Photo By Master Sgt. Brock Jones | Sgt. Juan Vega (middle), a native of Bronx, N.Y., who was a first responder with the...... read more read more
By Staff Sgt. Brock Jones
Multi-National Division - Baghdad
CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq – Sept. 10, 2001, was a normal Monday for most Americans: another work week, another commute, another day. New Yorkers and others across the nation went about their day not knowing that the next twenty-four hours would bring the worst terrorist attacks in America's history. The nation went to sleep on Monday night and woke up reeling from the horrors of terrorism. Many were numb beyond all ability to feel. Many suffered paralyzing losses.
But there were others for which Sept. 11, 2001, was a call to action.
"During 9-11, I was a first responder," said Juan Vega, a native of Bronx, N.Y. "I was in Tower Two during the initial attacks. World Trade Center Tower Two was the first building that fell, that collapsed, and I just managed to be one of the lucky ones to escape."
"My wife is a paramedic with the fire department so the whole time that I spent trying to run from this damn building, I'm trying to run back because I knew that my wife was somewhere in there," he said.
It wasn't until four days later that he ran into his wife, alive and well.
"I was very grateful. I was very happy that she was alive."
Vega and his wife escaped the fall of the giant towers but lost friends and family that day. One of Vega's closest friends had been on vacation to Ireland and had come back early to work that very day.
"It just happens to be that he came back on the eleventh and went to work. When I called him that morning, it was too late. I came to look for him."
The rescue workers at all the sites – New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania – were relentless in their efforts and their optimism. Often going without sleep and food, they worked around the clock those first days in the hopes of finding survivors and answers.
Many New Yorkers and Americans who weren't firefighters or paramedics also came forward that day, compelled to do whatever they could to help.
Kelvin Surgener, a native New Yorker, was one of them.
Surgener worked in an office with a view of the Twin Towers, and on the morning of 9-11, he could not believe what he was seeing on television and through the window.
"I get to work and everyone is hysterical. People were losing their minds," he said. "I can't really believe what I'm seeing and right before my eyes that first building fell out of the sky. I look at it falling and look at it on TV and it's falling, and I look back. It's gone. Gone. What was always there, always there, was now gone."
After gaining his composure, he reacted in the only way he knew how.
"My first thought was someone's going to need help. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do, but I'm going to do it."
Surgener left work with a friend in hopes of getting to the World Trade Center but was unable to get to Ground Zero. Firefighters and medical and rescue personnel were the only people allowed to pass checkpoints established by city officials. Undeterred, Surgener found a way to get to Ground Zero, waiting 16 hours outside the Jacob Javits Center where a volunteer collection area had been set up for those wanting to lend a hand.
"Some guy comes along with a clipboard and he looks at us and he goes, 'Are you coming? Let's go. Get on the bus.'"
Surgener jumped at the opportunity and soon found himself staring in disbelief at the rubble that had once been the World Trade Center.
"At this point, I'm stepping in probably 10 inches of soot and silt everywhere," he said. "What used to be 210 stories, two buildings, would look to me reduced to about eight stories. The building fell so hard it fell through the street and there was a parking garage down there. I remember looking down a crevice and seeing cars stacked up on top of each other," Surgener said.
Rescue workers and firemen, like Vega, were searching with urgent optimism for survivors during the first days of rescue operations. But the optimism soured as the days wore on. Though still frantic and rushed, the focus became recovering whatever remains the rubble would yield.
"I spent eight months in 'The Pile.' That's what we called Ground Zero," said Vega. "There was no way that I was going to leave that 'Pile.'
"If somebody found something, everything stopped on 'The Pile.' Everything: all construction, all movement, all noise. It just became total silence. We'd have a little ceremony there, or a memorial with the chaplain, a brief moment. [We would drape the remains] with the flag, say a prayer, and then we'd march it to the ambulance," he said.
"We ate and slept with dead people."
The hundreds of volunteers, like Surgener, who came forward those first days had no idea what they could do to help, but willingly did any job they were asked. As soon as they arrived at Ground Zero they were put to work.
"This guy hands me a bucket, and he hands me a shovel and he says, 'Start shoveling.' That's all I did was shovel soot," Surgener said. "I never dug so hard in my life."
"At one point, I looked and there was something in my shovel. I couldn't figure out what it was and I stopped; I froze. Someone came up behind me, putting his hand on my back, and he said, 'Don't look, just shovel. Don't look at it, just shovel.'"
The force with which the planes had hit the towers and the eventual collapse of the buildings had literally ground everything to bits and pieces, including the civilians and rescue workers who were inside them at the time.
