At 9:37 a.m. on September 11, 2001, part of the Pentagon vanished behind a wall of acrid smoke as American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building. First responders, service members, and emergency crews pushed through searing heat and blinding fumes into the impact zone at the western façade of the Pentagon. Alongside fellow first responders, military chaplains moved directly into the devastation to care for the wounded, nurture the living, and honor the fallen. Inside, intense heat radiated from collapsed walls as flames swept through the corridors. Sirens blared while responders advanced across broken glass and twisted steel, their uniforms turned gray under drifting ash and pulsing emergency lights.
Moments earlier, routine morning chatter and coffee runs had filled the halls. In a violent instant, that normalcy was shattered, binding the fates of Pentagon personnel to the 59 passengers and crew aboard the hijacked airliner. Survivors and rescue teams crawled through the smoldering ruins, following faint voices and clawing through wreckage for signs of life.
Caring for the wounded
Chaplain (Col.) James E. Walker was at the Pentagon’s dental clinic when the building shook. Walker felt the blast and heard the words spreading through the confusion: A plane had hit the Pentagon.
Outside, wounded men and women emerged from the building, some staggering under their own weight, others carried by fellow employees or first responders.
When Walker saw an Army officer stumbling from the building, overcome by smoke inhalation, he picked her up and carried her to the triage area.
Chaplain (Col.) Janet Horton was also in the Pentagon dental clinic when news of the World Trade Center attacks appeared on the waiting room monitor. Evacuation orders followed shortly after when the Pentagon was struck.
Outside in the Pentagon’s center courtyard, medical teams began treating incoming casualties, many severely burned. Security cordoned off the area for emergency personnel, initially barring Horton and two fellow chaplains. Knowing the wounded needed immediate pastoral care alongside medical treatment, Horton approached the head of security, an acquaintance from the building.
“This is doctrinal. We have to be in there,” she insisted.
He let them through. Horton and the chaplains rushed across the lawn, kneeling beside the injured as medics worked.
Pastoral care amid the chaos
Army Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Henry Haynes, Pentagon chaplain, was returning to his office when news broke of the World Trade Center attacks. As the second tower fell, a chilling dread filled the corridor; a colleague murmured, “I bet we’re next.” Minutes later, alarms sounded.
Evacuating into the smoke, Haynes immediately joined emergency teams establishing operations outside. Amid the confusion, he spent the grueling day providing pastoral care to the injured and traumatized. In the weeks that followed, his mission expanded to leading memorials and guiding grieving families, including relatives of personnel he knew personally.
One victim was a coworker Haynes had greeted almost every morning at 6:00 a.m., routinely seeing him quietly read Scripture in his parked car before entering the building. When the man’s parents later asked if anyone had known their son, Haynes shared that daily ritual, giving them an enduring memory of faith and peace amid their loss.
Ministry of presence
While Horton, Walker and Haynes were already responding inside the Pentagon, Chaplain (Col.) Larry W. Racster was miles away in a Manassas traffic court with his son. He was supposed to have been at the Pentagon that morning for promotion meetings with colleagues who were now caught in the attack.
When news hit that a plane had struck the building, Racster excused himself to the judge, raced home, and threw on his battle dress uniform. Grabbing his chaplain kit and loading a bicycle into his car in case road closures blocked his route, he headed toward Washington.
Arriving near Fort Myer by 11:30 a.m., Racster walked to the impact site, where about 30 chaplains had gathered. As initial evacuations shifted to prolonged recovery operations, leadership trimmed the presence down to a core team. As the ranking officer, Racster took charge, coordinating with the Emergency Operations Center to establish a field chapel. By midnight, a general-purpose tent was operational inside the secured perimeter.
(DoD photo by Tech. Sgt. Cedric H. Rudisill. (Released)) View original
(DoD photo by Tech. Sgt. Cedric H. Rudisill. (Released)) View original
The tent became a sanctuary where firefighters, Soldiers, and rescue workers could decompress, talk, or pray between shifts.
By the next morning, the mission had shifted from rescue to recovery. Chaplains accompanied engineering and mortuary teams into the charred interior, praying over recovered remains in what Racster later described as a "ministry of presence." Often, that simply meant listening.
