KEY POINTS:
One thing everyone who worked on the Erebus disaster in late 1979 can't forget is the smell of jet fuel.
From the police officer who led the team that recovered the bodies of the 257 people killed when Air NZ flight TE901 slammed into Antarctica's highest mountain on
November 28, to the team that helped put names to the remains brought back from the ice, they still can't shake the smell of the jet fuel.
Retired superintendent Bob Mitchell, who led the police body-recovery team, and forensic pathologist Timothy Koelmeyer were two of 22 people who yesterday received the Special Service Medal in a ceremony at Parliament.
Over the next few months around 200 people who worked on all aspects of Erebus, from body recovery to air accident staff to mortuary technicians, will be honoured for their role in the aftermath of what was then the fourth biggest air disaster of all time.
The day before Erebus, Mr Mitchell had taken part in a refresher course for members of the recently formed police disaster victim identification team. Hours later, he was in an Air Force Hercules on the way to the ice to put his training into action.
"We had actually done the forward planning for a major disaster, but we thought it would probably happen in New Zealand. We didn't really contemplate an event down in the Antarctic."
While flying down Mr Mitchell, a keen chess player, considered the grimmest set of squares he had ever seen: a grid pattern which recovery teams would use to tag and identify bodies and body parts.
"Once I got up there and had a look I saw it was do-able. It was going to be tough but it would be do-able."
Mr Mitchell was the linchpin of the recovery operation, co-ordinating between police headquarters, the teams on Erebus and recovery headquarters at Scott Base.
Conditions on the ice were hellish. Bodies had frozen solid and had to be chipped out of the mountainside. Several were trapped under wreckage.
Much of the debris was melted by the heat of the crash into the mountainside then covered by snow, making bodies and possible evidence doubly hard to spot, Mr Mitchell said.
The snow also hid crevasses.
Erebus gave Dr Koelmeyer the worst possible start to his career as a forensic pathologist. He had just qualified as a surgeon and was called the day after the crash and asked to become part of a team of doctors identifying the crash victims.
"That was my introduction to forensic pathology," Dr Koelmeyer said.
"The one thing that really lingered on and on and on in your senses was the smell of jet fuel. It has really stuck in my memory ... It hung around for weeks afterwards."
Despite the calamitous impact of the crash, some of the bodies he helped to identify were barely marked. Others were severely maimed.
"It wasn't a case of 257 bodies, it was 257 bodies in bits and pieces. In those days you didn't have DNA or such things. It was a big job."
