Cpl. Spencer Collart will be posthumously awarded the service’s highest noncombat award: the Navy and Marine Corps Medal.
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 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 can’t say I’m surprised», Bart Collart told Military.com in a phone interview Saturday. «Of course, our initial reaction was, ‘You silly, silly brave boy, why did you do that?'»
Spencer’s other military awards include the National Defense Service Medal and Global War, Terrorism Service Medal and Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, according to his obituary.»He was all in»
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 best friends, Lance Cpl. Evan Strickland and Cpl. Jonah Waser. They spent a year together training to become crew chiefs, enlisted Marines responsible for the aircraft and its passengers. There’s a photo of them posing with their class on April 22, 2022, the day they earned their wings.
They were flying the V-22 Osprey, which functions as both an airplane and a helicopter. But it’s an aircraft that has a troubled history and .
In June 2022, Strickland was killed along with four other Marines in a training crash in California.
