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PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. -- While no Marines were reported killed or seriously injured in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, many were inside the building when tragedy struck. Some were too close for comfort – but close enough to rescue many inside before ensuring their own safety in what could go down in the annals of history as profound acts of valor.
Lance Cpl. Dustin Schuetz had just returned from watching news coverage of the World Trade Center crashes to tell Lance Cpl. Michael Vera and other Marines in his office what he’d seen. Schuetz and Vera, both 21, are administration clerks for the Department of Aviation at Headquarters Marine Corps.
Schuetz was using his hands to demonstrate how one of the hijacked planes had collided with the World Trade Center. As his hands connected, the Pentagon rumbled.
Schuetz was knocked off his feet; Vera fell back into his chair. Within seconds, as the halls were filling with smoke, the two Marines joined numerous other Pentagon workers as they fled the building, evacuating to an open area between the D and E rings, the two outermost rings of the Pentagon. Along the way, they helped the injured escape; many had suffered burns and were terrified, said Schuetz.
Once outside, they could see more of the damage, though they wouldn’t find out the cause of the explosion until a call came in over a nearby security guard’s radio.
Almost as quickly as they came out, they returned.
“We didn’t think twice. We went back in,” said Vera.
Service members and civilians alike linked hands and walked as a human chain back into the thick smoke, following voices, helping whoever they could before the rescuers couldn’t breathe anymore and had to return outside for air.
Vera explained the decision to return.
“For some people, fear changes after you hear somebody screaming for help,” Vera said.
In one instance, the Marines found a Navy chief petty officer nearly surrounded by flames so intense they had trouble reaching her. Schuetz ripped segments of his camouflage blouse to cover their faces before they managed to rescue the badly burned sailor.
Once firefighters arrived, Schuetz and Vera stepped away leaving it to the pros.
The estimate they assisted in the rescue of approximately 20 people who may have perished had they remained in the Pentagon. Some could not be saved.
“We heard some people but couldn’t get to them,” Vera said sadly. “We did what we could.”
According to a (Sept. 18, 2001) Department of Defense press release, 124 Pentagon personnel are reported either dead or unaccounted for. The figure does not included the 64 passengers on the plane.
Other Marines close to the crash site also found themselves helping the injured.
Sgt. Gary W. Nichols, 29, a native of Blounstown, Fla., arrived to work at 9 a.m. at the Division of Public Affairs, HQMC, where he serves as the administration chief. His clerk, a private first class, was already there, but all other staff members were at a conference in California.
At approximately 9:30 a.m., Nichols sent his PFC on a mail run, leaving him alone in the office. At 9:43 a.m. “all hell broke loose.” American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the side of the Pentagon, a mere 20 to 30 yards down the hall from Nichols’ office.
“The whole building shook,” he said. “It’s like somebody grabbed you and shook the hell out of you.”
The force knocked him out of his chair to the floor. Fluorescent tubes above his head shattered, showering him with glass. Nichols picked himself up just in time to see flames rolling across the outside of the windows.
“If I were there for 30 seconds longer I would have been toast. They would have been peeling me off the floor,” he said.
Once he escaped to the hall, he saw other people running for their lives. He followed.
“We didn’t know what had happened until we got outside,” Nichols recalled.
Upon exiting the Pentagon, Nichols was greeted by smoke and confusion. After seeing parts of fuselage scattered all over the ground, he knew a plane had hit. He saw the crash site after rounding the corner of the building.
“It seems when the plane hit, it shattered into thousands of tiny pieces,” he said.
Almost immediately, Nichols was helping in the injured amid the smell of burning flesh and the sight of skin falling off people.
“You have to reach down deep,” he said.
He was assigned to a four-man team that carried the injured from the steps of the Pentagon to ambulances waiting nearby.
Schuetz, an Arkansas City, Kan., native, described the crash scene as “the worst, most terrible thing I have seen in my life.” Once he and Vera made it outside and saw where the plane had impacted, they realized how close they had come to death.
“A few inches to the left and I wouldn’t be here right now,” Vera said.
The terrorist attacks in New York City also hit close to home for Vera, a native of West New York, N.J. As a teenager, Vera and his friends hung out in a park overlooking the Hudson River and the Manhattan skyline, now two buildings fewer.
Despite working at the country’s defense headquarters, the Marines admit they rarely considered themselves potential targets.
“You don’t expect something like that to happen where you work at,” Schuetz said.
“I knew it could happen,” said Nichols. “I never thought it would happen on American ground.”
So now the challenge for the Marines and other Pentagon personnel is to move forward. For some, it’s difficult; they’re afraid it could happen again.
“The next morning, it’s hard,” said Schuetz. “I know I’ve got to be here. You just suck it up.
“My Pfc. is scared to death. She doesn’t want to set foot in the building ever again,” he said. “But what happened happened. You’ve got to go forward.”
Because of the Marine rescuers’ efforts, going forward is a reality for people who otherwise might have perished.
“Evidently, fate left these Marines alive and uninjured so they could help others stay alive,” said Maj. Matt Mclaughlin, spokesman at HQMC. “Their valiant actions are in keeping with the spirit of selflessness and heroism we’ve seen in rescue efforts at the World Trade Center. We in the Marine Corps couldn’t be prouder – they’re Marines.”
Editor’s Note: The following story, reporting first-hand accounts of Marines inside the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, obtained within a week of the attack, is reprinted with minor edits from the Sept. 20, 2001, edition of The Scout, Camp Pendleton’s base newspaper.
| Date Taken: | 09.08.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 09.08.2011 10:26 |
| Story ID: | 76646 |
| Location: | PARRIS ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 202 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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