Army Reserve responds terroist attacks - Attack on America - terrorist attacks on World Trade Center and the Pentagon, September 11, 2001 - Illustration

Army Reserve Magazine, Fall, 2001

Lt. Col. Randy Pullen

Army Reservists have been on the front lines of "the first war of the 21st century" since the morning September 11, 2001.

Although most of the Office of the Chief, Army Reserve (OCAR), is located a few blocks from the Pentagon, the office of the Chief, Deputy Chief and Command Sergeant Major of the Army Reserve is in the Pentagon. A number of OCAR staff members were in the Pentagon Tuesday morning for meetings and other business. There was also a meeting of the Army Reserve Forces Policy Council going on in the building, which brought together a number of Army Reserve general and senior officers from various commands. Finally, there were also Active Guard Reserve (AGR) soldiers assigned to other agencies in the Pentagon, as well as Army Reservists who hold civilian jobs in the Pentagon.

When American Airlines Flight 77 hit the west side of the Pentagon and a number of Army offices, AGR Lieutenant Colonels victor Correa and Isabelle Slifer, both assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, headquarters, Department of the Army, helped others escape the building. News accounts report that many survivors remember being guided by Correa's booming voice, guiding them to safety through the blinding smoke.

AGR Lt. Col. Sean Kelly and a co-worker, Capt. Darrell Oliver, lifted a desk off of a secretary. Oliver then put the woman on his back and carried her out of the Pentagon.

An AGR officer assigned to ODCSPER, Lt. Col. David Scales, was among the 125 Pentagon workers killed.

As the Pentagon evacuated following the attack, many Army Reservists moved to where they could help.

Col. Malcolm B. Westcott, Deputy Chief of the Army Reserve (DCAR), and Brig. Gen. John W. Weiss, Commanding General of the 330th medical Brigade, Fort Sheridan, Ill., the latter at the Pentagon for the ARFPC meeting, moved to where an open-air emergency triage area had been set up on the grass near the Pentagon and started helping the injured. They knew they could help.

Westcott is a former medic who has earned the Expert Field medical badge and Weiss is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Wisconsin, as well as a Transfusion Medicine Physician. For a while, they ceased being tow senior Army Reserve officers and did what came instinctively.

"I'm a medic first, I'm the DCAR second," Westcott later said.

Also helping to treat the injured was Col. Ed Wakayama, an Army Reserve Medical Service Corps officer on a one-year tour of duty with the Director for Operational Test and Evaluation, Office of the Secretary of Defense. After exiting the building, he helped perform triage and administered IVs to those who were in shock and who had lost body fluids. He then turned to help the Red Cross in setting up blood draw operations.

More Army Reservists headed to the Pentagon from nearby Crystal City. Capt. Calvin Wineland from OCAR Operations, rushed from a computer class at the Presidential Plaza to check on his children at the Pentagon childcare center. He found them and his wife, Maj. Desiree Wineland, another AGR officer assigned to OCAR in the Public Affairs and Liaison Directorate. All were safe in the area where the children had been relocated after the plane hit. She had sprinted to the childcare center from OCAR's offices in Crystal City.

Before he could take his family home in their Sport Utility Vehicle, Wineland was stopped and asked to take a badly burned soldier to the hospital. Along with an Army major, an Air force technical sergeant and several Department of the Army civilians, Wineland unloaded the SUV and they put the soldier in the back. When their police escort hesitated to leave the area with all that was taking place at the Pentagon, a Navy sailor on a motorcycle came along and said that he would act as an escort to the hospital.

Led by the sailor motorcyclist, they made a mad dash for the hospital, running over sidewalks, medians, and going against traffic to get the wounded soldier there. When they arrived at the hospital, the motorcyclist admitted that he had never been to Georgetown's Medstar Hospital but somehow he led them directly there.

Other Army Reservists also did what they could to help. Command Sgt. Maj. Of the Army Reserve Alex Ray Lackey and his Executive Assistant, Sgt. First Class Paul Mantha, formed a litter team, which included an Army lieutenant general and a colonel.

The fire from the burning airplane and reports of other airplanes approaching the Pentagon kept the litter teams back. They found other ways to support an army of fire fighters and other rescue personnel that now descended on the Pentagon.

Retired Army Reserve Col. William Croom, Assistant Deputy, and AGR Lt. Col. Douglas Thomson, the Executive Officer and Assistant for Army Reserve Logistics, were both in their Pentagon offices when the attack occurred.

The force of the impact was so great that it flung people against the wall or out of their chairs. Croom and Thomson went into action immediately. Their concern was to get people evacuated and to secure the area.