"Sir, we could be next"

Gregory Fechner, former Air Force staff sergeant

I had just returned to my Pentagon office from an errand when someone mentioned that an airplane had struck the World Trade Center. I went to my boss's office in search of a television. Both of us figured it was a freak accident. Then the second plane hit, and we knew. I kind of glanced out the window and said, "Sir, we could be next."

I was walking back to my office when I felt the Pentagon shake. Then the emergency alarms went off and this recording came over the intercom, telling everyone to evacuate the building. I began checking the bathrooms and banging on other office doors to make sure everyone had left, just like I'd been taught in basic training. I remember looking in one office and seeing a guy nonchalantly talking into the phone and working at his computer. I said, "Sir, we need to evacuate the building," and he said, "No, I've been through these drills a hundred times." He was convinced it was a drill.

At some point, a Navy petty officer ran up and said they needed fire extinguishers, so we got some from a fire extinguisher closet and ran toward the smoke. When we got to the Pentagon courtyard, there was a lot of smoke and debris. We went inside the building near the crash site, and we were up to our ankles in this brackish liquid. I thought a water main had broken, but it was a really bad-smelling mixture of jet fuel and water. Then we heard people coughing, and several of us decided to go in further to try and help them.

I remember guiding several people out through the smoke who were just dazed and totally in shock. Then I went back in and heard a guy moan. He was an older civilian, and he had really severe burns on the top of his head. After helping him out, I went back in and heard a woman's voice calling, "I'm down here! I'm down here!" Me and another guy found her lying on the ground with an obviously broken leg. It turned out that she had jumped out of a second-story window to escape the fire. We grabbed a piece of plywood and put her on it, then evacuated her out to an area where medics had established a makeshift triage unit. As we transferred her to the medics, I'll never forget how that lady, who was really in a lot of pain, grabbed my hand and squeezed. I told her, "You did really well in there, ma'am." I never saw her again.

It was past seven o'clock when I finally left the Pentagon courtyard, where I had been assisting firefighters by bringing them water. It was really eerie. The fires were still burning fiercely, but everything else was quiet. You knew there were going to be no more survivors coming out of the wreckage. We were stepping over chunks of aircraft fuselage when I noticed all these shoes lying around. There were ladies' high heels, men's patent-leather loafers, none of them matching. That's when it really hit me how tragic this day was. I knew the owners of those shoes weren't going to make it home to their families.