Retired Soldier Remembers 9/11 Pentagon Attack
(September 11, 2010) | 
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| | WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Sept. 9, 2010) -- "It
suddenly dawned on me that I had been at the point of impact
only minutes before the plane hit the building," said Walter
Wood. "I was in shock, bitter with anger that someone had
attacked and killed my friends." |
Retired Sgt. 1st Class Wood was working for the Army's Office of the Deputy
Chief of Staff for Personnel when terrorists flew American Airlines Flight 77
into the Pentagon killing 125 employees on Sept. 11, 2001.
"There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about it," he said.
Wood was watching television coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center
with colleagues, thinking this is what Americans must have felt during Pearl
Harbor. Minutes later there was a large explosion.
"We felt the building move, and at that point and time we knew that we had been
hit," he said.
Wood and his coworkers evacuated |
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Sgt. 1st Class Walter
Wood, middle, stands with Elaine Wood and Staff
Sgt. Christopher Braman, during Wood's
retirement Dec. 7, 2001. Braman was at the
Pentagon during the 9/11 attacks and worked all
night searching through the ashes of the burning
building in the aftermath.
Courtesy photo |
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the Pentagon. He tried calling his family, but couldn't get through. He looked
up and saw Air Force jets responding to the attack. A Pentagon police officer
told Wood to move away from the area because another plane was headed for the
building. |
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It was only later that Wood realized what had actually
happened, however, and how close he was to being in the
jetliner's path of destruction. Wood had been talking with
friends in the Pentagon corridor that was destroyed. Five
minutes after he left that corridor, everybody he just
talked with was gone forever.
He would never again see Sgt. Maj. Larry Strickland, the
senior enlisted advisor to the DCSPER, who was cleaning out
his desk, preparing for retirement; or Spc. Chin Sun Pak,
who had recently started her stint at the Pentagon; or Max
Bielke, a retired master sergeant who had the distinction of
being the last official combat Soldier to leave Vietnam.
"Twenty-six coworkers perished that day," Wood said.
Three months later Wood retired from the Army, but the
healing process started before then. Immediately after 9/11
the Army provided therapeutic teams to identify stress and
depression in employees.
"It was a great effort upon the part of medical command to
be able to give us those types of services because it did
help us heal," Wood said. "There were people that you could
go and talk to at any time. You were encouraged to seek them
out, and you were encouraged to speak to them about what you
were feeling."
Leadership and resolve from Teri Maude also helped Soldiers
and Army civilians stay focused. Maude lost her husband, Lt.
Gen. Timothy J. Maude, DCSPER, in the 9/11 attacks, but
gathered the strength to talk with displaced Pentagon
employees about their duty and thank them for their support.
"I could only imagine the enormous amount of will that it
took for her to do this," Wood said.
The healing process continued for Wood after his retirement.
He was part of a team that built 125 shadow boxes that would
hold American flags, flown over the Pentagon, to be
delivered to families. And one year after he left
active-duty service, he returned to the Pentagon as a
civilian to work in the same area that was devastated on
9/11.
"My wife asked me why I would go back in," Wood said. "The
reason I had done it was because if I was so scared as to
not go back into that part of the building, then whoever had
mounted the terror attacks on the Pentagon would have won."
President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak at the Pentagon
Memorial Sept. 11. He will be speaking to the families that
lost loved ones during the attack on the Pentagon nine years
ago. Wood will be spending the anniversary with his friends
and family, thinking about the sacrifices of those that have
pledged to defend America.
"9/11 means thinking of those that went before me, for the
veterans that have fought in the Global War on Terrorism
since that day," Wood said. "It means not giving up, it
means being there for Soldiers and families, and everybody
that is associated with our efforts as an Army." | |
By Matthew Hickman, OCPA
Copyright 2010
Reprinted from
Army News Service
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