Retired firefighter Alan Wallace was stationed at the Pentagon helicopter pad on Sept. 11, 2001, and when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, he quickly suited up and ran toward the danger.
The scenes replay like a horror film through Wallace's mind every day, watching Flight 77 in the seconds before 184 people were killed at the Pentagon.
"I have no helmet, no gloves, no breathing apparatus," he told Monday’s crowd at a remembrance ceremony at the fire station on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington.
He also had no idea what to do.
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“But I was gonna do something," he said.
Wallace and others boosted each other up into the windows, through fear and fire, armed with only a 20-pound fire extinguisher.
"I hear a woman yell, 'Hey!'” he said. “I'm telling you, it startled me so much that the only thing I could thing I could say was 'hey' back, and one of us says, 'I can't see you,' and this lady starts clapping her hands.
“Her name was Sheila Moody, and I talked to her this morning,” Wallace said. “It was one of the blessings that happened that day."
Wallace remembers the names and stories of the plane's flight crew including the captain — a Navy captain and Naval Academy graduate. He remembers the four flight attendants — the lead attendant, another who was pregnant and a married couple from Culpeper.
"If you ever go to Culpeper, there's a park there, and there is a stone bench that their crew members, after this incident, would actually have made with their name on it," Wallace said, fighting back tears.
Wallace said he remembers every detail of that day.
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