Marine who died trying to save crew in fiery Osprey crash to receive service’s top noncombat medal

WASHINGTON (AP) — Alexia and Bart Collart braced for a hard visit. Marines came to their home in Arlington, Virginia, last week to brief them on what caused the Osprey crash in Australia last year that resulted in the death of their son and two other Marines.

But they weren’t expecting to hear these words: Your son didn’t die in the crash.

Cpl. Spencer R. Collart had safely escaped the aircraft. But the 21-year-old saw that the Osprey’s two pilots were unaccounted for. Despite the smoke and flames, he went back in.

Collart “heroically reentered the burning cockpit of the aircraft in an attempt to rescue the trapped pilots,” the official Marine Corps investigation into the crash found. “He perished during this effort.”

For his valor, Collart will be posthumously awarded the service’s highest noncombat award: the Navy and Marine Corps Medal. It is an honor awarded for acts of heroism at great risk to the servicemember’s life.

It didn’t surprise his dad that Spencer tried to save the pilots.

“I heard a song the other day. I’ve heard it many times,” Bart Collart said. “There was a quote in there, about how ‘the last thing on my mind was to leave you.’ And I think that was Spencer talking with me a little. He had no intention of leaving us. I think he thought he’d go in and get the job done.”

Spencer Collart was a goal-driven, 6-foot-2, grinning Washington-Liberty High School lacrosse player who walked into the house on his 18th birthday with a surprise: He’d just enlisted.

“The Marines are the top of the top. The best of the best,” Spencer told his mom Alexia Collart, when she asked him why. The Collarts weren’t a military family, but Spencer wanted to serve. And he wanted to fly.

He got his top assignment choice and met his two