Lt. Col. Alison Thompson stands beside a CH-53E Super Stallion just before a mission in the early morning hours of Sept. 10, 2011. Thompson, the commanding officer of Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 464, served as a CH-53E pilot with Task Force 58 during the initial invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Now Thompson is back in the region as the first woman to command a Marine squadron in Afghanistan. Photo by Cpl. Brian Adam Jones

It’s Sept. 12, 2001. The wreckage from the attacks the day before still smolders. An aircraft carrier with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit lies off the eastern shore of the United States.

Several CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters with engines running rest on the deck. The flight lead is a young Marine captain, Alison Thompson. Her freckles and biting blue eyes are veiled by her visor and flight helmet.

She wants to take off.

“We had six 53s turning on the line. I kept calling to get clearance,” Thompson said. “The plan was we’d load supplies, embark the MEU, go up to New York City, provide any support they needed with our helicopters and go straight over [to the Middle East] from there. I kept calling for clearance to take off and at that point all aviation was grounded, civilian and military.”

The mission was ultimately called off. According to Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, then mayor of New York, thought a visible military presence might instill panic among the people.

The day before, Thompson was at home in Jacksonville, N.C., asleep when the phone rang. It was her dad. She sprinted downstairs and turned on the T.V. just in time to see the second tower get hit.

A few short months later, 9,000 miles away, the 53s are once again on the deck of the ship, turning on the line and Thompson is once again in the pilot’s seat.

This time they’re cleared for take-off. This time they will push into Afghanistan.

The Marines entered Afghanistan, some riding in Thompson’s helicopter. They took Camp Rhino and Kandahar Airfield, then pushed north into the Tora Bora mountains, continuing to seek out the enemy.

Ten years later it’s September 2011 and Alison Thompson is back in Afghanistan. Now she’s a lieutenant colonel at the helm of a new mission – commanding Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 464. As the first woman to command a squadron in combat, she leads the only CH-53E squadron in the region.

Thompson’s experiences over the course of her career have prepared her for command. She spent time as a military legislative assistant for former North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, served as an aide for the Deputy Marine Corps Commandant for Aviation and returned to HMH-464 as the operations officer.

But she said her most cherished experiences came in 2001.

“I felt very fortunate to be where I was when I was,” Thompson said. “It was very expeditionary, a lot of tough terrain, a lot of unconventional things we were doing.”

“It was a strange period, kind of eerie. It was exciting too,” said Lt. Col. Pete Gadd, commanding officer of HMH-463, a CH-53D Sea Stallion squadron adjacent to HMH-464 on the Camp Bastion flightline. As a major, Gadd was part of the CH-53E detachment with Thompson in 2001 and accompanied her on many of the missions. “It was the Wild, Wild West back then. We operated out of a lot of mud huts and thatched rooms.”

“She was a great pilot back then, she’s a great pilot now.” said Maj. Dennis W. Sampson.

Sampson, a CH-53D pilot with HMH-463, and the squadron’s operations officer, also participated in the initial invasion, flying some of the first missions in Afghanistan a decade ago.

“We did a lot of raids and take-downs. She was our tactics officer and it was vital for us to be able to follow her lead back then,” Sampson said.

Now Thompson leads several hundred Marines and sailors – pilots, crew chiefs and aircraft maintainers, among others.

“She’s going to do great things in Afghanistan,” Gadd said. “HMH-464 is in great hands.”

“I just want the opportunity to make a difference,” Thompson said, “whether it be tactically or with the individual Marines. From a unit standpoint I take care of them so they’re not fighting internal friction so they can focus on their job.”

Thompson grew up in Michigan, Nebraska and Kansas wanting to be a pilot but never imagining being a Marine. When she attended the Naval Academy women were not allowed to serve in combat in aviation.

“It just so happened that three weeks before I had to service select at the Naval Academy and I had to decide what I was going to do, congress lifted the combat exclusion,” Thompson said.

As one of the first women to pilot a Marine aircraft, and now as the first woman to command a squadron in combat, she said the feeling is the same – don’t mess it up.

“She’s a great leader,” Sampson said. “She’s got great strategic and tactical experience but more importantly, she cares passionately about her Marines and providing support for the Marines on the battlefield.”