Surgener kept working until that reality was too much to handle.
"I stayed down there about 18 hours and I couldn't take it. I left. I had to walk out. It crushed me, broke me. It snapped me like a straw."
He made his way home, covered from head to toe in gray soot.
"I've never washed those clothes," said Surgener. "That jacket still has those people on it."
Of the thousands who died that day, less than 300 bodies were found intact at Ground Zero. They had literally been turned to dust and smoke, becoming mixed into the very air breathed by those who were there trying to find them and into the dust that stained their sweaty brows.
One of the firefighters who ran toward the flames on Sept. 11, was Lt. Kevin Dowdell, a 22-year veteran of the New York Fire Department who had been around for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and had also assisted with the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
"On the morning of Sept. 11, he came over the Brooklyn Bridge and raced into Manhattan," said Patrick Dowdell of his father, Kevin. "He went into Tower 2 and was on his way up to the fire floor when the building fell."
Patrick was at college, north of Manhattan, when the planes hit the towers. On Sept. 12, he went back home to wait with his mother and brother for word on his father. When it was obvious that his father was not going to emerge alive from the stories-high pile of rubble, he returned to college to finish his application to West Point, then quickly returned to help his father's surviving friends and firefighters with the search.
"In the following months, I worked as part of the recovery operation at Ground Zero, digging for my father and the other firemen that were killed," said Dowdell. "I also had the privilege of playing the bagpipes with the Fire Department New York bagpipe band at some of the memorials and funeral services for firemen that were killed."
During the months-long rescue and recovery operation at Ground Zero, volunteers from all over the nation came to render aid in whatever way they could. They volunteered their time and money, and risked their health to clean up what hate had created. But for Vega, Surgener and Dowdell, and thousands of others like them, it wasn't enough. There was more to be done.
Once again, as on the day they responded to help a burning and broken city, they all heeded yet another personal call to arms and joined the military service.
Vega, who had served in the Army during the Gulf War, enlisted again in 2003 as a medic and found himself in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division during the initial invasion. Sgt. Vega is now in the Army Reserve, deployed as a combat medic with Company D, 404th Civil Affairs Battalion, attached to 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division – Baghdad.
"I put on the uniform because I love this country," said Vega.
Surgener also felt the need to serve in the military. He had passed the age limit for many of the service branches but discovered he would still qualify for the Navy. He joined and eventually became a combat photographer, specializing in both still and video photography. Petty Officer 2nd Class Surgener is assigned to Navy Expeditionary Combat Command out of Norfolk, Va., and is currently attached to 4th Inf. Div. and MND-B as a combat camera operator in support of the Army and its mission in Baghdad.
"I am here doing what I feel is best to serve my country. My attitude is if you are able, you should serve," he said. "I am able, and I have something to contribute, so I chose to serve. I'm glad and proud to be here on this day."
Dowdell also found the military to be the means to satisfy his need to do more, finally being accepted to West Point, an accomplishment his father had always encouraged him to achieve. 1st Lt. Dowdell currently serves as a platoon leader with 4th Battalion, 42nd Field Artillery Regt., 1st BCT, 4th Inf. Div., currently attached to 2nd BCT, 101st Airborne Div., MND-B. He is in his first deployment to Iraq.
"[Going to West Point] was something my father wanted, and I finally got to see it through," said Dowdell. "I know he was real proud that I decided to go into the military and kind of follow in the same line of service that he started when he became a fireman. To me, my father is my hero. My father was my best friend."
All three of these men continue to serve with the same zeal and fervor that drove them to "The Pile" seven years ago, and there are thousands serving with them in the military from California to Maine, Florida to Minnesota, who, out of the sadness, felt the same silent need to do something more.
"It was a tough time for our family and for friends and for people who lost somebody. But, at the same time, it brought everybody together and brought out the best in a lot of people," Dowdell said. "Overall, you take the good things away from a bad situation.
"I decided to [join the Army because] it's all about helping people and doing the right thing when it comes down to it. You've got to look yourself in the mirror and feel like you're doing something good."
Thousands of lives were lost, on Sept. 11, 2001, but thousands, if not millions of Americans were brought together by that tragedy, appalled by the horror of human hatred, but propelled to action by the desire to serve, by the need to simply do something more.
| Date Taken: | 09.11.2008 |
| Date Posted: | 09.14.2008 09:11 |
| Story ID: | 23633 |
| Location: | BAGHDAD, IQ |
| Web Views: | 418 |
| Downloads: | 321 |
This work, MND-B Soldiers, Sailor turn horror of 'Pile,' Sept. 11 into motivation to serve, by MSG Brock Jones, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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