Pentagon attack painful memory for retired chaplain
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A UMNS Web-only photo courtesy of the Rev. Terry Bradfield The
Rev. Terry Bradfield leads an exit ceremony for the Fairfax Search and
Urban Rescue Team at the Pentagon one week after the attacks.
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The
Rev. Terry Bradfield, a United Methodist and Army chaplain, leads an
exit ceremony for the Fairfax Search and Urban Rescue Team at the
Pentagon a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bradfield,
now an executive with the denomination's General Council on Finance and
Administration, spent weeks on site assisting the mortuary team,
maintaining a "Chain of Dignity" for the deceased. A UMNS Web-only photo
courtesy of the Rev. Terry Bradfield. Photo # W06122. Accompanies UMNS
story #538. 9/12/06 |
Sept. 12, 2006
A UMNS Feature
By Kathy L. Gilbert*
The Rev. Terry Bradfield fears a heinous tragedy has been compounded by
grievous errors after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Bradfield was an Army chaplain on assignment at the Pentagon’s Army
Chief of Chaplain’s office on that fateful day five years ago. He was
assigned to mortuary detail in the first days after the attacks.
“I think there’s a lot more fear in the world now than there was
before,” he says. “I don’t want to say it’s unwarranted fear because the
world’s a dangerous place. There’s just a boldness now that wasn’t
there before 9/11; there is a quickness to blame and that’s a sad
circumstance.”
Bradfield remembers in the first days after the attack an Air Force
general was walking around the Pentagon grounds. Someone asked him,
“General, what are we going to do about this?”
Bradfield says the general replied, “One of the things we don’t want
to do is take a heinous tragedy and compound it with a grievous error.”
“I’m not sure that we’ve been able to live into those words of caution,” Bradfield says.
The empathy and support of the international community were with the
United States immediately following 9/11, he says, even after military
operations in Afghanistan.
“I feel like our national leaders have squandered that good will by
demonizing an entire culture, cultivating a climate of perpetual fear,
and bullying the world into an ?us-or-them’ paradigm that is unhealthy
and dangerous,” he says. “Whatever the result of the ?war on terror,’ I
am fearful that we have solidified a cultural rift that will take
generations, if not centuries, to heal.”
Tuesday, Sept. 11
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A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose The Rev. Terry Bradfield and his wife, Maile, recount their experiences of the attack on the Pentagon.
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The
Rev. Terry Bradfield and his wife, Maile, recount their experiences of
the attack on the Pentagon. Bradfield, a United Methodist, is a retired
Army chaplain who was assigned to the Pentagon in the Army Chief of
Chaplain's office. He now serves on the staff of the denomination's
General Council on Finance and Administration. After the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, he spent weeks on site at the Pentagon assisting the
mortuary team, maintaining a "Chain of Dignity" for the deceased. The
Bradfields have found it difficult to live with the memories of those
days. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. Photo # 061054. Accompanies UMNS
story #538. 9/12/06
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The Pentagon was undergoing renovations at the time of the attack,
and Bradfield’s office had been moved to another building. That is where
he was when the plane hit.
“Where the plane entered the Pentagon was only about 45 feet from our old offices,” he says.
Like so many Americans, he heard the news report that a plane had hit
the World Trade Centers in New York. Everyone was gathered around
watching CNN when the second plane hit.
“It wasn’t but a few minutes later we looked out the window and could
see black smoke coming from the direction of the Pentagon,” he says.
Most of the chaplains immediately left the building to render aid. Something made Bradfield look back over his shoulder.
“I saw all the civilian employees standing in the office with a
puzzled look on their face, sort of like, ?Where are these guys going?’ I
tapped the shoulder on the chaplain in front of me and said I was going
to stay back for a while.”
He says that turned out to be a good decision because for the next
few hours that office became the communications center for most of the
Army leadership as the Pentagon was evacuated.
Wednesday, Sept. 12
The next day, after the fires were out, he became part of a four-man team on mortuary detail.
His place on the team was in the refrigerator trucks tagged as
mortuary vans. One chaplain accompanied the search and rescue team as
they went into the building. The remains would be brought out and handed
off to a team of stretcher bearers. A chaplain would accompany the
stretcher to the truck and Bradfield would help bring the remains into
the truck.
While a doctor was uncovering the remains and pronouncing death, Bradfield was saying a prayer.
“Then we would cover the remains up, move them to a place in the van
and bring in the next set. I did that for several days. I think we were
on 12-hour shifts during that time.”
The rest of the days
It is not easy for Bradfield to live with the memories of those days, and most of the time he tries to not think about them.
“When you are in the middle of it, the training kicks in,” he says.
“There were a lot of soldiers from Arlington Cemetery — the soldiers who
normally are on the burial details — who had volunteered to come down
and assist with the removal of the remains. So in a lot of ways it felt
like I was back in my early days in the chaplaincy when I was a
lieutenant and a captain and I had my unit and I was out with the
troops.”
Being a chaplain meant he also tried to help “young kids” who were
soldiers deal with issues of death, dying, mortality and fear. He says
he probably still suffers from post-traumatic syndrome because of Sept.
11.
“When I’m in groups where people start saying, ?Where were you on
9/11?’ and they start talking about where they were, I get tight. I
probably get a little angry when I listen to the stories until I can
remind myself that all of us were there on 9/11. And all of us were
impacted in some way on 9/11. There’s just no way to avoid it.”
Hearing about other perspectives has been part of the healing process, he says.
?Taken the joy away’
Bradfield’s wife, Maile, says up until 9/11 they had been living “a charmed life.”
“It showed me a level of hatred that to this day I still can’t wrap
my heart around,” she says. The worst effect for her is seeing what it
has done to her husband.
“It has taken the joy away from Terry,” she says. “He’s like the most
care-free, loving, joyful person I’ve ever met in my life, and for him
to have to deal with that on a daily basis just makes me angry.”
Bradfield, who has retired from the military and is now an executive
with the United Methodist General Council on Finance and Administration,
says being a chaplain was a great career for nearly 23 years.
“I have loved almost every moment of those 23 years.
“The worst thing that happened in my entire career was 9/11 and the Pentagon attack.”
* Gilbert is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.
News media contact: Kathy L. Gilbert, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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