Story by Cpl. Brian Adam Jones
DVIDS

Marine veterans Mike Demo, center, and Bill Cortese, right, drove 30 minutes to New York's Ground Zero to celebrate the news that Osama Bin Laden is dead. Two of Cortese's cousins were killed in the Sept. 11, 2011, attack on the World Trade Center. Photo by Sgt. Randall Clinton

Department of Defense Special Report: The Demise of Osama bin Laden

A crowd cheers and chants in excitement at the corner of Vesey St. and Liberty St. next to Ground Zero after hearing that Osama Bin Laden is dead. Bin Laden planned the attacks, Sept 11, 2001 and has been hunted by American forces in the years since. He was killed by a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan near the country's capital. The Freedom Tower, the skyscraper being built where the World Trade Center towers once stood, is now 60 stories tall and was lit up and visible from the street. Eventually the Freedom Tower will be the tallest building in the country. Photo by Sgt. Randall ClintonSmall RSS Icon

In the early morning hours of darkness yesterday, about 35 miles northeast of Islamabad, Pakistan, dozens of U.S. special operations members and CIA agents readied themselves aboard military helicopters for the operation of a lifetime.

U.S. intelligence officers had been gathering evidence since August that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was not in a cave along the U.S.-Pakistan border, as had become lore, but was living comfortably with his family and others in a $1 million compound in Abbottabad, a suburb of the Pakistani capital, Defense Department and CIA officials who spoke on background about the operation at the Pentagon said today.

Intelligence officers spent the next eight months gathering information, which flowed heavily early this year, in part from detained fighters with the Afghanistan insurgency, they said. “The intelligence on the compound was shared with no one outside the U.S. government, and only a small number inside,” an intelligence official said.

President Barack Obama “pushed this to an actionable level,” a senior defense official said, holding numerous meetings with his national security team to consider all possible scenarios.

The special operations team, meanwhile, used its intelligence information to train for the operation, including developing contingency plans for anything they could think of that might not go as planned. With no one other than a small group of U.S. national security officials aware of the operation, officials said, the team was flown in to take bin Laden dead or alive.

Officials would not say how the forces got inside the compound, which has walls that range from 10 to 18 feet high around the perimeter, are topped with barbed wire and cover an acre of land. Once inside the triangular-shaped fortress, the team engaged in a firefight that killed two men who lived there in separate, smaller homes outside the three-story home of bin Laden and his family, officials said. The men are believed to have been brothers; one owned the property and was a courier for bin Laden, deputy national security advisor John O. Brennan said later at a White House briefing.

As expected, officials said, bin Laden resisted capture and was killed in the firefight with U.S. forces on the third floor of the home. Bin Laden’s adult son and a woman believed to be his wife also were killed in the shootout, and two women were wounded, they added.

U.S. forces were in the compound for about 40 minutes and took no casualties, officials said. During that time, they also seized numerous items that are being investigated, they said.

Obama and his national security team anxiously monitored the operation in real time, Brennan said.

“The minutes passed like days,” he said. “The president was very concerned about the security of our personnel. Clearly, it was very tense. A lot of people were holding their breath, and there was a fair degree of silence as we got the updates.” Technical problems with one of the helicopters added to the tension, he said.

After the U.S. team was safely out of the country, officials said, Obama and other members of the national security team began calling government leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan and members of Congress.

“The accomplishment that these very brave personnel from the U.S. government were able to do yesterday is very significant” to the broader effort against terrorism, Brennan said. “This is decapitating the head of the snake. This is something we’ve been after for 15 years. We are going to try to take advantage of this opportunity we have to demonstrate to the Pakistani people and others that al-Qaida is a thing of the past.”

An intelligence official who spoke to Pentagon reporters on background said the operation demonstrated “the tremendous partnership between the CIA and the U.S. military since 9/11.”

As intelligence allowed them to piece together details of the compound and its occupants, he said, it became clear bin Laden “was more or less living in plain sight” while al-Qaida’s lower level operatives “are living in dire conditions.”

“You have to wonder what they think today when they see that their leader was living high on the hog,” he said.

By Lisa Daniel
American Forces Press Service

The plan to attack the compound of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden was the result of relentless intelligence work and operational professionalism, White House officials, speaking on background, said this morning.

