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.