazing grace, we beg you to be a shield to all who gather to pay tribute to fallen soldiers of the MFO Task Force and to express our grief for and with the families who have been so deeply crushed and cruelly disappointed. We pray for wives, for children, for parents and all whose lives are touched by personal loss and unexpressible grief. Continue to mold our country and its communities into ones of caring as well as crying of support as well as suffering, of trying in spite of tears and of genuine love in spite of agonizing loss. Help us in time to accept that our planned reunion this past Thursday has been preempted by their unexpected final rendezvous with destiny. And keep close to our consciousness the kernel of a deep and abiding faith which already catches the faint aroma of a far better reunion yet to come when we too shall mount up with wings as eagles and all sorrow and sighing shall pass away. Amen. Mr. President, Mrs. Reagan, as commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division Air Salt, and Fort Campbell, and speaking for every soldier and their families that serve and live here, we thank you for coming to the home of the screaming eagles. We knew that you would come to share our sorrow because all of us can feel the deep and abiding human warmth that you have for the armed forces of this great country. With us today and sitting with you are many of the families of those superb soldiers in Task Force 3502 who did not make it home from peacekeeping duties in the Sinai. Also with us are those brave soldiers of the Task Force who did make it home a week earlier. The entire chain of command from you, sir, to the brigade command level are here with us as well. The battalion Task Force commander, Lieutenant Colonel Marvin Jeff Colt Jr., was on the plane that went down in Newfoundland, and it is he and the other wonderful men and women of the Task Force who lost their lives whose memory we hallow today. There are also many families who lost loved ones that could not be physically present with us, and the same is true for the 234 soldiers of the Task Force who are still on duty in the Sinai, but we embrace them in spirit and include them in our prayers. Nearly six months ago when the Task Force was preparing to depart just outside this very building, I made the point that they were trained to a razor's edge, and I asked them to go to the Sinai and perform their peacekeeping mission in the finest tradition of their great combat division. They did just that. Lieutenant General Inger Brickston, commander of the multinational force and observers, told me, and I quote, They are among the finest troops I have seen in my career, both the leaders and the soldiers, and this is not our wash. I really mean it. End of quote. I think this sort of sums it up. As a professional soldier with considerable years of service, the only solace that I can personally take from this tragedy is that if a soldier has to die, it should be in the service of his country, doing a tough and important mission, and it should be with his fellow soldiers. This is how it was. Mr. President, we are pleased that you and Mrs. Reagan could join us this morning. You honor us with your presence. We are here in the name of the American people. The passing of American soldiers killed as they returned from difficult duty abroad is marked by our presence here. At this point, the dimensions of the tragedy are known to almost every person in the country. Most of the young men and women we mourn were returning to spend the holidays with their families. They were full of happiness and laughter as they pushed off from Cairo. Those who saw them at their last stop spoke of how they were singing Christmas carols. They were happy. They were returning to Kith and Kin. And then the terrible crash, the flags lowered to half-staff and the muffled stops, and we wonder how this could be. How could it have happened and why? We wonder at the stark tragedy of it all, the enormity, the lost. For lost were not only the 248, but all of the talent, the wisdom, and the idealism that they had accumulated. Lost, too, were their experience and their enormous idealism. Who else but an idealist would choose to become a member of the armed forces and put himself or herself in harm's way for the rest of us? Who but an idealist would go to hard duty in one of the most troubled places of the world and go not as a matter of conquest, but as a force that existed to keep the peace? Some people think of members of the military as only warriors, fierce in their martial expertise, but the men and women we mourn today were peacemakers. They were there to protect life and preserve a peace, to act as a force for stability and hope and trust. Their commitment was as strong as their purpose was pure, and they were proud. They had a rendezvous with destiny and a potential they never failed to meet. Their work was a perfect expression of the best of the Judeo-Christian tradition. They were the ones of whom Christ spoke when he said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Tragedy is nothing new to mankind, but somehow it's always a surprise. Never loses its power to astonish. Those of us who did not lose a brother or son or daughter or friend or father or shaken nonetheless, and we all mourn with you. We cannot fully share the depth of your sadness, but we pray that the special power of this season will make its way into your sad hearts and remind you of some old joys. Remind you of the joy it was to know these fine young men and women. The joy it was to witness the things they said, and the jokes they played, the kindnesses they did, and how they laughed. You were part of that, and you who mourn were a part of them. Just as you think today of the joy they gave you, think for a moment of the joy you gave them and be glad. For love, love is never wasted. Love is never lost. Love lives on and sees us through sorrow. From the moment love is born, it is always with us, keeping us aloft in the time of flooding and strong in the time of trial. You do not grieve alone. We grieve as a nation together. As together we say goodbye to those who died in the service of their country. In life, they were our heroes. In death, our loved ones are darlings. They were happy and singing, and they were right. They were going home. And so we pray, receive, O Lord, into your heavenly kingdom, the men and women of the Hundred and First Airborne, the men and women of the great and fabled Screaming Eagles. They must be singing now in their joy, flying higher than mere men can fly, as flights of angels take them to their rest. I know that there are no words that can make your pain less or make your sorrow less painful. I wish there were, but one thing we can be sure, as a poet said of other young soldiers in another war, they will never grow old. They will always be young. And we know one thing, every bit of our thinking, they are now in the arms of God. God bless you.