challenging threat. My exposure to the thorny battlefields in Iraq was brief and distant, mostly from miles above the action. But my satisfaction in playing a role in our nation’s war was no less sure than the soldier who patrolled the streets of Fallujah.
Lord, be sovereign over the nations; may your will be done in the governments of the earth.
“Rise up, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations are your inheritance.” (Psalm 82:8)
July 27
“WE’VE GOT TO BE A TARGET”
September 11, 2001 started off just like any other day. As a Deputy for Naval Aviation, I arrived to work at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, around 5:30 a.m. so I could have Bible study and prayer time before the day got going. Forty-five minutes later I immersed myself in working on budget figures for Congress, because we were trying to request some new aircraft and weapons systems.
“Captain Joyce.” I glanced at the clock as a Navy commander came by my desk. Two hours had passed already. “You need to come take a look at this airplane that just hit the World Trade Center,” she said.
“It’s probably just a small Cessna that had taken off at one of the regional airports there, maybe lost its way in the fog and ran into one of the towers,” I said, not giving it any second thought.
“No, you need to come take a look at it,” she responded.
So we went to the office next door, and watched the aftermath of the first plane that hit the first tower. We watched it until we saw the second airplane hit the tower.
“It’s a coordinated attack,” the guy next to me blurted out. As an aide to the admiral, his military mindset kicked in. He picked up the phone on the desk and immediately dialed to a friend of his who was on watch at the National Military Command Center in the bowels of the Pentagon. The NMCC is the place from which wars are run.
“What do we got?” he asked.
In a coded message, the response came back: “We’ve got other planes that are hijacked. We’re under attack. We don’t know from who.”
Looking at each other in that fifth floor office of the Pentagon, we said, “We’ve got to be a target.” We knew it was only a matter of time.
Lord, let me not forget that even in times of war and terror, you have not relinquished your sovereignty.
“…there is terror on every side; they conspire against me and plot to take my life.” (Psalm 31:13)
July 28
THIS IS IT
I’ve got to clear my head, I thought as I stared out my office window toward Arlington National Cemetery. I had watched the news until I could no longer watch the replays. Now it was time to think.
We knew there would be other attacks. We were up there on the fifth floor, most likely in harm’s way, but what do we do? We don’t leave our post. We continue to do our job and see who needs help. All the admirals who worked at our office were gone for a meeting, which made me the senior guy in my office. I wasn’t about to run away and seek my own protection.
I called my wife, Deshua, who was teaching at the time and told her what was going on. “You might want to let the principal of the school know,” I told her. “And people should start praying.”
Turning back to the window, I tried to focus my thoughts on what might happen and what our responses should be in various scenarios. I didn’t need to imagine the possibilities for long.
Moments later I saw the fireball coming toward the window.
This is it, I thought. I watched a big bright light rushing toward me and thought it was a bomb. It happened all at once, but at the same time everything seemed to slow down. And while one eye was focused on the fireball, my right eye was focused on a bag of Doritos I had put on my desk to eat later. I was watching this fireball thinking, I’m about to die, and looking at the Doritos thinking, I guess I’m never going to eat those. Then, before I knew it, the floor buckled, lifted me up, and threw me back. The plane had hit the building directly beneath me.
Lord, give me the courage to be where you’ve placed me, even if that means being vulnerable to any kind of attack or inconvenience.
“My times are in your hands; deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me.” (Psalm 31:15)
July 29
THE WORLD JUST CHANGED
I scrambled to my feet and grabbed another guy. “You and I are going to be the last ones out of here,” I told him. “We have to make sure we get everybody out.”
There were about one hundred people in our office to evacuate. Some we dragged out, some were carried out. The pressure from the explosion blew cinder blocks across the office, hitting some people squarely, splitting their heads wide open. We knew we had to get them to first aid pretty quickly.
By that time the fire was starting to consume our office. We picked our way across the floor on hands and knees through debris and glass to stay beneath the thick black smoke. Someone pointed out, “That’s got to be aviation fuel, look at the way it’s burning.” We were all aviators, so that’s when we realized it was a plane that had hit us.
Meanwhile, an intelligence officer from my office had been in the Navy Operations Center on the first floor directly below us calling up information to us when the plane hit, instantly killing forty-two people and blowing this officer completely out of the C-ring where he had been. He went back into the fire four times to pull four people out. He saved their lives. So many different people responded with acts of heroism that day.
Back upstairs on the fifth floor, our time was running out. The area we were in was completely on fire, which turned all the exits into dead ends. We were walking down the escalators (all power had been knocked out), and ended up finding an exit on the other side of the building completely on the other end of the world, we used to say. It took us the better part of forty-five minutes to get out of the building.
As one can imagine at the Pentagon, there was no problem with people taking charge. But other than those that were giving specific directions, nobody else spoke as we filed out. It was silent and really eerie. Everybody knew the world had just changed.
