News & Views

Last year, Marine Lance Cpl. Christian Brown lost both his legs while fighting in Afghanistan. Last week, he lost his dignity while flying on Delta. According to reports, Brown, 29, was humiliated by the airline staff who clumsily wheeled him to the back of the plane, bumping into seated passengers along the way, and refused to let him change seats with fellow ticket-holders who offered him their seats in first class. Army Lt. Col. Keith Gafford was also on that flight from Atlanta to D.C. and saw the whole shameful scene go down. He says Brown, who was also battling a fever of 104, was in tears.

Gafford explained:

I have been flying with Delta for a gazillion years and this crew treated Chris worse than you’d treat any thing, not even any body. I did 27 years in the military. I have seen a lot of things and have seen a lot of guys die, but I have never seen a Marine cry.

They sat on the tarmac for more than 45 minutes and Gafford said still, the flight attendants wouldn't move Brown to a better seat. He blasted the staff for being "hard as woodpecker lips."

What was going through the minds of the flight attendants who, from what it sounds like, went out of their way to be some of the least accommodating people on Earth? The man's got no legs, for crying out loud, he's sick as a dog, he's visibly humiliated, and he's a veteran who served our country proudly -- is it too much to ask to treat him like a human being?

Delta has issued an apology, but I can understand where Gafford and retired Army Col. Nickey Knighton, another service-member on the flight, are coming from when they speak with such disgust and disdain for the treatment Brown received.

You'd think around the holidays people would have lighter, kinder hearts, especially for those who served, and for those with their whole lives ahead of them. I guess not.

Can you believe how Brown was treated?

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