The operation was the culmination of years of careful and highly advanced intelligence work, officials said, as officers from the CIA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency worked as a team to analyze and pinpoint the Pakistani compound where bin Laden was killed.

Once the intelligence pointed precisely to the compound in Abbottabad –- a town 35 miles north of Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad –- the work on the mission began between the intelligence and military communities.

“In the end, it was the matchless skill and courage of these Americans that secured this triumph for our country and the world,” one official said.

A small team conducted the helicopter raid on the compound. An official called it a complex operation, noting that the compound was a virtual fortress -– built in 2006 with high walls, razor wire and other defense features. Its suburban location and proximity to Islamabad complicated the operation, the official said.

“The men who executed this mission accepted this risk, practiced to minimize those risks, and understood the importance of the target to the national security of the United States,” he said. “This operation was a surgical raid by a small team designed to minimize collateral damage and to pose as little risk as possible to noncombatants on the compound or to Pakistani civilians in the neighborhood.”

U.S. helicopters delivered the team to the compound, and the team was on the ground for less than 40 minutes, an official said. They did not encounter any local authorities. In addition to bin Laden, three adult males were killed in the raid.

“There were several women and children at the compound,” the official said. “One woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant. Two other women were injured.”

One of the U.S. helicopters was lost at the compound due to mechanical failure. The crew destroyed it on the ground, and the assault force and crew members boarded the remaining aircraft to leave, an official said.

“There’s also no doubt that the death of Osama bin Laden marks the single greatest victory in the U.S.-led campaign to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida,” the official said. “It is a major and essential step in bringing about al-Qaida’s eventual destruction.”

Though the organization’s terrorists still are dangerous and al-Qaida may not fragment immediately, an official said, “the loss of bin Laden puts the group on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse.”

The United States did not share any intelligence on the raid with any other country, the official said.

“We believed it was essential to the security of the operation and our personnel,” he said. “In fact, only a very small group of people inside our own government knew of this operation in advance.” Shortly after the raid, he added, U.S. officials contacted senior Pakistani leaders and told them about the raid and its results.

“Since 9/11, the United States has made it clear to Pakistan that we would pursue bin Laden wherever he might be,” the official said. “Pakistan has long understood that we are at war with al-Qaida. The United States had a legal and moral obligation to act on the information it had.”

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

Here are some websites you might not have found that show the images and memories of the murders that took place on September 11, 2001.

• Army Corps of Engineers – WTC site
• Army Corps of Engineers – Pentagon site
• U.S. Coast Guard – oral histories site
• Department of Defense – special topic site
• National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States – 9/11 commission final report
• Library of Congress – Witness and Response, the Library’s collection of material related to 9/11
• State Department – Top September 11 Conspiracy Theories debunked

New York City firefighters amidst the aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Search and rescue teams examine portions of the collapsed subway station beneath the World Trade Center rubble.

USACE emergency operations personnel, accompanied by representatives from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, survey the damage at the World Trade Center site.

Photos above found at the Army Corps of Engineers site for the World Trade Centers

The Pentagon shortly after September 11 2009

The photo above found at the National System for Geospatial Intelligence site.

The following was first printed here on September 9, 2003.

That night, my eyes and lungs still stinging, I walked up the Great White Way. It’s a section of road to which all others like it are measured, one which has made audiences laugh and cry for over a century. Tonight it was dark, but many of us came anyway, unsure what to do or say. We heard stories of the Pentagon, and the Heros who died in a Pennsylvanian field. It all felt far away, surreal, impossible. We heard Air Force jets overhead, and what seemed an endless cry of NYPD and FDNY sirens through the night, while we fought shock and horror.

Giuliani said more would be dead than we could bear, and he was right. For months I walked these streets, and I saw photos of tens of thousands of people. People feeling grief that not even I will know, as their husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, and their children– some who had only begun to live– were slowly pulled from the wreckage or consigned to forever be a part of it. I look back on that first night, and the day that preceded it, and all I want is my friends back, my neighbors back, and my towers back. I want them, but I can’t have them, nor can I ever have the same New York that I grew to love. In the weeks and months that followed, we cut the steel which for thirty years had symbolized our great City. We buried our friends, our neighbors, and our innocence.

Go read the entire essay at Capitalist Lion. Via Mike at Cold Fury.

The following was first printed here on September 9, 2003.

