Posted on 09/10/2011 9:09:23 AM PDT by darrellmaurina
FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (Sept. 9, 2011) — Memorial services on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks often focus on where people were on the day of the event.
“In our parents’ generation, I’ve heard those stories about where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor and knew instantly it would be one of those moments that would be life-changing,” said Col. James Watson, Fort Leonard Wood’s senior chaplain during the post’s Friday morning memorial service.
“Those first incomprehensible moments, when we thought there was an unexplainable accident, a plane running into a building, and a few minutes later that awful realization hit that we are under attack,” Watson said.
For Chaplain Eric Erkkinen, now retired and serving in the chaplain endorsement office of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Sept. 11, 2001, began in his typical role as deputy chief chaplain for the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir; he’d been promoted to lieutenant colonel just four months earlier.
It wasn’t long before the Army Chief of Chaplains called Erkkinen, who had previously helped with counseling in a mass shooting incident outside Fort Hood in 1991, to come to the Pentagon and assist.
Helping victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack and their families wasn’t easy.
“Emotions can paralyze us with fear, they can force us to change our actions, they can inspire us to do something,” Erkkinen said. “Here we are, gathered together to remember an event that occurred 10 years ago. What emotions are in us right now as we sit here?”
Erkkinen said a recent article in the Wall Street Journal noted that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan do not have what the writer called “bookends.”
“We know when it began, Sept.11, 2001. Where are we now?” Erkkinen said. “Ten years after the tragic events of 9/11, we need words of assurance, of guidance, but more than that, we need comfort and inspiration for the way ahead.”
Knowing how to do that is not easy, Erkkinen acknowledged, recounting a story of a military doctor unzipping body bags to pronounce the victims dead.
“You’re in a Tyvek suit with a hard hat on and a mask, which, by the way, does not leave out the smells,” Erkkinen said. “There’s eight young soldiers dressed the same way, looking and waiting for you, and the only identifying feature that you have is a duct-taped silver cross on your chest. And as you look up and pray over the remains, there is a woman with no head and no legs, but the chiffon blouse that she has on is identical to one in your wife’s closet.”
“They don’t teach you how to deal with that in seminary,” Erkkinen said.
After the terrorist attack, Erkkinen had to visit a retired Marine gunnery sergeant.
“He’s waiting for his wife to return from the Pentagon where she worked,” Erkkinen said. “A month later… he knows she died because she didn’t come home that night to celebrate her birthday… the cake’s on the table still.”
“It’s not easy to stand there by the fence and watch a cadaver dog go through long rows of debris piled high,” Erkkinen said. “That dog would stop and pause and alert, and then a medic would come over and remove an American piece… how do you go through that and take the next step and move forward when there are so many things to set you back?”
“The only way to make sense out of the tragedy or find meaning in 9/11 is to hold onto the hand of God, or better yet, have him hold you and sustain you,” Erkkinen said. “You do his will with all our strength and all your might with his help. That’s the only way to move forward.”
Responding to the attacks required military force, and for the post commander, Maj. Gen. David Quantock, his career dramatically changed when the war in Iraq put him in charge of military police detainee operations and made him responsible for fixing the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
“There’s a very poignant picture and it shows the fire department handing the flag of the United States over to the military for them to continue the protection of our country, to take on what started on 9/11 and continues to this day,” Quantock said.
The 9/11 terrorist attack found Quantock studying in classes at the Army War College as he realized “in horror that it wasn’t an errant pilot, it was terrorists who had taken aim at freedom.”
“As we watched those planes fly into those buildings, all of us gained a great sense of anger as we saw our fellow citizens, many of them on death’s doorstep, jumping from buildings,” Quantock. “We lost over 3000 of our fellow citizens that day, but as we saw people leaving and running through the streets, running away from the terror, we saw hundreds of brave Americans, fire departments, police, running toward the disaster, running to save lives, running up and down those buildings. That is the courage that makes our country great.”
After liberty was attacked, military personnel deployed to both Afghanistan to root out the terrorists, Quantock said.
“We deployed to Iraq to continue the fight, to continue to give countries that don’t understand freedom the taste of freedom,” Quantock said. “We see what happens today around the world with the taste of freedom. You see it all over the Arab world: The power to vote, the power to elect their own government. Yes, liberty is a powerful calling.”
The death of 3,000 people on 9/11 and twice that number since in military conflict needs to be remembered, and that’s the role of 9/11 memorial ceremonies and events, Quantock said.
“We responded with courage, with heroism, with patriotism, because liberty was under attack and it needed to be answered,” Quantock said. “Rarely in a person’s life do you have an event like what happened in Pearl Harbor in 1941, but we had that event, we had it in our lifetime. We will carry those images with us for the rest of our lives and it is up to us to continue. As our youngsters, as our family members, are born into freedom, and born into liberty, and probably don’t appreciate freedoms and liberties, (it is up to us) to educate them to appreciate the sacrificed that happened on Sept. 11, 2001, to the present, so they can continue the fight — the fight for freedom and for liberty.”
“We will have victory in Iraq and Afghanistan… we have given them the opportunities that they did not have before for freedom and liberty,” Quantock said.
The article is posted in full. No need to click on the link; there's nothing additional there except a photo of the chaplain speaking which I don't know how to post in Free Republic. Someone else can post the photo here on Free Republic if they wish, or tell me how to do it, but I don't think the photo is anything terribly interesting.
I had FNC on while I was getting ready for work. My first thought was, that is going to be one heck of a job to repair the hole in that building.
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