That moment, I mean, you're 15 to 20 yards from an 80-ton jet coming
through the building at 530 miles an hour with over 3,000
gallons of jet fuel.
You live to tell about it, not because the United States Army made me the
toughest guy in that building, but because the toughest man that ever
walked this earth, 2,000 years ago, who sits at the right hand of the
Father, had something else in mind.
[RADIO TRANSMISSIONS]
[9:37 am Eastern Standard time]
[RADIO TRANSMISSIONS]
[Arlington, Virginia]
[RADIO TRANSMISSIONS]
The morning of September 11, I stepped out and went to the men's restroom and
took care of business.
I'm seven or eight steps out when Flight 77 is deliberately crashed into
the Pentagon, at the intersection of the fourth quarter and the E-ring, at
about a 45 degree angle.
[RADIO TRANSMISSIONS]
Thrown around, tossed around like a rag doll inside, set ablaze.
Black, putrid smoke that I'm breathing in.
The aerosolized jet fuel that I'd inhaled.
The temperature of what I'm breathing in.
It's somewhere between 300 and 350 degrees.
And you see can see flesh hanging off the arms.
My eyes are already beginning to swell closed.
Got no hair.
The front of my shirt is still intact, and my access badge and my name tag
are melted, but still hanging, covered in the black soot and scorched blood.
My arms are skinned alive, my pants are gone.
I only have my leather belt and a portion of my pants that in the
immediate area of the belt.
[RADIO TRANSMISSIONS]
The flame consuming me before I expect to pass.
[RADIO TRANSMISSIONS]
It's really the definition of terrorism, because it
combines two things.
One, receipt of a life threatening injury.
I mean, set on fire the way I was.
But combined with the blackness, and the darkness, and the
inability to navigate.
Just moments before, I was in a hallway that I was exceedingly
familiar with.
I knew exactly what direction I was going.
And in that next moment, after the impact of the aircraft, and
being set on fire.
I'm sustaining a life threatening injury with no way to escape, no way
to know which is to safety, which way is to danger.
That darkness and that blackness.
That's what really captures your heart.
That panic when you meet those two circumstances.
And those moments seem to last an eternity.
And I did what we in the military are never trained to
do, and that's surrender.
And I came to that realization that I was no longer struggling to survive.
But I'd stepped over that line from the desire and that zest for living
that we're all created with to that acceptance of my death, and
recognizing that this was how the Lord was going to call me home.
I just screamed out in a very loud voice, "Jesus, I'm coming to see you."
That feeling would not come.
I would lay there thinking, OK, Lord, c'mon.
Let's get on with this thing.
But the Lord had other purposes.
I used the wall that I'd been blown up against to get up.
So, I'm staggering down the hallway.
Four men, Bill McKinnon, Roy Wallace, John Davies, and Chuck Knoblauch will
come out of B-ring door area.
And Roy can see me.
Sees me coming out of the smoke, staggering down the hallway.
And in their haste to pick me up, Bill, Roy, Chuck and John each grab a
limb and give that first exertion to pick me up, but I
don't come with them.
Similar to that paraffin, or that hot wax that you would stick your hands
in, and then after the wax cools, it'll just peel right off.
And that's what happens when Bill, Roy, Chuck, and John each grab a limb
and go to pick me up.
They pull chunks off of me.
And that's my first insight into the pain thresholds that are ahead of me
as a critical burn survivor.
I begin screaming at them to leave me alone.
And in my heart and mind, I know I'm telling them to leave me there to die.
They don't do that.
Chuck actually rolls me over on the left-hand side, and essentially, the
four of them shake hands with each other, grasping each other's hands or
wrist, with my body weight resting on their arms, acting as a litter to
carry me through.
I'm yelling at them to put me down, to leave me alone.
And I'm yelling at Bill.
Because I recognize Bill, but Bill doesn't recognize me.
I'm trembling violently and uncontrollably.
And in all my years of the triage processes, take care of those that are
most injured first, most critical.
And Dr. Baxter treats me first.
And that tells me how serious I am.
We get to Georgetown University Hospital, and on the other side of the
Potomac River, across the Key Bridge, there was a lot of intensity, a lot of
voice commands, a lot of directives.
Clearly, a lot of gravity.
Normally, in an emergency room situation, it's airway, breathing,
circulation.
Once those three things have been stabilized, you're evacuated to
specialized care.