Lt. Rick Rescorla, Platoon Leader, B Co 2/7 Cav

A hero for our time, England and Cornwall’s finest!

Lt Rescorla survived that engagement and many others.

He had grown up in a village on England’s southwest coast and left at age sixteen to join the British military. He’d fought against Communists in Cyprus and Rhodesia. He then came to America, he said, so that he could enlist in the Army and go to Vietnam. He welcomed the opportunity to join the American cause in Southeast Asia. He worked his way up through the ranks to Sergeant before being commissioned…

After fighting in Vietnam, he returned to the United States and used his military benefits to study creative writing at the University of Oklahoma. Literary minded, even before college he had read all fifty-one volumes of the Harvard Classics and could recite Shakespeare and quote Churchill. He had started writing a novel about a mobile-air-cavalry unit, and had several stories published in Western-themed magazines. He eventually earned a bachelor’s, a master’s in literature, and a law degree.

Rescorla then moved to South Carolina for a brief teaching career. He left for greener pastures; jobs in corporate security eventually led him to Dean Witter in 1985. He moved to New Jersey, commuted to Manhattan, and rose to become vice-president in charge of security at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.

And, oh by the way, was still in the Army, as a Reservist, having advanced to colonel before retiring in 1990.

Rescorla’s office was on the forty-fourth floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center. The firm occupied twenty-two floors in the south tower, and several floors in a building nearby. In 1990 Rescorla and Dan Hill, an old Army friend, evaluated the security, identifying load bearing columns in the parking garage as a weak point. A security official for the Port Authority dismissed their concerns. On February 26, 1993, a truck bomb exploded in the basement.

Rescorla ensured that every one of his firm’s employees was safely evacuated, and was the last man out of the building. ..

In St. Augustine, Dan Hill was laying tile in his upstairs bathroom when his wife called, “Dan, get down here! An airplane just flew into the World Trade Center. It’s a terrible accident.” Hill hurried downstairs, and then the phone rang. It was Rescorla, calling from his cell phone.

“Are you watching TV?” he asked. “What do you think?”

“Hard to tell. It could have been an accident, but I can’t see a commercial airliner getting that far off.”

“I’m evacuating right now,” Rescorla said.

Hill could hear Rescorla issuing orders through the bullhorn. He was calm and collected, never raising his voice. Then Hill heard him break into song:

Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming;
Can’t you see their spearpoints gleaming?
See their warriors’ pennants streaming
To this battlefield.
Men of Cornwall stand ye steady;
It cannot be ever said ye
for the battle were not ready;
Stand and never yield!

Rescorla came back on the phone. “Pack a bag and get up here,” he said. “You can be my consultant again.” He added that the Port Authority was telling him not to evacuate and to order people to stay at their desks.

“What’d you say?” Hill asked.

“I said, ‘Piss off, you son of a bitch,’ ” Rescorla replied. “Everything above where that plane hit is going to collapse, and it’s going to take the whole building with it. I’m getting my people the fuck out of here.” Then he said, “I got to go. Get your shit in one basket and get ready to come up.”

Hill turned back to the TV and, within minutes, saw the second plane execute a sharp left turn and plunge into the south tower. Susan saw it, too, and frantically phoned her husband’s office. No one answered.

About fifteen minutes later, the phone rang. It was Rick. She burst into tears and couldn’t talk.

“Stop crying,” he told her. “I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I’ve never been happier. You made my life.”

Susan cried even harder, gasping for breath. She felt a stab of fear, because the words sounded like those of someone who wasn’t coming back. “No!” she cried, but then he said he had to go. Cell-phone use was being curtailed so as not to interfere with emergency communications.

From the World Trade Center, Rescorla again called Hill. He said he was taking some of his security men and making a final sweep, to make sure no one was left behind, injured, or lost. Then he would evacuate himself. “Call Susan and calm her down,” he said. “She’s panicking.”

Hill reached Susan, who had just got off the phone with Sullivan. “Take it easy,” he said, as she continued to sob. “He’s been through tight spots before, a million times.” Suddenly Susan screamed. Hill turned to look at his own television and saw the south tower collapse. He thought of the words Rescorla had so often used to comfort dying soldiers. “Susan, he’ll be O.K.,” he said gently. “Take deep breaths. Take it easy. If anyone will survive, Rick will survive.”

