I scrambled to my feet and grabbed another guy. “You and I are going to be the last ones out of here,” I told him. “We have to make sure we get everybody out.”
There were about one hundred people in our office to evacuate. Some we dragged out, some were carried out. The pressure from the explosion blew cinder blocks across the office, hitting some people squarely, splitting their heads wide open. We knew we had to get them to first aid pretty quickly.
By that time the fire was starting to consume our office. We picked our way across the floor on hands and knees through debris and glass to stay beneath the thick black smoke. Someone pointed out, “That’s got to be aviation fuel, look at the way it’s burning.” We were all aviators, so that’s when we realized it was a plane that had hit us.
Meanwhile, an intelligence officer from my office had been in the Navy Operations Center on the first floor directly below us calling up information to us when the plane hit, instantly killing forty-two people and blowing this officer completely out of the C-ring where he had been. He went back into the fire four times to pull four people out. He saved their lives. So many different people responded with acts of heroism that day.
Back upstairs on the fifth floor, our time was running out. The area we were in was completely on fire, which turned all the exits into dead ends. We were walking down the escalators (all power had been knocked out), and ended up finding an exit on the other side of the building completely on the other end of the world, we used to say. It took us the better part of forty-five minutes to get out of the building.
As one can imagine at the Pentagon, there was no problem with people taking charge. But other than those that were giving specific directions, nobody else spoke as we filed out. It was silent and really eerie. Everybody knew the world had just changed.
Lord, as the world changes and leaves me with nothing to rely upon, may I constantly come back to you for guidance.
“Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me.” (Psalm 31:3)