LAFIRE.COM
Los Angeles Fire Department
Historical Archive
September 11, 2001
World Trade Center
New York, New York
PEGGY
NOONAN Courage Under Fire The 21st century's first war heroes. Friday, October 5, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT Forgive me. I'm going to return to a story that has been well documented the past few weeks, and I ask your indulgence. So much has been happening, there are so many things to say, and yet my mind will not leave one thing: the firemen, and what they did. Although their heroism has been widely celebrated, I don't think we have quite gotten its meaning, or fully apprehended its dimensions. But what they did that day, on Sept. 11--what the firemen who took those stairs and entered those buildings did--was to enter American history, and Western history. They gave us the kind of story you tell your grandchildren about. I don't think I'll ever get over it, and I don't think my city will either. What they did is not a part of the story but the heart of the story Here in my neighborhood in the East 90s many of us now know the names of our firemen and the location of our firehouse. We know how many men we lost (eight). We bring food and gifts and checks and books to the firehouse, we sign big valentines of love, and yet of course none of it is enough or will ever be enough.Every day our two great tabloids list the memorials and wakes and funeral services. They do reports: Yesterday at a fireman's funeral they played "Stairway to Heaven." These were the funerals for yesterday:
What the papers are doing--showing you that the fireman had a name and the name had a face and the face had a life--is good. But it of course it is not enough, it can never be enough. We all of course know the central fact: There were two big buildings and there were 5,000-plus people and it was 8:48 in the morning on a brilliant blue day. And then 45 minutes later the people and the buildings were gone. They just went away. As I write this almost three weeks later, I actually think: That couldn't be true. But it's true. That is pretty much where New Yorkers are in the grieving process: "That couldn't be true. It's true." Five thousand dead! "That couldn't be true. It's true." And more than 300 firemen dead.Three hundred firemen. This is the part that reorders your mind when you think of it. For most of the 5,000 dead were there--they just happened to be there, in the buildings, at their desks or selling coffee or returning e-mail. But the 300 didn't happen to be there, they went there. In the now-famous phrase, they ran into the burning building and not out of the burning building. They ran up the stairs, not down, they went into it and not out of it. They didn't flee, they charged. It was just before 9 a.m. and the shift was changing, but the outgoing shift raced to the towers and the incoming shift raced with them. That's one reason so many were there so quickly, and the losses were so heavy. Because no one went home. They all came. And one after another they slapped on their gear and ran up the stairs. They did this to save lives. Of all the numbers we've learned since Sept. 11, we don't know and will probably never know how many people that day were saved from the flames and collapse. But the number that has been bandied about is 20,000--20,000 who lived because they thought quickly or were lucky or prayed hard or met up with (were carried by, comforted by, dragged by) a fireman. I say fireman and not "firefighter." We're all supposed to say firefighter, but they were all men, great men, and fireman is a good word. Firemen put out fires and save people, they take people who can't walk and sling them over their shoulders like a sack of potatoes and take them to safety. That's what they do for a living. You think to yourself: Do we pay them enough? You realize: We couldn't possibly pay them enough. And in any case a career like that is not about money. I'm still not getting to the thing I want to say.It's that what the New York Fire Department did--what those men did on that brilliant blue day in September--was like D-Day. It was daring and brilliant and brave, and the fact of it--the fact that they did it, charging into harm's way--changed the world we live in. They brought love into a story about hate--for only love will make you enter fire. Talk about your Greatest Generation--the greatest generation is the greatest pieces of any generation, and right now that is: them. So it was like D-Day, but it was also like the charge of the Light Brigade. Into the tower of death strode the three hundred. And though we continue to need reporters to tell us all the facts, to find out the stories of what the firemen did in those towers, and though reporters have done a wonderful, profoundly appreciative job of that, what we need most now is different. We need a poet. We need a writer of ballads and song to capture what happened there as the big men in big black rubber coats and big boots and hard peaked hats lugged 50 and 100 pounds of gear up into the horror and heat, charging upward, going up so sure, calm and fast--so humorously, some of them, cracking