After Before and After

Phase 4: Chapter 106

Savannah, Georgia was a beautiful place during the autumn season; leaves various shades of reds, browns, oranges, and yellows, every sidewalk lined with their fall colors, the wind a perfect temperature to keep you cool after stripping off your sweatshirt, the sun still bright and warm against the skin. Though, that all was easy to forget when you were trapped inside the dimly lit courthouse most of the day through most of the week.

What also made the early-autumn air in Savannah taste a little bittersweet to Ralph Langley was that if you were really paying attention, you could taste the daunting shift towards the end of the trial. During the middle of the trial, the media was mostly quiet about it. It was all the rage in November and December of last year when it first began, but being a private trial, closed to the public, it very quickly lost the media's attention. But now that it was nearing its long-anticipated end, it was starting to make headlines again:

All 22 Former Military Cadets set to Testify in Conclusion of the Year-Long Trial.

State Trial Against Military Boys Scheduled to Conclude Before the end of the Year

Defense's Case for 22 Bainbridge Military Academy Cadets may Rest on the Children's Testimonies

Former Military Cadets who Survived Plane Crash on a North Atlantic Ocean Island will Begin Testifying as Early as Next Week

Murder Trial Against Former Military Academy Boys is Making Waves as Trial is set to Conclude After Nearly a Year

What Could the Future Look Like for 22 Former Military Cadets Following State Trial?

The last article peaked Ralph's interest as he came across it in the morning paper one warm Saturday morning. Jeffery was inside a small local restaurant paying for the breakfast the two of them just had while Ralph patiently waited for him outside under the mid-October morning sun. The newspaper stand just outside the restaurant, propped next to the overflowing garbage can, caught his attention. Ralph glanced to read the top article as it stopped his heart for a brief but impactful second.

He picked the first paper up off the top, his hands shaking nervously, as he pondered the answer to the question posed in the headline: what would the future look like for him after the trial?

"October 9, 1993

The world hasn't forgotten the twenty-two former cadets at Bainbridge Military Academy who rocked the whole country after their military school plane went missing over the North Atlantic Ocean just over three years ago.

Very late on September 5, 1990, the small military grade aircraft departed from an airfield in rural Georgia in pursuit of an overseas military base in the United Kingdom. The plane was carrying forty-one passengers; forty of which were young boys between the ages of six and thirteen years old. The pilot flying the plane, Captain Johnathan Benson, was a former pilot for the United States Navy and a renowned staff member at the military school.

On the morning of September 6, 1990, the ATC center lost contact with the plane. It was soon confirmed that it never arrived in the United Kingdom, and was allegedly somewhere over the North Atlantic Ocean when something went awry. Nearly five months passed before the families of the passengers, the school, and the public got any answers.

It wasn't until January 27, 1991 that a smoke signal alerted U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Marine Corps personnel to the possibility of life on an island not far from where the plane had disappeared. Upon pursuit of the island, twenty-two boys were rescued. Sixteen boys were reported to have died when the plane went down and crashed in the ocean, and twenty-five survivors later turned to twenty-two following the deaths of three more between the time of the crash and the time the boys were rescued. The former navy pilot and only adult on the flight was among the three who died on the island.