The Smoke, The Shoe, The Flag

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA

09.11.2015

Story by Sgt. Christopher Garibay 

139th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

REFLECTION

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - Every generation in this country has one of those days. A day you’ll always remember where you were or what you were doing. Some of them are our nation’s greatest achievements, like man’s first walk on the moon, or the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some are catastrophes like the attack on Pearl Harbor, or JFK’s assassination. These days are destined for more than just pages or paragraphs in history books, they change the very fabric of what it means to be a citizen of this country.

Sept. 11, 2001. When someone says the date we all feel it. Maybe for some that feeling is anger, or perhaps it’s pain or sorrow. But undoubtedly we all, at least, share the common sight of planes crashing into buildings, or see a charred spot in a field in Pennsylvania.

While I remember those things, for me, it really isn’t any images I saw on television that I think of when someone mentions the date. When I think about that day I think mostly of the smoke, the flag and the shoe.

THE SMOKE

I was serving in the U.S. Army, 3rd Infantry Division the Old Guard, the Army’s Honor Guard, a ceremonial unit used as the president’s official military escort. The Honor Guard is split between Fort McNair, in Washington, D.C., and Fort Myer, Virginia, both within eyesight of the Pentagon.

I belonged to Company A, which is housed at Fort McNair, a beautiful little peninsular base of Washington, D.C. It is surrounded by the Potomac River and is preceded by the iconic tidal basin seen laden with cherry trees and blossoms in so many photos during the spring.

That morning we took a bus across Interstate-395 bridge over the Potomac, to Fort Myer in Virginia, just a few miles away. We were in a giant building nicknamed C-hall when the crash happened and we were close enough to hear the impact. Everyone ran outside at once and everyone froze.

The Pentagon, our country’s symbolic building of military strength was seemingly alive, spewing gigantic plumes of black smoke into the air. The Pentagon is such an imposing building; it employs more than 23,000 people. It was a surreal sight. I remember the confusion, fear and anger as we loaded the bus to get back across the river.

We were stopped on the bridge going back into Washington, D.C., so we got off and ran roughly a mile-and-a-half down the tidal basin, along the water that led back to Fort McNair. We all sprinted, every one of us silent. All the while, the Pentagon bled out dark smoke just over our shoulders at only a glance away, there across the river.

THE SHOE

After securing our fort in Washington, D.C., we were loaded onto trucks and taken to the Pentagon. We had been told that since most members of our unit had security clearances we would be needed to augment the search and rescue mission inside the building.
We were briefed by firefighters on what we could expect to see. Instructions were given by military brass on what we could never discuss and we were sworn to secrecy on any sensitive material the floors or broken cabinets inside might share with us. We dressed in chemical suits, full white garbage bag-looking plastic suits and given a civilian gas mask.

We walked under the slab of roof that hung down in front of the hole for the first time, and when we did, I could have never been prepared for what I saw.
When I describe it, I always tell people to imagine a bomb going off in a junkyard, but that’s not near enough disaster. It was sheer chaos. I think before we arrived everyone hoped to be the one to find someone alive and bring them out, but when you walked in that first time all those hopes were shattered, no one could have been alive in what lay before our eyes.

Huge support columns had to be reinforced and in some cases built anew to keep the weight of the damaged building from collapsing. Then the arduous task of sifting through debris separating biological remains from a jungle of twisted metal began. Though some bodies were found, particularly away from the impact site, it was the red biohazard bags for body parts that were most common.

There were moments during this time some of us would come together to weep during the days and weeks that followed. One memory in particular sticks with me. Just the thought of a friend fighting back tears, holding up the shoe of a young boy, almost certainly a passenger on the plane that tore through the building just a day or two before.

THE FLAG

If I remember correctly, we worked eight-hour shifts around the clock for the first two weeks or so. We even slept there, on site, in tents. Most of the work was hard labor moving bombproof filing cabinets that were twisted and torn to pieces or trying to make sense of countless office décor strewn together, with charred human remains mixed throughout.

Then a different kind of memory jumps into my mind. I remember getting to leave for something after a few weeks and there were people on some of the interstate overpasses holding huge American flags during weird times of the day. Early, like Army early, when people should be sleeping or getting ready for their day.

People were coming together in a way which I’d never seen in my lifetime or have since. People volunteered to help, counselors gave us free sessions, masseuses gave massages and phone companies set up lines to call whomever we needed for free.

In fact, what I feel most about that day is pride. Of course, I’m not proud of what happened, but when I saw the huge flags over the interstate and the even bigger one on the Pentagon itself, it filled me with pride to see us come together to help one another.
I was proud to be a Soldier, in a team of Soldiers, firefighters, police and volunteers who ran willingly into those wounded buildings with the sole intent to help someone they had never met, only because those people live under a common flag. Of course, I think about the ones who went in never to come back out.
Perhaps it’s naive and a bit cliché to still say in 2015, that we are the greatest country in the world, a title our grandfathers and great grandfathers earned, and has become this country’s birthright since. Maybe we don’t see that every day anymore, but I saw it then. That’s what I mean when I say I remember the flag, not the colors or fabric, but the symbolism behind it. The representation of everyone who died that day in September and all the days before defending what this nation is.

It’s pride in men, who, guessing their fate, charged the plane’s cockpit, choosing to sacrifice themselves rather than be used as a weapon against others. It’s pride in the ones left behind who are strong enough to carry on and hold up that flag so that this land and the entire world will know that we will persevere and we will never forget.

• Date Taken: 09.11.2015
• Date Posted: 03.01.2016 10:50
• Story ID: 190630
• Location: GUANTANAMO BAY, CU