Fort Knox 9/11 icons quietly speak of Army sacrifices for freedom

FORT KNOX, Ky. — Four icons located at and around Fort Knox carry deep significance that few may realize as they pass through the gates to reside, work or visit.

Two icons came from the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan, the other two from the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Combined, they offer four daily reminders of that fateful Tuesday morning Sept. 11, 2001, when the world suddenly pivoted on a different axis.

Some remember 9/11 with the raw emotion of personal experience. Some people like Al Wallace.

“We knew about the two attacks in New York that had happened,” said Wallace.

He and fellow Fort Myer Fire Department firefighters Mark Skipper and Dennis Young were manning the Emergency-One 4x4 fire truck Foam 161 at the Pentagon heliport when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. Then at 9:03, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower.

The firefighters had been alerted and warned 15 minutes after the second attack to be prepared for a possible third attack somewhere in the Washington, D.C. area.

“The fire chief called our firehouse and talked to Dennis, who then called for me and Skipper,” said Wallace. “He first asked me, ‘Are you aware of what’s going on in New York City?’ I told him yeah. ‘Our government is considering this a terrorist attack at this point.’”

Wallce and Skipper left the firehouse to start preparing Foam 161 for service while Young stayed in the firehouse to monitor communications. Wallace said he and Skipper had been working around the right backside of the truck and were walking to the front of it when they saw it —

“We didn’t realize that anything was out of the ordinary until we saw the airplane,” said Wallace. “It crossed the freeway about 200 yards away, knocking down light poles. Immediately we were enveloped in this very loud noise.”

With only seconds to react, Wallace ran to a nearby van and dove under it while Skipper fell to the ground on the tarmac. Miraculously, though both suffered minor burns on their backsides, neither man died from the ball of flames rushing at them.

Wallace later testified that the position of Foam 161 was likely the reason why Young and two flight tower personnel in the firehouse were saved. Foam 161, parked between them and crash site 200 feet away, had taken the brunt of the explosion.

“If the firetruck hadn’t been parked where it was,” said Wallace, “the firehouse would have been leveled.”

Wallace said instinct and training kicked in immediately as both he and Skipper prepared to maneuver the truck so they could spray foam on the crash site. Wallace revved the engines trying to get the truck to move, finally realizing that Foam 161 was out of commission and was, in fact, on fire.

So, they turned their attention to rescuing others inside the Pentagon. On Sept. 11, 2013, the first rescuer of Pentagon personnel, Foam 161, arrived at the Patton Museum of Leadership at Fort Knox, where it sits today – charred and scarred just like it became on Sept. 11, 2001.

Just minutes before the Pentagon crash, Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude had been sitting in his office at the Pentagon, conducting a meeting. The Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel and his staff had recently moved into the newly renovated section at the west side of the building.

Maude had been promoted to the three-star position the previous year and, according to historic accounts, was working to consolidate Army human resources headquarters – in three sites at that time – into one location.

Maude had been recovering from a splintered spleen and decided to return to work early to continue efforts in revamping recruitment efforts because, according to one source, “the Army needed him.”

Gregory Gardner, who works at the Fort Knox-based U.S. Army Human Resources Command, said he never met Maude but had heard a lot about him in 2005 when Gardner joined the organization. He said a few years after American Airlines Flight 77 hit the west wall of the Pentagon, Maude’s executive officer at that time, Col. Sean Byrne, decided to rename the HRC facility in Maude’s honor.

“I remember General Byrne telling us, ‘I want to name the facility after General Maude,’” said Gardner. “It was his plan; it was his idea; but the process took a bit of time. I thought it was a great idea to name the human resources building after him.”

By the time the process had finished, HRC had moved into its current building at Fort Knox in 2010. The building was named the Lt. Gen. Timothy J. Maude Complex on May 27 of that same year.

Among the rubble of the World Trade Center tower collapses of Sept. 11, 2001, was a tangle of twisted and broken I-beams. They would later be cut into smaller sections and distributed to areas all around the United States.

One of those pieces – a 16-foot-tall beam mounted on a 6-foot-tall granite column that in total weighs over nine tons – towers over Kentucky Veterans Cemetery Central in Radcliff about halfway up the rows of tombstones on the right side. Many note how it looks like a partial cross that casts large shadows across the land at sunrise and sunset.

Called the Kentucky September 11th Memorial, it “is dedicated to those that lost their lives on that fateful day as well as military service-members who gave their all in the War on Terror overseas since,” according to a brochure published by Radcliff Tourism.org.

According to the brochure, “the back wall is constructed of limestone blocks recovered from the Pentagon after the attack.”

The other I-beam, the smallest of the two, also sits in granite beside Fire Station 1 at Fort Knox. To the right of it is an inscription that reads in part, “It now sits upon a solid foundation of remembrance from the Pentagon to the World Trade Center and in the fields of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

“A brief decade ago, America and her citizens were plunged into a state of anguish. Shaken yet united in cause, we grow stronger … we will never forget.”

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