There is no doubt in my mind that last week’s attack on America was an act of war.
I fought in the Gulf War. I saw bombs and missiles explode overhead. I saw people die. And when, on my way to work Sept. 11, I saw an American Airlines jet come overhead and slam into the Pentagon, it all came back. Hard.
I was sitting in heavy traffic in the I-395 HOV lanes about 9:45 a.m., directly across from the Navy Annex. I could see the roof of the Pentagon and, in the distance, the Washington Monument.
I heard the scream of a jet engine and, turning to look, saw my driver’s side window filled with the fuselage of the doomed airliner. It was flying only a couple of hundred feet off the ground — I could see the passenger windows glide by. The plane looked as if it were coming in for a landing — cruising at a shallow angle, wings level, very steady. But, strangely, the landing gear was up and the flaps weren’t down.
I knew what was about to happen, but my brain couldn’t quite process the information. Like the other commuters on the road, I was stunned into disbelief. The fireball that erupted upon impact blossomed skyward, and the blast hit us in a wave. I don’t remember hearing a sound.
It was so eerily similar to another experience during the Gulf War — a missile strike that killed a Marine in my unit — that when I jumped out of my SUV, I felt like I’d jumped into my past and was in combat once again. The feeling was the same, but the context was all wrong.
My first instinct was to run toward the Pentagon, where I knew people were dead, wounded and dying. But the building was on fire, and even if I made it to the scene, I couldn’t be of much help. I tried to call my wife, but the cell-phone circuits were jammed. Commuters were beginning to panic — some turned their cars around and drove back down the northbound HOV lanes, against traffic. Others wailed and sobbed. Across the way, the Navy Annex parking lot was full of screaming people. Sirens howled in the distance.
I started directing cars to pull to the side of the HOV lanes to make way for emergency vehicles. On the way in to work, I’d heard about the two planes that attacked the World Trade Center, and now that came to mind. What if “dash two” was inbound to the Pentagon? Then a gray C-130 flew overhead, setting off a new round of panic. I tried to reassure people that the plane was not a threat.
All around me people began to panic, fleeing for their lives. Afraid of being trapped, I drove through a gap in the median barrier and drove across 395 to an exit ramp. I turned south into Crystal City, trying to call my wife the entire time.
At a red light, two frightened women approached me and asked for a ride to safety. They said they had just fled the Pentagon. I offered to take them wherever they needed to go and managed through the rest of the morning and afternoon to get them to their destinations.
It wasn’t until much later that the shock wore off. I was home then, able to watch TV. Now, for the first time, I was seeing the images that most people had been watching all day. And sitting there in my living room, I was consumed by a feeling that haunted me for months after coming home from the Gulf War: an irrational fear that at any moment something was going to crash near me and kill me. Once again, I found myself trying to shake off the experiences of a person who’s gone to war.
I struggled all day for context for the event, an explanation for the shock and fear I felt as I watched TV. This is, after all, America.
This is our home. Anyone who has served in the military understands the context of war — but war, through American eyes, takes place far from home, on distant shores. And though I, like many others, always feared a terrorist attack on America was possible, it was excruciating to watch war come to America before my very eyes.
The writer served with the 1st Marine Division in the Gulf War and is a senior fellow with the Lexington Institute, a public-policy foundation in Arlington, Va. His e-mail address is olemissgrad84@hotmail.com.
