Sheppard honors 9/11 victims

  • Published
  • By John Ingle
  • 82nd Training Wing Public Affairs
SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  It's come to be known simply as 9/11. There's no mistaking what it means when someone asks, "Where were you on 9/11?"

That one day changed a multitude of lives forever. For retired Air Force Col. Kathleen Roberts, it took her in a direction she hadn't imagined - especially as someone who was used to helping people heal from pain as a nurse. She shared her story Sept. 11, the sixth anniversary of the terror attacks on the United States, at a Patriots' Day Memorial Service at the North Chapel.

Although all victims of the attacks of 9/11 were remembered, Colonel Roberts and others in attendance thought of the attack that struck the very heart of military structure in the United States - the Pentagon.

"Like most people, we thought it was an accident," she said, recalling that she was at a planning meeting at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., to discuss, ironically, the deployment of field hospitals in case of natural disasters or war. "Then the second plane hit."

Then the unthinkable occurred as the chief of Wartime Medical Planning System Office at the Office of the Air Force Surgeon General sat, watching in horror and disbelief as news came across the television that a third plane hit the Pentagon.

"I started to pray because I had friends there," the colonel said.

Perhaps a stroke of fate, or maybe even luck, took Colonel Roberts from her normal duty location in the Washington, D.C., area. Regardless of what took her away from the locality of the terror strikes, she said her next assignment put her in a position that didn't require her to care for the sick.

"I spent my entire life to (either) heal people or train people to heal people," Colonel Roberts said. Now she would focus her attentions on preparing a nation for war.

Colonel Roberts said she returned to Washington, this time as a member of the Air Force Crisis Action Team. After all, she was one of a handful of colonel's in the area who possessed medical experience and a top secret clearance.

She described the scene and people who she knew and worked with at various times. The wounded Pentagon smelled of jet fuel and smoke. A chaplain she knew injured his knee while evacuating personnel from the symbol of American military might. A husband-wife NCO team worked countless hours while neighbors took care of their children. A general officer shed his rank and participated in recovery efforts, wearing a blue medic vest riddled with burn holes throughout.

Sifting through the injured and dead, she said, was difficult.

"I couldn't depersonalize those casualties," she said. "They all had faces."

But as the majority of Air Force members do, the colonel said the action team focused on the mission - caring for people and preparing to defend the nation.

So the team began to plan for the second attack. The team focused on preparing the service's medical community to care for those who would seek justice.

Even though days and weeks would pass, Colonel Roberts said she recalled aircraft passing over the Pentagon as she would walk across the bridge to the gym for a workout. She said it took a long time to walk across the bridge and not look for an aircraft that would strike a second time.

But, she said the structure and people have recovered from the wound left by extremists that day. In true medic form, she drew from her knowledge to send her point home.

"Scar tissue is stronger than (the tissue) it replaces," she said. "The Pentagon is stronger than that day on 9/11."

Sometimes events lead people where they don't expect to go - good and bad. Colonel Roberts said planning for war wasn't in her plans, but planning medical care and training medics to care for the nation's wounded is part of what she does.

At the end of the memorial, Chap. (Capt.) James Pitts quoted an appropriate line from founding-father Thomas Paine, a quote that still has meaning today. Mr. Payne wrote in his letters called "The Crisis" during the winter of 1776:

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thank of man and woman.

Mr. Paine continued: Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.