One recovery worker, hardened after hours of grim duty, broke down after stepping into a blackened office. Amid the ashes stood a single chair where an occupant had clearly been sitting when the fireball hit. Nearby on the scorched wall, a framed wedding photograph hung untouched by the flames.
“He said, ‘I knew that could be me and my wife in that room,’” Racster recalled. “It’s those personal moments that hit home, reminding you that you’re human, and that you don’t have all the answers.”
Providing support to families
Beyond the burning rubble, military chaplains mobilized to anchor a reeling community and account for hundreds of missing personnel.
In Crystal City, Chaplain (Col.) James A. Buckner tracked the World Trade Center strikes from the Office of the Chief of Chaplains, activating specialized disaster-response teams the moment the second plane hit. Nearby, Chaplain (Col.) William Broome sprinted toward the Pentagon against incoming evacuation traffic, pushing through security cordons to reach fleeing survivors just as a compromised section of the exterior wall collapsed.
With cellular networks down, Buckner’s staff worked landlines around the clock to compile accountability rosters. By evening, the missing had names and faces as anxious families gathered at the Pentagon City Sheraton, desperate for news of their loved ones.
Tasked with establishing an immediate Family Support Operation, Buckner assigned Navy chaplains the first night shift, with Army teams taking over at dawn. Chaplain (Col.) Donna Weddle, volunteering alongside fellow attendees from the Joint Forces Chaplain Conference, arrived the next morning to comfort relatives suspended between hope and grief.
Weddle quickly organized a multi-service network across the hotel, scheduling pastoral care sessions, managing walk-in stations, and coordinating with community clergy before military teams assumed the mission.
When visits to the crash site were arranged, Weddle ensured a chaplain accompanied every family bus for continuous support. At the Pentagon, the Rev. Jesse Jackson boarded the vehicles to pray with relatives. Weddle’s efforts culminated on Sunday, when she coordinated and led an interfaith service for roughly 300 family members, Soldiers, and survivors.
Honoring the fallen
Stationed at the mortuary van, Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Terry Bradfield prayed over each recovered casualty after medical staff confirmed death, reciting Scripture when human words fell short. Even when remains were unrecognizable, Bradfield remembered that each had a family anxiously awaiting news.
Overcome by the gravity of the scene, Bradfield and three colleagues eventually pulled the van doors shut to step away from the outside commotion. In the cold, quiet darkness alongside the fallen, Bradfield broke down, weeping for the victims and their waiting families.
Among those pulled into the recovery was Chaplain (Maj.) Timothy Mallard, who had been home that morning caring for his sick child.
When he heard that a plane had struck the Pentagon, he rushed to the scene. He was assigned to a FEMA recovery team from Tennessee alongside a physician who determined whether the remains they found were those of someone who might still be alive. Mallard’s task came after the doctor’s determination: to stand over the dead and offer a blessing. The work confronted him with a kind of suffering he had never imagined.
“I remember being utterly stunned at how fragile the human body is.” Mallard later recalled. “Nothing in my theological training had prepared me for that.”
The weight eventually reached the recovery crews, too. One morning, members of Mallard’s FEMA team found him at the chaplain’s tent and refused to re-enter the building until he spoke to them. Pulling out the New Testament, Mallard read, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." Mallard looked toward the enormous gash the airplane had torn into the Pentagon and wept alongside the crew. Feeling renewed, the team re-entered the wreckage.
Exhausted, Mallard retreated to a dark corner of the chaplain tent, collapsing in tears. Commander Doug Waite, a Coast Guard chaplain, found him, placed a hand on his shoulder, and prayed until Mallard could stand again.
The chaplains had come to the Pentagon to carry other people’s burdens, but the wreckage did not leave them untouched. They carried pieces of it with them.
The response around them was becoming its own small community.
In the Pentagon’s South Parking lot, tents went up around the recovery operation until Camp Unity stretched across the grounds. Red Cross and Salvation Army workers brought food, water and fresh clothes. Volunteers set up lights, telephones, ice and hand-washing stations, while chaplains and counselors supported the recovery crews.
For those coming out of the Pentagon covered in dust and sweat, Camp Unity offered vital refuge. A support system worker later called the support there “heaven sent,” saying it made the difficult task more bearable.
