What I Saw on September 11

I was only a mile away from the Pentagon. 

It was a day I’ll never forget

Gary Hoge

Like many people, I first learned that an airplane had struck the World Trade Center when a bulletin came across the Internet. It was just a headline, no story: “Airplane Hits World Trade Center.” My first thought was that a dreadful accident must have happened. I figured a small plane must have gotten lost in the fog and crashed. I remembered that something similar had happened in 1945 when a B-25 got lost in the fog and crashed into the Empire State Building. It wasn’t until about a half-hour later, when I started seeing the first pictures, and seeing reports that a second plane had hit the Trade Center, and that these planes might have been hijacked airliners, that it dawned on me we were under attack.

I went down the hall to my friend Bill’s office to tell him the news. He had just arrived and was shocked when I told him what had happened. As he tried to log onto the Internet his phone rang. His wife, who also works at the Patent Office, and who had also just arrived, was calling to ask if he had looked out his window yet.

Bill hung up and we pulled open the blinds and there right in front of us an ugly black column of smoke was blooming into the sky just behind the row of office buildings across the street. Small bits of paper were fluttering down in front of our window. Although I couldn’t see it, I knew exactly what was behind those buildings: the Pentagon. My mouth gaped. Bill and I stared at each other in disbelief. “Did they attack the Pentagon, too?” I asked.

Bill hadn’t been able to get online yet, so I went back to my office and, sure enough, a bulletin was just coming in that the Pentagon had been attacked. There were conflicting reports. Some said an airliner had crashed into it; others said it was a smaller plane; others said a bomb had been detonated at the Pentagon’s helipad.

I turned away from the computer and stared out the window at the thick black smoke pouring into the sky, and I wondered how many people had just lost their lives.

My boss, Ed, had a radio on in his office, so I went there and listened in disbelief as reports began streaming in about the devastation in New York and over at the Pentagon. A report came in that there had been an explosion at the Capitol, so Ed and I walked down the hall to an office in the north-east corner of our building. We were on the seventh floor, and from that office we had an unobstructed, panoramic view of Reagan National Airport and, across the Potomac River, the city of Washington, D.C., itself. I stared at the Capitol dome, which I could see quite clearly. There was no smoke. After a few minutes, we figured the report of an explosion there must have been false.

We went back to Ed’s office, but a few minutes later a similar report of a car-bomb explosion outside the State Department sent us back to the corner window looking for smoke again, which we again didn’t see.

By now, it seemed no one was working anymore. The halls were filled with people walking back and forth, or clustered in small groups in doorways talking in hushed tones about what they were seeing and hearing. I went back to my office to check the news sites on the Internet, most of which I couldn’t access because so many other people were trying to do the same thing.

A few minutes later I received an email message advising us that all government agencies were shutting down, and directing us to leave the building. Moments later I received an email message from someone in my carpool telling me that they’d meet me at the car in a few minutes.

When I stepped outside I could smell the acrid smoke that the shifting wind was sometimes blowing our way from the nearby Pentagon. In the distance I could hear sirens. The road in front of my office was jammed with cars trying to leave. I crossed the street and walked down the ramp into the garage under the offices there where my carpool parks. Cars were lined up trying to leave the garage, but I knew from what I’d seen on the street that they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I met my friends Carol and Jim at Carol’s car, and we quickly decided that we’d rather sit outside in the shade for a few hours than spend those hours in the car going nowhere. That turned out to be a good decision. I’ve never seen such gridlock. We watched a 7-Up truck move about a hundred feet in two hours.

After we’d been sitting outside for a few minutes, I decided to see if I could find a radio somewhere so we could keep up with what was going on. I walked over to Radio Shack, where I saw that a lot of other people had the same idea. On the counter was every portable radio they had and in front of the counter was a line of people waiting to buy them. I got in line and bought a small radio. I held it to my ear as I walked back to where Carol and Jim were waiting.

We sat for hours listening to the news and talking with friends and acquaintances who happened to walk by. We knew that all aircraft had been grounded, so whenever we heard jet engines, we carefully searched the sky to see what kind of plane it was. Several times we saw fighter jets patrolling overhead. There were rumors that another hijacked plane was heading this way, and that those fighters were there to shoot it down, if necessary.

In the afternoon I decided to walk over to the Pentagon. Jim and Carol stayed behind. As I got closer, the roads were cordoned off with yellow tape, and police were at every corner. I saw local police, DEA officers (one of whom was holding a rifle in his hands), and even immigration officers. I headed up Army-Navy Drive which passes just to the south of the Pentagon. I was only about two- or three-hundred yards away, but I couldn’t see the Pentagon because I-395 obscured my view. All I could see was the greenish-white smoke that continued to billow up from the still-burning building.

I continued up Army-Navy Drive, which goes up a hill to the west of the Pentagon, and as I walked up that hill on the sidewalk, to my left a sheer wall about fifty feet high marked the edge of the property of an apartment building. I climbed up a steep hill behind that wall and found myself on a grassy bluff with about a hundred other people. From there we had a panoramic view of the west front of the Pentagon, which is right where the airplane hit.

The Pentagon looked like a cake that someone had taken a slice out of. One section of the building was simply missing. The west front on either side of the missing section was blackened and the roof continued to burn steadily at what looked like a considerable distance from the impact site. I couldn’t see any sign of the airplane, but I knew it had to be in there somewhere.

Two contradictory thoughts struck me: first, that I was looking at the first direct attack on the United States since World War II, and second, that the actual damage seemed quite small, physically speaking. On TV the image filled the screen, but from where I was standing, it looked relatively minor. It was a crystal-clear day, and I could see for miles. I could see literally hundreds of buildings in Arlington, and across the river in D.C., and they were all, of course, quite intact. Only a relatively small section of a relatively small building was damaged. And yet, I knew I might as well be looking at Battleship Row. It was difficult to fully grasp it, but hundreds of people lay dead right before my eyes, and I was in fact looking at the opening volley of the first war of the twenty-first century.