IN SERVICE TO THEIR NATION
SGT Glover ' s Search & Recover Team boards the Chinooks to begin their search for , and recovery of , the bodies of Taliban-executed Afghan civilians .
We were walking in an oven . Our movements through the dry riverbed making us vulnerable to enemy forces possibly above us on high ground and the fiery enemy above us in the sky .
I knew the moment we began to approach our objective : What first smelled only faintly like hot trash with rotting meat quickly turned into the unmistakable putrid odor only cadavers can make .
The hot canyon air had intensified the decay of the corpses we would now have to recover .
Instantly , my mind pulls me back . I am no longer in that dust-filled narrow valley . I am at the Pentagon . It ’ s 9 / 11 . Memories are not yet buried , emotions are happening now . I ’ m moving forward with my unit ; we are inside . WASHINGTON , D . C . SEPTEMBER 2001 Operation Noble Eagle . We had been informed that the building was far from secure , that this was strictly voluntary to enter at this time , and if at any time we felt that we could not continue with recovery operations , we would be tasked with other efforts that needed manpower . The collapsed portion of the building was still on fire with fire crews continuing to fight it .
We entered the building through an access tunnel the engineers made . Plastic sheets had been installed , creating a tunnel to keep the toxic chemicals from spreading . Stacks of 12x12 railroad ties formed the cribbing that was used to support the damaged portion of the building that hadn ' t yet collapsed down . Hydraulic jacks were being used to raise the structure 1 / 4 " at a time so it could be shimmed . 10 AHERO MAGAZINE SUMMER 2021
I looked around . There were no more walls . They had been burned , turned to slag . In a building I knew pretty well , I didn ' t know where I was standing . The plane had punched through almost every ring , except for the innermost wall leading into the Pentagon courtyard . Jet fuel burned inside the newly reinforced building , reaching temperatures of 2,000 degrees . Ft . Myer ' s brand new firetruck was one of the first on scene . The heat was so intense it burned the firetruck .
Standing in the midst of smoldering wreckage and debris , I am surrounded by charred office-equipment and puddles of ankle-deep water saturated with fire retardants and unburned jet fuel . The heavy smell is a burn-pit mix of wet cement , jet fuel , burnt plastics and electrical equipment – and scorched human flesh already decaying though barely a day has passed since the plane hit .
We are in it . I am in it . We need to try and find surviving victims , to comb and sift through the broken rubble and debris of plane and building wreckage , to find evidence … to find people .
Shoving at walls , pulling fallen ceilings aside , we only uncover pieces of them : a single limb , a partial torso . Doing all we can while trying to make ourselves understand we likely won ’ t be finding survivors . Only bodies .
In the first few days following September 11 , 2001 , we were shocked at the gruesome nature in which they died . President Bush had immediately come to take stock . He
shook our hands , the same hands we ’ d use to shift debris only to reveal a body part or a shoe with a foot still snugly inside but the rest of the body nowhere to be found .
Each ceiling panel had to be lifted , each broken wall moved . Constantly , the charred debris had to be shoveled , sifted through . Every one of these moves was executed with dread and sadness . As the days went on , discovering full or partial remains gradually became less shocking . We were becoming numb .
After a week and a half , it was the smell of a corpse rotting that would guide us to wherever the victim or body part was buried . Anxiety and depression fell over us like cold rain as we bent , reached , touched , lifted . Death was all around . AUGUST 2004 , AFGHANISTAN Then I was back in the ravine . Those few seconds of terrible recollection seemed like a lifetime of being back in the hellish scene in D . C . I was sick with it . Overwhelmed . I threw up . As I regained my composure , one of my soldiers , Spc . Elias , jokingly said , " Ahhh , c ' mon , Sergeant Glover , the smell isn ' t that bad . Don ' t be a pussy !" and laughed as he continued his search for the Afghan civilians . He didn ' t know about my previous recovery mission three years earlier . How could he ? I had carefully kept myself from talking about it to anyone . Within minutes , we located the first Afghan body and then another . First platoon pushed out and set up roving patrols while investigating a possible alternate landing zone for extraction . My platoon ( Second ) separated into four teams after securing the area . Third platoon and weapons squads would maintain security , while First split into two fire teams to continue locating remains . My squad was
SGT Dave Glover