Every American should spend time reading through at least some of the just-released transcripts of the oral histories from firefighters and other emergency workers who were present at Ground Zero on 9-11. To read those words is not only a fitting act of devotion, but also, as we near the fourth anniversary of 9-11, a bittersweet opportunity to remember what America was like when we were united -- united in grief, united in resolve, united in gratitude to those brave souls who went running up the stairs when others were running down.
Yes, it's been a long time since then. Black Tuesday seems longer ago than four years, because the times since have been so divisive. The Iraq War has split the country in half -- and cleaved most of the world from us. Nobody is saying, "We're all Americans now." But those who struggled on 9-11, and those who died in that struggle, are perpetually innocent of such politicization. Nothing should obscure the remembrance of that tragic and heroic day, and what those men and women did.
So we might dwell for just a moment in that hallowed memory palace, as we seek to recapture the thoughts and emotions of those who unexpectedly found themselves on the front line of the Terror War that day. What were they thinking? What were they feeling? The transcripts tell the tale, as they rushed toward the Twin Towers and stopped, awed by what they saw. And then, simultaneously exhilarated and sobered by a landscape of destruction, they rushed forward, onward, and upward, into the flames.
We can pick their stories out almost at random, because the theme -- the answer to the call, the brief sense of wonderment and bewilderment, followed by fulfillment of duty -- is so constant across the 503 different first-person accounts. We can read, for example, the recollections of Eric Rodriguez, an emergency medical technician, who was sitting with his partner when he first heard of the developing disaster that bright late-summer morning. His immediate radioed response: "Put us on the job." But as he and partner arrived at the site, they had occasion to pause: "As we're standing there watching the buildings is when the second plane hit. It was then that we realized that this was not just a fire. That whole feeling just like, your stomach dropped out." So what to do then? Should the two men hang back? No. Just the opposite. "At that point, we got on the radio and said 35 Zebra, we're going." Into the unknown, into the smoke and black.
The same mix of emotion hit another EMT, Faisel Abed, as he and his mate were rushing to the scene. "So my partner said, 'Stop the freaking bus. The building's going to fall.'" So what did Abed do? "I slowed it down….He got scared and I got scared so we kind of just slowed down a bit, you know, and he says listen, we really can't go in there." They can't if they want to be safe. They shouldn't -- who would know? And yet they did. Abed recalls: "So we do it. We go, we go."
What choice did they have? Their fellow New Yorkers needed them. Duty summoned them. Their sense of humanity prodded them. In his poem "Dirge in the Woods," British poet George Meredith summed up human mortality: "And we go/And we drop like the fruits of the tree/Even we/Even so."
That same sense of unavoidable mission also motivated firefighter William Casey. He recalls arriving at the North Tower soon after it was hit. What was happening? "At that point, it was a lot of chaos. You were hearing jumpers." A "jumper," of course, is what one would guess it is, given the calamitous context of a high-rise fire; a jumper is a person leaping, or falling, to his or her death. And they pose a danger to those on the ground--at least one firefighter was killed by a jumper on 9-11.
Casey was ordered upstairs, into the burning building, to the 27th floor. The scene there, of course, was more chaos. Ordered to move back to the ground level, he was heading down the stairs, but then thought better of it, and decided to ignore his orders. He thought to himself, instead, "I'll stay with the captain," because maybe he'll need "a hand with something." But as Casey was heading back up, "I came across a civilian on the 26th floor, and he was struggling." The firefighter continued: "I didn't want to leave him there…There was nobody there in the stairwell at that time, and so I had to help him. He was not making it. He was falling down the stairs. So I put him on my shoulder, and I proceeded down with him." When Casey reached the bottom, he still had to be careful, "Like I said, there were people jumping." And so they made their way out of the immediate danger zone as fast as they could: "We ran out a little with him, but couldn't really run. We were dragging him."
Uncommon valor was common that day. Of course, many valorous stories will never be told, because nobody survived to do the telling. In the weeks that followed, a few artists harnessed their talent to helping the dead speak, notably Bruce Springsteen, whose song, "Into the Fire," recalls "Up the stairs, into the fire/Up the stairs, into the fire/I need you near, but love and duty called you someplace higher/Somewhere up the stairs, into the fire." For one brief moment, everyone from the The Boss to George W. Bush was on the same psychic and moral page.
Then came Iraq. Now America is divided, and amidst the surging emotions and counter-emotions--not to mention the new heroic and tragic tales emerging from Iraq, and from their families back home--there's not enough attention paid to the firefighters anymore. Yet if we want heroes, we must find a way reward them. That's why ceremonies of commemoration are functions of enlightened self-interest, as well as moral obligation.
In the decades to come, as battles elsewhere are lost and won, we will still have good occasion to think about the firefighters and EMTs and cops who went running up when self-preservation demanded that they go running down.
And on such occasions, we might think back on those who fell on 9-11, and remember them as best we can. Perhaps they will find their own future poet, as happened to a band of brothers who fought and mostly died in that American Tragedy of nearly a century-and-a-half ago, the Civil War. The Twentieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, and all the Union forces, were lionized forever after by one of their number, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. In a speech given on Memorial Day, 1884, the future Supreme Court Justice recalled his slain comrades; from the remove of two decades, he thought back to their "young and gracious faces, somewhat remote and proud, but with a melancholy and sweet kindness. There is upon their faces the shadow of approaching fate, and the glory of generous acceptance of it." As Holmes recalled, "They were very gentle. They cared nothing for their lives." And yet in revering their sacrifice, he concluded, "We know that life may still be lifted into poetry and lit with spiritual charm." We can only hope that someone as impressive and articulate steps forward to speak for those who did so much on September 11, 2001.
Amidst all the false attempts to construe 9-11 into a casus belli against the world, the truest single lesson of 9-11 is small and yet profound: There is such a thing as a rendezvous with destiny, when one will be called upon to do one's utmost. And so the rest of us can take comfort and strength from the apolitical example of those who tried so hard on that day, and who gave so much. Their deeds, and words, should be enshrined in our hearts forever.