The Damage Runs Deeper Than Bricks and Mortar

It dredged up too many memories for the Washington native, memories that made this 37-year-old career soldier scream out in his sleep. The horrors of Sept. 11 repeat themselves each day when Weaver reports to his job as an Army personnel assistant at the Pentagon.

More than 24,000 military and civilian employees work at the Pentagon. Thousands were displaced when the jet plummeted into the building, killing 125 Pentagon employees and 64 airline passengers. For some survivors, returning to the scene of the crime is cathartic, while others return to send terrorists a message: "We will not be defeated." For other survivors, such as Weaver, the prospect of working in the same place where they lost co-workers and friends is not welcome.

Weaver, who has worked for the Army Personnel Command since 1998, was shuffled around to multiple locations after his office was demolished. He and his co-workers finally landed in temporary space nearby in Arlington, Va. In February, they moved to temporary offices in the Pentagon. A few weeks later, Weaver made an appointment to see a counselor.

"I blame myself for [the deaths of] my immediate co-workers, people I worked with every day, who didn't make it," says Weaver, who earned a Purple Heart for the wounds he suffered in the attack. Weaver suffered what he considers minor injuries.

"I feel I didn't do enough to get them out," said Weaver, who after being thrown at least 20 feet by the blast from the impact, almost immediately started feeling for people and told other survivors to grab hands and form a lifeline while he headed toward what he hoped was an exit.

Army Sgt. Maj. Tony Rose often sits at his desk staring into space, remembering the way the building shook, the smell of thick acrid smoke and the unbearable heat of the fires caused by exploding jet fuel.

Rose, a 31-year Army veteran who describes himself as "patriotic to the bone," dismisses the suggestion that he might be scared to return to his old offices once the restoration is complete. "I'm looking forward to us moving back," says Rose, who also earned a Purple Heart during the attacks, as well as a Soldier's Medal, the highest military award for bravery. "It will be like going home."

After escaping from the Pentagon, Rose rushed back into the carnage five times to search for the wounded and other survivors, ignoring the shards of glass and shrapnel embedded in his skin, his smoke-filled lungs and his wounded knee. Rather than dwelling on the tragedy, which left him partly deaf in his right ear, Rose, a senior career counselor, focuses his energy on rebuilding 43 years' worth of historic files that were lost in the fire.

Being close to death and walking away physically unscathed is something you don't forget easily, says Army Capt. Lance Giddens, who lost 19 co-workers in the crash. "Being over here is traumatic sometimes," says Giddens of his Pentagon office. During his Sept. 11 escape, Giddens saw a severely burned officer whose image is seared forever in his mind's eye. "When I enter the building I have to walk past that corridor and I have thoughts of him lying in the corridor, burned and crying in pain," the father of two says. "It starts off being a normal, quiet day where you kiss your kids and your wife goodbye and then you walk past that corridor. Some days it can bring you down."

David Theall was just five weeks into his new Army public affairs job at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, and because the unit was scheduled to relocate to new offices, he had yet to settle into permanent workspace. Theall was using an office less than 100 feet from where the plane crashed into the building.

Like other survivors, Theall and co-worker Carl Mahnken crawled through the rubble to get out of the building, and despite their own injuries, helped medical teams treat the wounded. The two then walked for about two hours to Theall's Old Town Alexandria home and began answering press calls. Theall returned to the Pentagon the next day.

"The greatest testament to those lives that were lost that day is simply to rebuild, repair the damage, remember those people and their contributions, and finish the jobs they were all working on at 9:40 a.m., Sept. 11," Theall says.