When Hill hung up, he turned to his wife. Her face was ashen. “Shit,” he said. “Rescorla is dead.”(2)

The rest of Rick Rescorla’s morning is shrouded in some mystery. The tower went dark. Fire raged. Windows shattered. Rescorla headed upstairs before moving down; he helped evacuate several people above the 50th Floor. Stephan Newhouse, chairman of Morgan Stanley International, said at a memorial service in Hayle that Rescorla was spotted as high as the 72nd floor, then worked his way down, clearing floors as he went. He was telling people to stay calm, pace themselves, get off their cell phones, keep moving. At one point, he was so exhausted he had to sit for a few minutes, although he continued barking orders through his bullhorn. Morgan Stanley officials said he called headquarters shortly before the tower collapsed to say he was going back up to search for stragglers.

John Olson, a Morgan Stanley regional director, saw Rescorla reassuring colleagues in the 10th-floor stairwell. “Rick, you’ve got to get out, too,” Olson told him. “As soon as I make sure everyone else is out,” Rescorla replied.

Morgan Stanley officials say Rescorla also told employees that “today is a day to be proud to be American” and that “tomorrow, the whole world will be talking about you.” They say he also sang “God Bless America” and Cornish folk tunes in the stairwells. Those reports could not be confirmed, although they don’t sound out of character. He liked to sing in a crisis. But the documented truth is impressive enough. Morgan Stanley managing director Bob Sloss was the only employee who didn’t evacuate the 66th floor after the first plane hit, pausing to call his family and several underlings, even taking a call from a Bloomberg News reporter. Then the second plane hit, and his office walls cracked, and he felt the tower wagging like a dog’s tail. He clambered down to the 10th floor, and there was Rescorla, sweating through his suit in the heat, telling people they were almost out, making no move to leave himself.

Rick did not make it out. Neither did two of his security officers who were at
his side. But only three other Morgan Stanley employees died when their building was obliterated.

However, over 2600 employees of Dean Whitter walked out of the south tower and in to the rest of their lives that morning.

Mudville Gazette via Silent Running.

Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming;
Can’t you see their spearpoints gleaming?
See their warriors’ pennants streaming
To this battlefield.
Men of Cornwall stand ye steady;
It cannot be ever said ye
for the battle were not ready;
Stand and never yield!

The following was first printed here on August 27, 2003.

September 11, 2001 dawned for me like many had that summer, sunny and warm. I was out of work for nearly a year, working a 4 hour per day temp job at the time. About 9 or so my boss came in and asked if I had a news station on my radio in the bookkeeping office. His daughter had called and said that a plane had hit a skyscraper in Manhattan. I turned the radio to WHAM, the local 50,000 watt Clear Channel talk station and sat in horror for the next three hours. I suppose I did something that morning, but I have no recollection. I called my wife at work and told her, and told her that I would be going straight to the ambulance base after work. If anything came up, I’d call her.

Arrived at the base to find a couple of guys already there and the TV on. Basically we sat, made lists of supplies we could spare to send, and called people to find crews for ambulances if we had to send them. We had no calls; in fact the county was eerily quiet that day.

As the President’s movements were reported, I nodded, seeing the justification and the appropriateness of the bases he went to.

Mostly I was numb.

Lots of channel surfing, but mostly we stayed on CNN and Fox News. Not a lot of talking amongst us.

The guys who were fire guys also were visibly upset, and raring to go. The paid ambulance guy who also volunteered with us got beeped, and took off for his HQ. Funny, no women came in, though we are 2/3 female volunteers. It was fire guys, and former fire guys like me. I guess it’s a fire thing. In an emergency, go to the base.

Went home at about 5 pm, when it was becoming obvious that we wouldn’t be called just yet to do anything. The lovely wife and I talked some, but I was still numb.

I cried for the first time months and months later. I taped the CBS documentary (by the two French brothers) but we couldn’t bear to watch it for about eight weeks. Then we did, and we cried, the wife and I.

I was so proud to be an EMT, and a former firefighter that day, and every day since. My wife hugged me once and said “I’m glad you weren’t there because I wouldn’t have you now.” She knows. There was only one direction to run that day. If I could have, I would have. A part of me still mourns that I could not have done anything, that I was not able to do something, anything.