mild jokes--that some of the people on the stairwell next to them, going down, trying to escape, couldn't help but stop and turn and say, "Thank you," and "Be careful, son," and some of them took pictures. I have one. On the day after the horror, when the first photos of what happened inside the towers were posted on the Internet, I went to them. And one was so eloquent--a black-and-white picture that was almost a blur: a big, black-clad back heading upward in the dark, and on his back, in shaky double-vision letters because the person taking the picture was shaking, it said "Byrne." Just Byrne. But it suggested to me a world. An Irish kid from Brooklyn, where a lot of the Byrnes settled when they arrived in America. Now he lives maybe on Long Island, in Massapequa or Huntington. Maybe third-generation American, maybe in his 30s, grew up in the '70s when America was getting crazy, but became what his father might have been, maybe was: a fireman. I printed copies of the picture, and my brother found the fireman's face and first name in the paper. His name was Patrick Byrne. He was among the missing. Patrick Byrne was my grandfather's name, and is my cousin's name. I showed it to my son and said, "Never forget this--ever." The Light Brigade had Tennyson. It was the middle of the Crimean War and the best of the British light cavalry charged on open terrain in the Battle of Balaclava. Of the 600 men who went in, almost half were killed or wounded, and when England's poet laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson, learned of it, he turned it into one of the most famous poems of a day when poems were famous:
I don't think young people are taught that poem anymore; it's martial and patriarchal, and even if it weren't it's cornball. But then, if a Hollywood screenwriter five weeks ago wrote a story in which buildings came down and 300 firemen sacrificed their lives to save others, the men at the studios would say: Nah, too cornball. That couldn't be true. But it's true. Brave men do brave things. After Sept. 11 a friend of mine said something that startled me with its simple truth. He said, "Everyone died as the person they were." I shook my head. He said, "Everyone died who they were. A guy who ran down quicker than everyone and didn't help anyone--that was him. The guy who ran to get the old lady and was hit by debris--that's who he was. They all died who they were." Who were the firemen? The Christian scholar and author Os Guinness said the other night in Manhattan that horror and tragedy crack open the human heart and force the beauty out. It is in terrible times that people with great goodness inside become most themselves. "The real mystery," he added, "is not the mystery of evil but the mystery of goodness." Maybe it's because of that mystery that firemen themselves usually can't tell you why they do what they do. "It's the job," they say, and it is, and it is more than that.So: The firemen were rough repositories of grace. They were the goodness that comes out when society is cracked open. They were responsible. They took responsibility under conditions of chaos. They did their job under heavy fire, stood their ground, claimed new ground, moved forward like soldiers against the enemy. They charged. There is another great poet and another great charge, Pickett's
charge, at Gettysburg. The poet, playwright and historian Stephen
Vincent Benet wrote of Pickett and his men in his great poetic epic of
the Civil War, "John Brown's Body":
The center line held to the end, he wrote, and didn't break until it wasn't there anymore. The firemen were like that. And like the soldiers of old, from Pickett's men through D-Day, they gave us a moment in history that has left us speechless with gratitude and amazement, and maybe relief, too. We still make men like that. We're still making their kind. Then that must be who we are. We are entering an epic struggle, and the firemen gave us a great gift when they gave us this knowledge that day. They changed a great deal by being who they were. They deserve a poet, and a poem. At the very least a monument. I enjoy the talk about building it bigger, higher, better and maybe we'll do that. But I'm one of those who thinks: Make it a memory. The pieces of the towers that are left, that still stand, look like pieces of a cathedral. Keep some of it. Make it part of a memorial. And at the center of it--not a part of it but at the heart of it--bronze statues of firemen looking up with awe and resolution at what they faced. And have them grabbing their helmets and gear as if they were running toward it, as if they are running in. Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal.
Her new book, "When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald
Reagan," will be published by Viking Penguin this fall. Her column
appears Fridays.
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I could not agree more. These men heard the call to battle, and ran
to the sound of the guns. No unit in our military (or anyone else's) can
say any more than that. God has blessed our nation with such men, and I
salute them.