Breaking the silence
When the Pentagon Metro station reopened to the public nearly three weeks after the September 11 attacks, Chaplain Mallard walked among the commuters. Wearing his service beret with visible religious insignia, he engaged with passengers to offer comfort and break the station’s heavy, somber silence.
Three days later, Mallard noticed commuters talking among themselves on the platforms—clear evidence that his presence had helped ease apprehension, rebuild connection, and restore a shared sense of normalcy.
From broken shards to sacred ground
Slowly, the sounds of work returned with the people. The movement through the corridors resumed. Offices reopened, and the job of restoring the damaged building continued.
But there was one part of the Pentagon that could not be restored simply by replacing walls and windows; the place where so many perished required a dedicated space for remembrance. Amid the reconstruction efforts, defense officials and chaplains recognized a profound need for a permanent sanctuary within the complex. Exactly one year later, on September 11, 2002, the Pentagon Memorial Chapel was officially dedicated and opened to personnel, their families, and authorized visitors.
Around the outer edge, 184 red glass pieces honor each of the lives lost that day, with 125 inside the Pentagon and 59 aboard American Airlines Flight 77. View original
The chapel carried that history into its stained-glass window. Hundreds of chaplains and chaplain assistants helped assemble pieces of colored glass into a five-sided design bearing an eagle, the Pentagon, the American flag, and an olive branch. Around the design, 184 crimson pieces formed two rings, one for each person killed at the Pentagon and aboard Flight 77.
For Racster, one of those pieces represented someone he had expected to see that morning. He had been scheduled to meet with Lt. Col. Scales, who was killed when the plane struck the Pentagon. When Racster placed his piece of glass in the window, he did so in Scales’ memory.
Piece by piece, the shattered glass was becoming something whole.
Former Army Chief of Chaplains (Maj. Gen.) Gaylord Gunhus saw in it a reflection of what the Pentagon community itself was trying to do with its grief.
“Those broken shards were bound together then in a window that virtually jumps out at us with a message of hope and our nation’s resolve,” he said. “What once was a pile of broken glass is now a symbol of unity and of remembrance.”
Today, in the place where the Pentagon had been torn open, its walls burned and 184 lives lost, light passes through pieces of glass gathered from hundreds of hands and joined into something whole. The window is a reflection of what transpired in the months and years that followed. What had been shattered could not be returned to what it was. But it could be gathered, remembered, and given meaning.
Twenty-five years after the attack, the ground beneath the Pentagon remains sacred to the workforce that carries its legacy forward. The chapel is open 24 hours a day and can support 12 worship services a week.
Carrying the legacy forward
When the flag rises over the Pentagon on the 25th anniversary, Americans will remember the lives that were taken and the people who ran toward the danger. They will remember the families who waited, the chaplains who prayed with them and helped them face the unbearable, the rescuers who kept working, and the community that rebuilt.
Remembrance lives on in the children who survived, in the young people who choose to serve, and in every generation that decides what kind of country it will inherit, and what kind it will leave behind. The chaplains who answered the call on September 11 could not undo the loss. What they could do was stand in the middle of it, care for the wounded, comfort the grieving, and help people find the strength to take the next step.
Terrorists chose the moment of the attack, but they did not choose what came after. They did not choose the courage that rose from the ashes, the hands that reached for one another, or the Americans who would dedicate their lives to serving something greater than themselves.
That choice belongs to every generation that comes next. And somewhere among them are the next chaplains, the next Soldiers, the next Americans who will run toward someone else’s darkest hour and remind them that they are not alone.
God bless America. Never forget how strong we are.
In memory of the victims of Airline Flight 77 and the Pentagon.
Related links:
Chaplain Recalls Fear, Confusion, Faith During 9/11 Attack
Face of Defense: Chaplain Recalls 9/11 Attack on Pentagon
Chaplain Returns to Minister to Pentagon after 9/11
Pentagon Memorial Chapel Place to Grieve, Reflect, Heal
What to Know Before You Visit the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial
Fragments Made Whole: Remembering 9/11 Through Stained Glass at the Pentagon Memorial Chapel
Pentagon’s Crash-Site Memorial Inspires Remembrance
U.S. Army South Memorial Ceremony Honors Victims of 9/11 Attacks
Pentagon 9/11: Office of the Secretary of Defense, Historical Office, 2007
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