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Repost from last night:

Soldiers Recall Events of Sept. 11th

1st AD Soldiers Now In Baghdad At Ground Zero And At The Pentagon

Spc. John S. Wollaston
3rd Brigade PAO

BAGHDAD, IRAQ – Where were you when Pearl Harbor was attacked? What were you doing when Kennedy was shot? Where were you when the Twin Towers fell? Events in America’s history, in one form or another, that are forever seared in the memories of the people who experienced them. For two soldiers currently serving with the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad, there is no way they’ll ever be able to forget the events of September 11, no matter how hard they might try.

That’s because they were on the receiving end of the attacks.

During a memorial service to remember the September 11th victims at the 2nd Battalion 70th Armor Regiment dining facility, what started out as an ordinary reading of the timeline of events on that tragic day suddenly became riveting for those in attendance. That’s because when Captain Thane Thompson of the 490th Civil Affairs Battalion, a reserve unit from Abilene, Texas attached to the 3rd Brigade, came to the events on the timeline at 8:01 a.m., they became very personal to him.

“8:01 a.m., United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 carrying 38 passengers, two pilots and five flight attendants leaves Newark, New Jersey for San Francisco.” Cpt. Thompson said reading from the timeline. What he said next is what got everyone’s attention. “At the time I had just arrived for work, on the 61st Floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.”

Thompson then went on to describe as he went through the timeline what was happening around him as the events of September 11th began to unfold.

“At 8:45 a.m. I was taking a coffee break, looking out over the entire New York Harbor.” Thompson continued. “It was a beautiful, I thought life was grand. I was in New York City. Then I heard a muffled explosion behind me, that was 8:46 a.m.”

What Thompson had just heard was American Airlines Flight 11 slamming into the North Tower. Thompson said he knew almost immediately that something was wrong and without waiting, he grabbed his personal belongings and made his way to the exit. “I saw flames and burning material outside my window” Thompson said. “I knew it was time to get out.”

Thompson and another man risked their safety to help a heavyset woman who was having trouble making it down the stairs. With each man supporting one of her arms, they began helping her down 61 floors to the outside.

17 minutes and 39 floors later, Thompson, the unknown man and the woman they were assisting were jolted by yet another explosion.

This one was United Airlines Flight 175 crashing into the 84th floor of the building they were in, World Trade #2, the South Tower, what would barely an hour later become the first of the towers to collapse.

“This was a very, very loud explosion. The building was shaking and people were screaming.” Cpt. Thompson said as he described the impact of the Boeing 767 60 floors above.

Thompson and the two other people with him safely exited the building and moved to a park a short distance away from the Twin Towers. But instead of counting his blessings and calling it a day, Cpt. Thompson decided to go back and see what he could do to help at ground zero.

“As an enlisted man I was a medic.” Thompson explained. “I figured I could be useful helping to carry stretchers and holding I.V. bags. So I went back.”

Thompson made his way to the on-site command post and assisted where he could. He was helping paramedics from the New York City Fire Department when the first tower came down. Thompson and the firefighters saved themselves by taking shelter in an underground parking garage. They eventually escaped as the North Tower was coming down by jumping into an ambulance and leaving the scene as the building was collapsing.

At the same time that Cpt. Thompson was exiting the South Tower, at 9:45 a.m., The 1st Armored Division’s Assistant Commander for Maneuver, Brigadier General Curtis Scaparrotti’s escape from the terrorist attacks was just beginning. Brig. Gen. Scaparrotti, a Colonel at the time, worked at the Pentagon in the National Military Command Center, the operations center for the U.S. Military and on the opposite side of the building from where American Airlines Flight 77 crashed.

“We were watching what was happening in New York City on the television.” Scaparrotti said. “ When we saw the second plane hit we realized that this was no accident, it was a deliberate attack.” Almost immediately Scaparrotti and his co-workers began preparing contingency plans and drawing up options for what was happening and how the military would respond to the situation. “I knew we were about to get real busy real fast and we needed to be ready.” Scaparrotti said.

When the order went out from the Federal Aviation Administration for all commercial flights to land immediately, the officers in the NMCC were monitoring every commercial flight that was in the air over the United States on a large video screen. “At about 8:30 that morning I can tell you there were an awful lot of aircraft in the air.” The general said.

But slowly the flights began to disappear from the screen as they landed. All the aircraft eventually dropped from the screen. All that is, except two.

“We knew pretty quickly which flights were heading this way,” Scaparrotti told the audience. “We alerted the air defense systems in the U.S. and there were already two aircraft in the air trying to intercept the two remaining airliners.”

Those assembled in the NMCC were watching American Flight 77 on the screen as it drew closer to the Capitol and were actually trying to figure out what it’s target would be when it slammed into the Pentagon.

“We were on the inner ring on the opposite side of the building and it moved the floors up and down about an inch to one and a half inches when it impacted.” Brig. Gen. Scaparrotti said. It didn’t take long after the impact for those of us in the ops center to realize that it (the ability for the Pentagon to remain standing) was going to be touch and go.”

After a brief evacuation of the building and a head count of his people, Scaparrotti and the other NMCC staff returned to work, despite the smoky, hazardous conditions inside. It was then, Scaparrotti noted that he began to see the true professionalism of the soldiers around him come shining through. The general described watching medics and emergency response personnel from all branches of service immediately go into action to help those trapped in the building and those who were outside and wounded. Often the first responders were crawling in the darkness through thick smoke, jet fuel and fire to get to the victims. “The warrior spirit that we see alive and well here on the battlefield in Iraq, was on display from all four services that day at the Pentagon.” He said.

Despite the tragedy and danger that was literally yards away from them, the NMCC staff quickly formed a “crisis action team” and began to draw up the military’s response to what happened that day. For the next 36-48 hours the team worked non-stop.

Scaparrotti also praised what he called “the American Spirit” that he saw in the volunteers who brought food and water and whatever else was needed to the Pentagon in the first few days after the attack. The general however was unprepared for what happened the first time he arrived at his residence after the attacks.

“When I went home after having been at the Pentagon for 48 hours straight, I pulled into my driveway and half of my neighborhood came out to greet me and make sure I was ok.” The general said. “What that means to me is that people were touched by what happened so deeply, that they would come out and take the time to say ‘how are you doing?’ I was very touched by it.”

326 posted on 09/16/2003 3:09 AM PDT by txradioguy (HOOAH! Not just a word, A way of life!)