My PTSD level is pretty high, anyway, from the years of fire and EMS. This added to it, both in a good way, and in a bad way. It made it easier to be an EMT, but gave me, gave us all, some pretty big footsteps to follow in.

Yes, I recognize that the emotions that I have felt are nothing in comparison to those felt by the people who lost loved ones in these acts of murder. I have no intention of saying that they have any equivalence. I’m just talking about me.

It was no ordinary day, that September 11, 2001. It was a day that changed my life and my point of view. I’m still an EMT and will proably be until I get too old to lift or until the PTSD finally takes its toll and I start to gibber.

It was no ordinary day.

Seven years have passed since the events of September 11, 2001. Lots of words have been used to describe those events but the one word, the most important word, that ought to be used is MURDER.

A group of well-educated men plotted for years to commit murder. Some were wealthy, some were doctors, engineers, college professors. They had but two things in common, an overwhelming desire for power and the willingness to commit murder.

Nothing that Americans did provoked these murders. The men who did them claimed that Islam told them to kill unbelievers. Their real motives were far baser. They hated the society that had given them all that they were. Their wealth, their education, their place in their societies all came as a free gift from the West, from America.

They hated themselves and they hated Americans.

And so, their plotting came to fruition and they murdered nearly 3,000 people.

Our society survived. Our nation prospered. We hunted them, killed them, captured them and we will now put them on trial for these murders.

And every minute of every hour of every day they will hate us and seek to murder more of us.

Reprinted from August 2003

September 11, 2001 dawned for me like many had that summer, sunny and warm. I was out of work for nearly a year, working a 4 hour per day temp job at the time. About 9 or so my boss came in and asked if I had a news station on my radio in the bookkeeping office. His daughter had called and said that a plane had hit a skyscraper in Manhattan. I turned the radio to WHAM, the local 50,000 watt Clear Channel talk station and sat in horror for the next three hours. I suppose I did something that morning, but I have no recollection. I called my wife at work and told her, and told her that I would be going straight to the ambulance base after work. If anything came up, I’d call her.

Arrived at the base to find a couple of guys already there and the TV on. Basically we sat, made lists of supplies we could spare to send, and called people to find crews for ambulances if we had to send them. We had no calls; in fact the county was eerily quiet that day.

As the President’s movements were reported, I nodded, seeing the justification and the appropriateness of the bases he went to.

Mostly I was numb.

Lots of channel surfing, but mostly we stayed on CNN and Fox News. Not a lot of talking amongst us.

The guys who were fire guys also were visibly upset, and raring to go. The paid ambulance guy who also volunteered with us got beeped, and took off for his HQ. Funny, no women came in, though we are 2/3 female volunteers. It was fire guys, and former fire guys like me. I guess it’s a fire thing. In an emergency, go to the base.

Went home at about 5 pm, when it was becoming obvious that we wouldn’t be called just yet to do anything. The lovely wife and I talked some, but I was still numb.

I cried for the first time months and months later. I taped the CBS documentary (by the two French brothers) but we couldn’t bear to watch it for about eight weeks. Then we did, and we cried, the wife and I.

I was so proud to be an EMT, and a former firefighter that day, and every day since. My wife hugged me once and said “I’m glad you weren’t there because I wouldn’t have you now.” She knows. There was only one direction to run that day. If I could have, I would have. A part of me still mourns that I could not have done anything, that I was not able to do something, anything.

My PTSD level is pretty high, anyway, from the years of fire and EMS. This added to it, both in a good way, and in a bad way. It made it easier to be an EMT, but gave me, gave us all, some pretty big footsteps to follow in.

Yes, I recognize that the emotions that I have felt are nothing in comparison to those felt by the people who lost loved ones in these acts of murder. I have no intention of saying that they have any equivalence. I’m just talking about me.

It was no ordinary day, that September 11, 2001. It was a day that changed my life and my point of view. I’m still an EMT and will proably be until I get too old to lift or until the PTSD finally takes its toll and I start to gibber.

It was no ordinary day.

The Department of Defense announced today that charges have been filed against six of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in connection with the events of September 11, 2001.

