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The pentagonal Pentagon is located on the southern bank of the Potomac River, opposite to Washington, D.C., and is a huge symbol of American military power.
For the approximately 23,000 military and civilian personnel who went to work there, September 11, 2001 was the beginning of another day of routine.
The summer heat is fading, and with the arrival of autumn, the weather gradually cools down. The sky is clear blue.
“It’s a good and normal day to work at the Pentagon.” Army Colonel Marilyn Wills said she was a congressional affairs official who was sitting at a conference table when a commercial airliner attacked the Pentagon.
American Airlines Flight 77 carried 64 people, including 5 al-Qaeda hijackers Crash to the west At 9:37 in the morning, the Pentagon. The other two hijacked planes crashed on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and the fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
These events caused nearly 3,000 deaths, Set off rapid deployment The U.S. military went to Afghanistan and started the longest war in the United States.
Wells was 40 years old, and he was blown to the floor from the room by an explosion. She guided the others out, crawling along the floor through the smoke and burning windows, their clothes melted on her body, and the smoke choked their lungs.
Some people have succeeded in chaos, smoke and burning jet fuel, some have not. Twenty-nine people were killed in the Pentagon that day.
Wells was carried out of the building by people on the ground, who formed a human ladder to reach the window. She was admitted to the hospital for burns and smoke inhalation. She returned to work 13 days later and learned that the explosion was an attack.
“When I came back, the worst was the smell. You can smell the smoke, you can smell the burning corpse, you can smell the burning wire. You can smell it all,” Will, now retired from the Army Si recalled at the Pentagon briefing on Wednesday.
“I walked down the hallway and I would think I saw ghosts,” said Wells, who later received the Purple Heart for her injuries and the Soldiers for heroism.
On September 11, 2001, a commercial airliner crashed into the damaged area of ​​the Pentagon, at sunrise, with the US Capitol in the background, taken on September 16, 2001 [File: Larry Downing/Reuters]Army Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff Roy Wallace (Roy Wallace) was 50 feet from the crash path. He vividly recalled that the fire sucked oxygen away from the room he was in.
An officer staggered out of the fire and fell to the ground in front of Wallace. His uniform was “a mess.” When the plane hit, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Birdwell was only a few yards away from the plane. He was swallowed by flames.
Wallace later retrieved a clock from his office. It stopped 19 minutes after the plane impacted.
Wallace said at a media conference on Wednesday: “That’s the time it takes for the heat of the flame to melt the crystal and freeze your hands forever.”
Mark Lewis, the then Acting Minister of Manpower and Reserve Affairs, recalled that because the building was still smoking and the United States was on high alert, the Army’s focus quickly shifted to preparations for deployment to Afghanistan.
“We transition to war immediately. We are very busy,” Lewis said.
Deputy Assistant Secretary Gerry Kitzhaber managed to escape. His wife called to tell him about the plane crash in New York, which delayed him to the meeting. He would have been in the corridor directly hit by Flight 77.
“We only talked for a few minutes, I hung up, and just as I turned around, the plane crashed,” Kittshaber recalled.
Kittsharber evacuated to the central courtyard of the Pentagon, where he saw a piece of aircraft fuselage “about the size of a turkey platter” on the ground.
“At that time we knew that we were obviously hit by a plane.”
Kitzhaber was evacuated from outside the building to the street under the rush of people and met the driver of the delivery truck who had witnessed the accident.
According to Kittsharber, the truck driver said: “I heard a noise and I looked up and saw the plane coming in.”
“The b***h’s son shot before he came in,” the truck driver said, and he could see the people on the plane through the window.
Moments later, two Air Force F-16 fighter jets took off from Boleyn Air Force Base on the other side of the river and screamed over the building to intercept Joint Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, when the passengers rushed into the cockpit.
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