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It Was Byrne That Got Me When I reached the point in your article about Patrick Byrne, I actually began to cry. Your picture of his life, his history, taken only from a name, and your admonition to your son never to forget his life, was as good as any poetry. Thank you.
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Your friend's comment "Everyone died who they were" is
profound. My father went "up the stairs" in WW II and survived
Iwo Jima that defined "who he was and is" to me. I hope that
if I am ever put in harms way that I by the grace of God will go
"up the stairs." Thank you for an inspiring article.
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First Battle Dead Great article. I agree with the idea of a monument in New York City.
I have another suggestion as well. Since I also believe that these brave
men are the 1st War Heroes of the 21st Century how about a monument to
them at Arlington National Cemetery. It strikes me as ironic that
forensics have almost guaranteed that all battlefield dead will be
identified today. Some of these firemen never will be.
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Talk About Reaching Out and Touching Someone You wrote so beautifully about the firemen, it made me cry here in Sydney. I am awestruck by your talent. You have done those men proud. Congratulations.
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One bare hour ago I would have said that the praising of these men,
though peremptorily necessary, was impossible--that in their glory they
were inaccessible to us, that the best of us could do no more than stand
mute and trembling in tears.
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Michiel van der Voort - New York Wonderful Ms. Noonan but let's make sure we include the
retired firemen, employees of various firms that happened to have EMS
training that were in the buildings and even two blocks away at their
desks who raced in and helped. We will indeed never know the true level
of their heroism.
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They Did a 'John Wayne' John Wayne would have understood these firemen. In the military, when someone does something heroic, he's said to have "done a John Wayne." John Wayne was an icon for heroism. He'd have understood. He'd have honored them but not gaudily. He'd probably say something like "Make sure their kids know how brave their dads were. Make sure every kid knows how brave those men were. We owe it to them."
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I Know Heroes I've been in the Navy for over 20 years and have served beside heroes in war. Ms. Noonan comes the closest to enabling one to visualize what these heroic fireman did. They ran in. Thanks Peggy Noonan for a powerful article, a written tribute to heroes, a personalization of who they were.
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Joy Loth - Houston, Texas When I viewed the gaping remains of the Morrow Building after the
Oklahoma City bombing, and not so much later, those spires rising above
the smoking refuse of the World Trade Center, I felt that out of the
horror, the monuments to the dead had risen from the remains. Somehow,
there was a symmetry which was evocative of life rather than death.
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Scott Williams - Columbus, Ohio I begin each day by quickly reading OpinionJournal. I look forward to
these few quiet moments of thought before the day starts. Friday is the
best day because that is the day for Peggy Noonan's column. (Although I
am anxiously awaiting her new book, her absence from Opinion Journal has
been hard on her readers).
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Marian Booker - Conroe, Texas I have been distressed for some time about the cheapening of the word
"hero," especially when used to define an overpaid,
poorly-behaved, pampered prima donna basketball or football player, or
especially an actor (I'm not a real hero, but I play one on TV). Some of
those people may actually be humanitarians, donating a part of their
wealth and time to causes, to help those less fortunate. But none of
them lives in a 1,500 square foot apartment or tract house with an aging
car in the driveway and a family to feed, nor would they donate their
wealth until it hurt.
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Our Heroes Carried the Day A lovely sentiment, Ms. Noonan; but unlike the Light Brigade or Pickett's Division, the firefighters of New York did not fail in their charge. They carried the day and as you point out saved over 20,000 lives.
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To Be a Man Incredible article, I cried, stopping to clear my eyes before I could go on. I was proud to be an American, a man and not the least a witness from the New Jersey shore that fateful day. I watched without knowing that such heroism was unfolding and to this day wonder that such beautiful bravery isn't seen as the essence of what being a man is really all about.
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There Were Others Wesley Riggs - Merriam, Kan. I hesitate to diminish such a fine article with a hint of criticism, but weren't there many police officers who charged in as well? I am sure there were some women among the rescuers, even if the firemen were all male as you wrote. It was a superb article, though.
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America's Heroes Straight to the heart! I was unable to get through this with dry eyes. There were surly similar heroes on Flight 93. We may doubtless never know the details of their courage, but it was courage just as surly taken from the same source. May God bless them all!