The Defense Department announced today that charges have been sworn against six detainees at Guantanamo, alleged to be responsible for the planning and execution of the attacks upon the United States of America which occurred on Sept. 11, 2001. Those attacks resulted in the death of nearly 3,000 people. The charges allege a long term, highly sophisticated, organized plan by al Qaeda to attack the United States.

The accused are: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarek Bin ‘Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, and Mohamed al Kahtani.

Each of the defendants is charged with conspiracy and the separate, substantive offenses of: murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism.

The first four defendants, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarek Bin ‘Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali are also charged with the substantive offense of hijacking or hazarding a vessel.

All of the charges are alleged to have been in support of the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

Taking questions at today’s Bloggers’ Roundtable, Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann discussed the process from this point forward.

Clarifying media reports, General Hartmann stated out that the death penalty has been requested for these defendants but it remains up to the convening authority, Susan Crawford, to:

review the charges and supporting evidence to determine whether probable cause exists to refer the case for trial by military commission and whether the case should be capital.

This is the same process that previous detainees including Australian David Hicks have been through.

Hartmann believes that there will be a limited amount of classified material used in this trial. The defendants’’ military counsel will have clearance and access to such materials, which will allow for a defense to be prepared. The trial itself will be where the validity and admissibility of all evidence, including any which may have been obtained by waterboarding, is determined.

Any capital sentence will be determined by a unanimous finding of special circumstances by the twelve members of the military commission panel and a finding that a capital sentence is called for. Unlike normal criminal and military trials in the United States, this trial provides the defendants with an automatic right of appeal in the event of a conviction. The appeals route will be first to the Court of Military Commission Review, then through the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The logistical details of any sentence, capital or otherwise, remain to be determined.

References:

• Charges [pdf file]
• Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann bio
• American Forces Press Service report
• Military Commissions website
• Bloggers’ Roundtable transcript [pdf file]

Original post here.

Based upon Major Awad contacting me, I am preparing an extensive profile of him for the immediate future.

The AP has a story that has received a big play in the Sunday papers. Wounded Vets Also Suffer Financial Woes is how it’s titled in Rochester’s Democrat & Chronicle.

The star of the story is retired Marine Corps Major Gamal Awad. Major Awad was at the Pentagon on September 11 and received an award for his work that day. He’s served a tour in Kuwait, and another in Iraq where he was injured by an IED. He’s retired on disability, suffering from PTSD and depression.

He receives $53,000 yearly from the government. His mortgage, on a home in the California wine country, is $1,400 more a month than his pension.

He’s divorced and living alone with his memories and demons.

Here’s the deal. Who is Gamal Awad? I am unable to locate any reference to this man before the AP story. No story about the medal for 9/11. No story about his being wounded in Iraq. Searched the DoD web site. Nothing.

The Democrat & Chronicle did not print the entire AP story, but they covered the Awad portion. The story states that part of his PTSD is due to what he saw in Kuwait. That would be at a peaceful military base in a country without fighting.

The story also says that he was making $100,000 yearly as a major. According to the Marine web site, the pay rate for a major with 20 years in, the top rate, is about $75,000 a year. Combat pay, etc., could make up the difference but it appears on the face of it that the story overstates his pay rate.

I’ve written the AP to ask if they verified his story with the Marines or DoD.

I still get angry. I still want revenge.

I still wish I could have been one of those running towards the burning towers.

I mourn them all, heroes, cowards and just plain folks. Some went down fighting. Some died without ever knowing they had been murdered.

It’s nearly impossible to write about September 11. The words are buried by all the emotions.

In some ways, late in my life, the events of 9/11 have become the defining events of my life. It is my Pearl Harbor.

Before that day, I knew that we had enemies in Islam. I knew about all the attacks and terror and death that Islam had brought in the preceding generation. I knew it like you know a fairy tale. By heart, but it’s just not real.

Then the towers fell, and so did the walls of my tidy, secure little world. Someone out there wants to kill or enslave me and mine. And that will be over my cold, dead body.

I WILL NEVER SUBMIT!

I will fight our Islamic enemies through this blog, through the Terrorist Death Watch site, by voting for people willing to fight and by supporting our men and women doing the fighting. I will be the best volunteer EMT I can, and work to see that others are as prepared as they can be for the next time that Islamic terrorists choose to murder Americans.

Our enemies will attack us again. More innocents will die at the hands of Islam. I will not surrender to this terror. I will not give in or give up. I will never get over it or move on.