But more importantly, when Flight 77 makes impact with the Pentagon, it's
the third aircraft crashed that day.
Inside the White House Situation Room, Vice President Cheney turns to
Secretary Mineta, Secretary of Transportation, and says, shut down
all air space in the United States.
And that includes medivac helicopters.
Dr. Williams will not just do his best to stabilize me, he'll begin the
debridement, the escharotomy, the excisions, the very ghastly things
that have to be done to somebody that's been so seriously and
critically burned.
The finality and permanency of life that I thought I was facing inside the
Pentagon, I'm now in an emergency room, realizing that whatever I do
here may be my final acts.
So, I told Dr. Williams I wanted to take the wedding ring off.
Because normally jewelry has to be cut off the burn survivor, whether it's a
ring or a bracelet or necklace.
If that's the part of the body burned, as the expansion from the swelling of
the body occurs, but the jewelry doesn't swell, it becomes a
tourniquet.
Judith Rogers, one of the nurses in Georgetown that had answered the all
hands on deck call to the emergency room-- just for the ring, as my body
is cooled, like that steak you take off the grill--
as Judith gives that tug, degloves the flesh.
There's exposed bone after she pulls it off, there's blood streaming out of
the base of my hand.
And only the Lord can here me scream in my mind.
Concentrating on the dignity and the finality of a death that I
know that I'm dying.
And saying goodbye to my wife and my son.
To the symbolism of that wedding ring.
Mel will eventually arrive at Georgetown.
Knowing that she was there was critical to me.
And that, more than anything else, she was living up to the wedding vows that
she had taken 14 years earlier.
Proud of her.
And then I asked for the hospital chaplain, Chaplain Cirilo.
Would you say that final prayer?
It's just a prayer that says, OK, Lord, you're in charge here.
If you guide Dr. Williams hand and the team here at the Georgetown Emergency
Room, and I survive, we'll salute that flag and move out with that mission.
But if you've brought me here and your decision is to call me into eternity
silently and quietly under the care and compassion of my fellow Americans,
we'll salute that flag, too.
And it was with the strength not of a soldier, but of my faith in Christ
that I could look at Dr. Williams when that prayer is over with, and very
laboredly tell him, "let's get on with it."
Resting in the comfort of who's the commander in chief of life.
General Peake very wisely asks Mel, "Has Matthew been up
here to see his father?"
And Mel says, "no, not yet."
And General Peake says, "you need to get Matthew up here.
Your husband's dying.
And your son needs to come say goodbye before that happens."
Matt would make that visit.
And in 20 plus years of military service, the hardest thing I've ever
been asked to do is say goodbye to my son.
I remember watching Matt come in.
And he came into the right-hand side.
I'm wrapped like a mummy.
I've got a tube in every orifice of my body.
And I mean every.
I can't speak because of the trach and the feeding tubes and other things.
And I can see him walk in and he just mouths, speaks to me.
He says, "I love you, Dad."
And I could sit there and mouth back to him how much I loved him.
And because of the opportunity I'd had to say goodbye to my son, in that
moment, I was having my it is finished moment.
And as hard as that was, to physically and emotionally say goodbye to my son,
I think about how difficult it must have been for God the Father to say
goodbye to the Son for three days.
Having known the perfection of heaven.
In my death, I would be separated from my son, but joined
in my heavenly Father.
It's Christ's death that he was to be separated from the perfection of
heaven and the relationship he had with the Father.
[Since 2001, Brian has endured over 39 reconstructive surgeries.]
[Today, as a retired lieutenant colonel, he continues to serve his country as a member of the Texas Senate]
Time will allow me to forgive.
In fact, I can't say that that's happened.
I couldn't look you in the eye and say, yeah, I've forgiven and moved on.
But I can tell you that Mel and I accentuate positive of not only having
our lives to remain together, watch Matthew continue to grow up, grandkids
somewhere in the future, continue to live in this great nation.
We don't think about the difficulty that five particular terrorists put us
through in concentrating on the negative of the terrorist's action.
But we concentrate more on the grace of the Lord's actions.
I got a Purple Heart for stepping out of the men's restroom.
And many of our men and women in uniform today earn their Purple Hearts
by stepping out of this great nation into foreign dangers zones.
Christ earned his Purple Heart stepping out of the
perfection of heaven.
And that's exactly why the term I am Second and He's first is so
appropriate.
My name is Brian Birdwell.
And I am Second.