Pentagon families remember "devastation, fire and smoke"

By Frank Fuhrig Sep 11, 2011, 21:16 GMT

Arlington, Virginia - Rebecca Dolan was 15 when her father, US Navy Captain Robert Dolan Jr, was killed in the September 11 terrorist strikes, and she attends commemorations every year at the Pentagon.

'It feels like it happened just yesterday,' she said Sunday, after the 10th anniversary ceremonies at the Defence Department headquarters just outside Washington. 'God willing, if I'm still around for the 50th anniversary, I think it'll still be that way.'

A red, white and blue flag, three stories long, was draped Sunday over the spot on the Pentagon's outer ring where a hijacked airliner tore into the building. All 125 passengers and crew died with the four al-Qaeda terrorists, along with 59 military and civilian workers inside the building in Arlington, Virginia.

During the National Anthem, a man wearing a red, white and blue ribbon and five-sided pin, given to all the families of the victims lost at the Pentagon, wept quietly behind his gold-trimmed, tortoise-shell sunglasses.

A few minutes later, an infant's wail could be heard over a military choir's slow rendition of the iconic American church hymn Amazing Grace.

'It is difficult to believe that 10 years ago this was the scene of incredible devastation, of horrific fire and smoke,' Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said, 'of heroic first responders who were struggling to bring victims to safety, searching for survivors, fighting the flames at this spot, at this very moment.'

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered the families of the 184 victims condolences 'on behalf of the 2.2 million men and women who wear the uniform of the United States armed forces.'

He hailed the 'great skill and bravery' of 'a whole new generation that has been inspired to serve, many of them in uniform,' in response to the 9/11 attacks.

'Indeed, from this place - place of wrath and tears - America's military ventured forth as the long arm and clenched fist of an angry nation at war,' Mullen said. 'And we have remained at war ever since, visiting upon our enemies the vengeance they were due and providing for the American people the common defence they demand.'

But the Pentagon families have helped teach the lessons 'that sometimes we defend best our national interests when we help others defend their own, and that sometimes in war, it isn't the enemy lives you take that matter most, but rather the innocent lives you save.'

Vice President Joe Biden remembered the 1,648 US service people lost in Afghanistan and 4,478 in Iraq, along with more than 40,000 wounded in those wars since 9/11.

The US role in Iraq is due to end in 2011, with an agreement in negotiation for only a small group of US trainers to remain in 2012 to help the new Iraqi government's own security forces.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban regime that had harboured al-Qaeda, the terrorist network behind the attacks on New York and Washington, was rooted out in a US-led invasion after 9/11, only to return as an insurgent movement. A renewed, NATO-led operation to secure Afghanistan is underway, while al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was slain on May 2 in a US commando raid on his secret compound in Pakistan, after years of intelligence work to track him down.

Biden hailed the 2.8 million members of 'this 9/11 generation,' who have volunteered for military service in the last 10 years, as 'the finest group of warriors the world has ever known.'

'They relentlessly took the fight to al-Qaeda and its affiliates. They were prepared to follow bin Laden to the hell's gate if necessary,' he said. 'And they got him.'

Rebecca's mother, Lisa Dolan, has become a leader of the association of families of the Pentagon attack victims since she was widowed. She wore her husband's 1981 Naval Academy class ring on a chain around her neck.

'It was found in the rubble of the Pentagon,' she told a group of reporters on Sunday at the entrance to the Pentagon's September 11 memorial. 'It was the only thing I received back from him.'

Link: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/911victims/robert-edward-dolan-jr/

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