Remember September 11!

In August 2006 I wrote:

An anniversary is approaching and my PTSD is twitching.

I get it every year around September 11. Problems sleeping. Heightened anxiety. Wanting to have the scanner on all the time yet not being able to bear the reports I hear.

The arrests in England last week started the process. It brought back a lot of the feelings I had that first September 11. It ain’t gonna get any better.

I remember standing there in my airmask, watching the flames blow straight out from Ernie’s trailer for thirty feet or more. We knew right away that someone was inside. When they finally cut through the outside wall into the bedroom and we knew that Ernie and his grandson were dead…

I think about taking Midnight and Smokey and Shadow to the vet. Hearing them crying in fear and pain and knowing that each of these three good friends would be gone so very soon. Three trips I wish I never had to make.

I remember my first CPR call. We couldn’t get the body to lay flat because it was stooped with age.

I remember the 43 year old man who died in front of me. When I was 43.

I remember the traffic accident in Brighton, and the brains scattered around the scene and the blue tarp covering the woman they belonged to. It looked like someone had tossed a pot of macaroni around. Her sister sat right next to the body, in the car, and didn’t know what was wrong. I sat there, too.

I remember Randy and Bev, friends, EMT’s, each killed by something no one could do anything about, heart disease and cancer.

EMT’s lose some battles.

I remember September 11. Sitting at the ambulance base, ready to send whatever help was needed the five hours to the city. None was needed. There was nothing we could do.

Don’t tell me to get over it. Don’t tell me to forget it. A piece of my soul is a part of every life I tried to save, wanted to help, and could not. As much as I hate this time of year, I love it too. A part of me comes back for a little while and tells me that it’s not gone forever.

In August 2003 I wrote:

September 11, 2001 dawned for me like many had that summer, sunny and warm. I was out of work for nearly a year, working a 4 hour per day temp job at the time. About 9 or so my boss came in and asked if I had a news station on my radio in the bookkeeping office. His daughter had called and said that a plane had hit a skyscraper in Manhattan. I turned the radio to WHAM, the local 50,000 watt Clear Channel talk station and sat in horror for the next three hours. I suppose I did something that morning, but I have no recollection. I called my wife at work and told her, and told her that I would be going straight to the ambulance base after work. If anything came up, I’d call her.

Arrived at the base to find a couple of guys already there and the TV on. Basically we sat, made lists of supplies we could spare to send, and called people to find crews for ambulances if we had to send them. We had no calls; in fact the county was eerily quiet that day.

As the President’s movements were reported, I nodded, seeing the justification and the appropriateness of the bases he went to.

Mostly I was numb.

Lots of channel surfing, but mostly we stayed on CNN and Fox News. Not a lot of talking amongst us.

The guys who were fire guys also were visibly upset, and raring to go. The paid ambulance guy who also volunteered with us got beeped, and took off for his HQ. Funny, no women came in, though we are 2/3 female volunteers. It was fire guys, and former fire guys like me. I guess it’s a fire thing. In an emergency, go to the base.

Went home at about 5 pm, when it was becoming obvious that we wouldn’t be called just yet to do anything. The lovely wife and I talked some, but I was still numb.

I cried for the first time months and months later. I taped the CBS documentary (by the two French brothers) but we couldn’t bear to watch it for about eight weeks. Then we did, and we cried, the wife and I.

I was so proud to be an EMT, and a former firefighter that day, and every day since. My wife hugged me once and said “I’m glad you weren’t there because I wouldn’t have you now.” She knows. There was only one direction to run that day. If I could have, I would have. A part of me still mourns that I could not have done anything, that I was not able to do something, anything.

My PTSD level is pretty high, anyway, from the years of fire and EMS. This added to it, both in a good way, and in a bad way. It made it easier to be an EMT, but gave me, gave us all, some pretty big footsteps to follow in.

Yes, I recognize that the emotions that I have felt are nothing in comparison to those felt by the people who lost loved ones in these acts of murder. I have no intention of saying that they have any equivalence. I’m just talking about me.

It was no ordinary day, that September 11, 2001. It was a day that changed my life and my point of view. I’m still an EMT and will proably be until I get too old to lift or until the PTSD finally takes its toll and I start to gibber.

It was no ordinary day.