Heroes... written on September 17, 2001

Written September 17, 2001 by Tripletmom

Heroes

I have struggled in vain; no matter how hard I have searched I cannot find the words to describe the feelings I have in response to what happened on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. There are no words terrible enough... aghast, shocked, horrified, appalled, disgusted, sickened, dismayed, revolted, distraught, traumatized, angry............

One of the biggest problems with this tragedy is that there is nobody to point the finger at. We want the black knight. We want a villain with a wicked laugh. We want a country that America and the free world consider to be evil. We want an Enemy. We want someone to strike back at.

What we NEED is the man with the black hat, riding the black horse. What we HAVE are people who shoot innocent people in the back with no warning and for no apparent reason. We cannot see them. They hide in the shadows. We cannot identify them. We cannot even see the shadows.

Right now we only know for sure from phone conversations with the passengers on the airliners that there were a bunch of men who took over a bunch of planes with knives and box cutters, killed flight attendants and told the passengers they had bombs aboard.

They seem to be related to Bin Laden’s terrorist group, but the government is not saying that it is sure of bin Laden being behind this. Yet we point our fingers at him because we need someone to point at. The general population does not know what is going on behind the scenes in the investigation, but we hope the investigators know more than we do.

The passengers aboard these planes did not know where they were headed. They did not know these men were about to attack America. If they had known this, if they had known they were doomed to a certain death if they let them take over, they would have fought back. They probably thought the hijackers wanted to be taken to another country. They might have thought they would be held as hostages so the hijackers could get what they wanted - money or political prisoners for example. They did not know they would be used as weapons of mass destruction.

The people on the flight that went down in Pennsylvania did know. They had the time to call their families and call emergency numbers and found out. It seems they at least tried to fight back, tried to take back the plane, though they did not fully succeed in gaining control. From looking at the radar of the plane just before it went down, it seems there was a struggle and they succeeded at least in crashing the plane in an open field where it would not kill anyone else and would miss its intended target. They were the first heroes of this war.

The moment they decided to take back control of the plane, they were no longer civilians they were no longer innocent victims. They chose to die for their country, to protect the way of life of their families, the American people and free nations all over the world. Not enough is being said about these people in the past few days. They are not being given the credit they deserve.

The passengers on the plane that hit the Pentagon knew as well, but they did not have the time to do anything about it. A woman on the plane called her husband in the Justice Dept., and asked him what she should tell the pilot to do, then they were cut off... the plane had crashed. I know in my heart they would have done something like the Pennsylvania passengers did.

The men and women who died going into the World Trade Center to rescue people and put out the fire that was endangering so many... going up when everyone else was going down... those are the second group of heroes. They knew the dangers, and they went up anyway to help the thousands of people who needed them because that is what they were all about.

There are so many people who helped others escape from these buildings as well. Everyday men and women we see on the street. They stopped and helped people get out and get away from the buildings instead of getting their own selves away as fast as they could have unhampered by the injured. They are included in this group of heroes.

The rescue workers at both the Pentagon and World Trade Center are the third group of heroes. They were and are in constant danger of fire and the buildings collapsing further.

The rescue workers at the World Trade Center are risking their lives as I type, on the possibility that they might save others. They work without rest, without food, pushing themselves to the point of sheer exhaustion until they are about to collapse. They sleep on cots and sidewalks for a couple of hours before doing it all over again.

Whether they be firefighters or police officers who put their life on the line every day and gave the ultimate sacrifice on that day, the man who died giving last rites to a fallen firefighter, the passengers on board the airplane who decided not to let these madmen use them as a weapon, the people who stopped running in order to carry a person stranded in a wheelchair, the man who could have ran faster but did not want to leave his slower coworker behind, the person who dragged a number of injured people out with him on each arm, the emergency workers and medical personnel who rushed to the scene to help the injured, the hundreds of volunteers who show up and risk their lives every day at the crash sites to sift through the wreckage looking for survivors and never give up hope. these people are truly heroes in every sense of the word. These men and women are truly brave. Their families should be proud of them. We should all be proud.

I know I will think of them every day for the rest of my life.

In recent years, we have all heard comments on the lack of role models and heroes in the world today. It took a disaster like this to find them. They are ordinary people who were under extraordinary circumstances, like most heroes. No matter what happens in the days and years ahead, let us not forget the first heroes of this war.