Less than an hour after the Globemaster took to the skies, hostilities flared up once again when separatists shot down two government jetfighters in eastern Ukraine near Savur-Mogila; this was only forty kilometres from the spot where MH17 was shot down six days before. Ukrainian officials said that separatists had downed two of their four Su-25 planes flying near the border with Russia, where they were assisting military forces on the ground. After trying unsuccessfully to manoeuvre away from the surface-to-air missiles, the pilots managed to get out of their aircraft moments before impact, floating down to pro-Russian territory and into the hands of the enemy. The downing of the military aircraft signalled renewed hostilities in the area.
Meanwhile at Eindhoven airport, flags flying at half-mast flapped in the breeze. There was one flag to commemorate every nation that had lost citizens, as well as the Ukrainian flag. Although there were no Ukrainian nationals among the victims, it was thought that Ukraine too had suffered. At Schiphol the impromptu shrine outside terminal three, which had been little more than a pile of flowers just after the news of the downing of the MH17 broke, had now grown into an ocean of bouquets, teddy bears and candles.
Fifteen minutes before four o’clock a murmur rose from the crowd gathered at the airport. A small dot appeared in the cloudless blue sky, gradually getting larger as it approached its destination. At 3.47pm the first plane, the Hercules, landed, and just three minutes later the Globemaster followed.
Churches around the Netherlands started tolling their bells at five minutes to four. This lasted for five minutes. Just before 4pm a lone bugler sounded the traditional military farewell of the ‘last post’, marking the arrival of the two aircraft. It was a profoundly moving lament which echoed across the silent airfield, the last tones drifting away on the wind as the silence returned. At 4pm local time, at precisely the time the rear cargo doors of the planes were opened, a nationwide one minute of silence followed. From Amsterdam to Maastricht, the country fell silent. Trains and traffic ground to a standstill, and planes did not take off or land. The cranes in Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, ceased to swivel and haul. In supermarkets across the country, shoppers paused to remember the dead. The nation’s iconic windmills were placed in ‘mourning position’, their wings tilted to the right. Courts suspended all trials, and even commercials were pulled from Dutch television and radio.
To coincide with the arrival of the two planes at Eindhoven, there was a small ceremony at Kiev. In front of the Dutch embassy there, the Ukrainian people had paid tribute to the dead by lighting candles or laying flowers. Among the carnations, sunflowers and roses were more than a dozen teddy bears for the eighty children and infants who had died in the crash. Some thirty members of the Dutch embassy staff walked in a line to stand in front of the endless rows of flowers, candles, soft toys and messages of condolence that the locals had left during the past five days. For five minutes they stayed motionless, until at a signal they wordlessly walked back inside in the knowledge that the victims had arrived home.
Back at the Dutch air base the eerie silence was broken only by the soft clinking of flagpoles whipping in the wind at half-mast. Then, on cue, members of the Royal Netherlands Air Force began to move. The men marched in formation, two lines, four pallbearers on each side, disappearing into the bellies of the massive planes and returning just moments later carrying a single coffin. Faced with that first coffin, some family members were unable to contain themselves. Confronted for the first time with the undeniable truth of death, a few screams cut through the dense silence.
It took ninety minutes for all forty caskets to be carried out and placed in individual hearses. The short rhythmic steps of the eight pallbearers were precisely accurate, never advancing more than one foot at a time. The solemn, dignified and painstakingly precise ceremony moved nearly all those attending to tears. Queen Maxima clutched her husband’s hand, unable to contain her tears as the coffins were carried before the attendees.
The stark wooden coffins, bereft of any flag, hit home how anonymous the bodies still were. None of the families knew if their loved ones were among those now being carried to the hearses, no one had yet been identified, but it did not matter. Sir Peter Cosgrove later told the media: ‘We were thinking to ourselves, “Is this person in this casket an Australian?” But today they were all Australians. They were all Dutch. And they were all of the other nations.’
Protected from the media glare and seated behind large shields, the bereaved watched and wept as the coffins were carried into the black automobiles. The Dutch King would later comment that ‘the families’ grief had ripped through his soul’. On the baking tarmac at the military airport, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima stood and bowed their heads in remembrance as the last coffin was placed in a hearse.
Six days after they had perished in the wheat and sunflower fields of eastern Ukraine’s countryside, forty of the victims had finally made it home. No words were spoken, and no speeches made that day. Out of the carnage, chaos and unspeakable horror finally came a moment of calm.
At 4.46pm the first twenty hearses moved off, slowly driving past the area where the families were seated before leaving the airport. Gone was the horror of the train of the dead, with its appalling odour and lethal gases, the remains were now on their way to a state-of-the-art laboratory at the Korporaal van Oudheusden army barracks.
As the cars started off on their ninety-minute journey to Hilversum, the convoy passed along roads and overpasses lined with thousands of members of the public, who applauded, threw flowers or stood in silence to pay respect to the dead as the cars drove by. White roses were dropped from a motorway bridge as the cortege of hearses drove past. When the cars finally arrived at the army barracks, a large crowd applauded the victims as the hearses passed. Some held their hands across their mouths in shock while others mourned and wept.
Everyone was aware that this was only the first group of victims, and that another 258 were to follow; some were still to be located and the remains of another 150 were waiting at Kharkiv for transportation to the Netherlands. As they arrived over the next few days, every coffin would be greeted with the same show of respect and the same painstakingly precise procedure, but without the assembled international dignitaries. Men in uniform carried the caskets from the aircraft into the waiting hearses and along the motorways people lined up day after day, throwing flowers and crying for the lost lives that passed them by.
On that first day and the days that followed, the images of chaos in a far corner of Europe were replaced with images of a country at peace but deeply affected by the senseless loss of lives.
For the 38 Australian citizens and residents who were killed on 17 July, it would take some weeks before they could be returned to the country they called home. First, they would need to be identified. The Victorian couple Mary and Gerry Menke, who ran their abalone pearling business at Mallacoota, were officially identified in August 2014; they were the first Australians to achieve this finality.
On 11 September, nearly two months after the tragedy, the bodies of several Australian passengers were returned home and met by a convoy of hearses at the Qantas hangar at Melbourne airport, where a repatriation ceremony was held for those killed in the crash. There was no confirmation of how many were repatriated that day or their identity, but at the beginning of December 2014 forensics in the Netherlands confirmed that all Australians had been identified and that their remains would now soon be returned to their families.