I’m lucky enough to travel quite a lot.
As a matter of fact, I’m writing this on an overnight international flight.
As I clicked my seatbelt in, my thoughts turned to the passengers and crew of MH17.
Like me, they would have settled in to their seats, had a drink or a coffee, watched a movie,
or caught up on some sleep. The crew going about their well-practiced routine of feeding and watering.
Some passengers would have been reliving memories of their holiday or business trip, thinking about what needed to be done once they got home. Those mundane things like the washing,
or back-to-back meetings. The kids looking forward to telling their friends all about their adventures, showing them the selfies they hadn’t posted on Facebook.
Then they were blown out of the sky by some lunatic bastards.
There but the grace of whichever mystical sky person of choice go I.
Was it the sick work of some random rebel nutjobs playing with a deadly new toy (“what does this button do?”) Hardly. The lives of 293 people obliterated in a war that had nothing to do with them and in a split second ripping apart those of friends and families on the ground, scattered around the globe.
The stories emerged of MH17, as they do, of the passengers, the chaos of the scene and reports of looting and bodies shown no respect, left for days in the sun.
Will the murder of all those on board make one iota of difference in Ukraine? Of course not.
It will be murder as usual. The victims of MH17 will merely be collateral damage.
To the passengers and crew of MH17, a Monty Python quote:
“What a senseless waste of human life.”
©Steve Williams 2014