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Thanks for Noticing Before, we complained that Americans no longer had heroes.
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Let's Hear It for City Employees I'm glad city employees are finally getting some praise for a job
that they do everyday. Before Sept. 11 city employees and there
departments were either derided or neglected with budget cuts. Here in
Los Angeles, both the fire and police departments need major investments
in communications and other hardware, as well as, increases in personal
and pay. In the past, important city departments took a backseat to
fulfill tax cut policies of politicians and their constituents.
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Poetic Prose How appropriate that Ms Noonan should call for a poet to pen praise for the brave firemen of New York. But her beautiful piece today would qualify as just that. Well done, Ms. Noonan, well done.
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Damn Judges I was very touched by your article. I am a retired Battalion Chief from the San Francisco Fire Department. The FDNY is the best. My admiration before, during and after the evil 11th is impossible to express fully. The before was their fight to prevent the lowering of standards by the courts (ours was Judge Patel) to accommodate the women. The during was in the highest traditions of the service, I have seen heroism but never any as great. The after was the bone weary, mind numbing, hard nosed rescue efforts that required stamina and strength. The standards that were established many years ago were for a reason, and we all saw on live television the reason. I hope all of the "out of control" Federal judges who would lower the standards for politically correct reason will have second thoughts.
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New York's Finest Russ Emerson - Apex, N.C. Once again, Peggy Noonan has validated the opinion I've held since I
began reading her work. She (along with Tony Snow) is the finest writer
in journalism today.
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There Are Heroes After All Somewhere along the way, Hollywood and the intellectual types
redefined the word hero to include any craven individual who
protests for a political issue they favor. As a result, animal-rights
activists now become freedom fighters, simply because they break into
labs, destroy stuff and release rodents from their cages. With people
like these, it's no wonder average Americans like myself think that
"real heroes" don't exist anymore.
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'Just Doing His Job' I have been married for 24 years to a fireman and now our 22-year-old son has followed his dad and grandfather in what I consider to be the most noblest of professions. I have watched my husband charge into a burning building more than once; I have seen him breathe life into an unconscious child. He would tell you he was "just doing his job." I await the time I witness my son performing the same courageous acts as he "just does his job."
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'Let's Roll!'
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Well Donne What a very moving tribute to men whose faces we very seldom see, hidden behind masks and uniforms, but who are always there waiting now and over the years to assist when needed. On Sept. 11 we saw the risk they are willing to take and now we see some of their faces. Was is John Donne who wrote centuries ago that "no man is an island, entire of itself . . . that each man's death diminishes me because I am a part of mankind." I'm not sure I have that right but I wonder if that is how these firemen felt, a connection and duty towards the victims they tried to save because they and we are all a part of mankind.
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The Right Side Won Ms. Noonan's tribute is ruined by bringing up Pickett's charge. Whether your actions are praiseworthy or not depends on what you're fighting for, and fighting to maintain slavery is nothing at all like rescuing people from disaster.
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The Right Side Won Ms. Noonan's tribute is ruined by bringing up Pickett's charge. Whether your actions are praiseworthy or not depends on what you're fighting for, and fighting to maintain slavery is nothing at all like rescuing people from disaster.
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The Right Side Won Ms. Noonan's tribute is ruined by bringing up Pickett's charge. Whether your actions are praiseworthy or not depends on what you're fighting for, and fighting to maintain slavery is nothing at all like rescuing people from disaster.
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The Right Side Won Ms. Noonan's tribute is ruined by bringing up Pickett's charge. Whether your actions are praiseworthy or not depends on what you're fighting for, and fighting to maintain slavery is nothing at all like rescuing people from disaster.
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My Father, the Fireman
Raymond G. Riesterer - Romeoville, Ill.
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Almost every day I pass the fire station near our home. The flag is
still at half staff to honor those heroes Ms. Noonan describes in her
excellent article. I am sure that each fireman in America hopes that he
would act as honorably as the ones that responded to the attack on the
World Trade Center on Sept.11. They died so that others could live. |
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