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First Firefighter to Enter Burning Pentagon on 9/11 Is a Vietnam Veteran

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On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Pentagon firefighter Alan Wallace was just outside the Pentagon, positioning his firetruck, called a crash truck, near the helipad where helicopters shuttle top brass and civilian leaders to and from the building.

"The sky was an incredible blue without a cloud or contrail in sight. It was the darkest blue sky that you are ever going to see in your lifetime. It was hauntingly blue," he said.

At 8:10 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, left Washington Dulles International Airport with 58 passengers and a crew of six. It flew west across Virginia and West Virginia, then made an unscheduled turn at the Ohio border. 

At 9:03 a.m., air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane.

At 9:38 a.m., Wallace, standing beside his crash truck, saw Flight 77 out of the corner of his eye and heard a deafening roar as it screeched just feet above his head.

A wing clipped his crash truck, causing the back of it to explode in flames.

A millisecond later, the plane, filled with jet fuel, hurtled into the building a few dozen feet behind him at a speed estimated at around 400 mph, transforming the 270,000-pound mass of metal and humanity into white-hot shrapnel. The impact, penetration and burning fuel had catastrophic effects on the five floors and three outer rings in and around corridors 4 and 5 and the people who were inside.

A painting depicting a person diving below fire.
Fire Dive Painting
This painting is based on Alan Wallace’s account of the moments after American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Wallace runs for his life, dives next to a vehicle, and crawls under it briefly to protect himself from the fire, heat and debris.
Credit: Illustration by Mike Howard, DOD
VIRIN: 210802-D-ID864-001

Witnesses said the dark blue sky turned black with smoke.

Although nothing could have prepared Wallace for the horror and heroism he witnessed that day, Wallace had similar experiences in Vietnam.

His journey there, and later to the Pentagon, began Aug. 2, 1965, when he arrived at Naval Station Great Lakes, Illinois. Wallace became a sailor and received follow-on training as a hospital corpsman. He was later stationed at Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland for two years, then got orders for Vietnam.

On Christmas Day 1967, Wallace began working in the operating room at Naval Support Activity Station Hospital in Da Nang, South Vietnam.

On Jan. 31, 1968, the Tet Offensive began, and intense fighting took place in Da Nang. "It was rocket city," he said, noting that rockets and mortars caused damage and casualties at the hospital.

A flood of wounded arrived at the hospital in the ensuing days, weeks and months. "It was not uncommon to work 24 hours straight," he said. "We were so busy that, at one point, it was three days before anyone had a chance to eat. We were absolutely overwhelmed with wounded."

Looking back on his time there, he said, "I never felt more valuable in my life."

Wallace left Vietnam on New Year's Day 1969; on Feb. 2, 1970, he was discharged from the Navy, returning to his native Ohio to work a few years in a Columbus hospital. After that, he had plumbing and carpentry jobs before becoming a firefighter at the Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base near Columbus in 1981.

In 1993, Wallace accepted a job as a firefighter with the Fort Myer Fire Department in Virginia, which maintained a small fire station at the Pentagon.

On the morning of 9/11, Wallace was just feet from his crash truck, an Emergency One Titan 3000 that was parked about 10 feet from the Pentagon when the airplane struck. 

A painting of a plane approaching the Pentagon.
Watching Flight 77 Painting
This painting shows Alan Wallace near his firetruck as he sees American Airlines Flight 77 before it hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
Credit: Illustration by Mike Howard, DOD
VIRIN: 210802-D-ID864-004

Less than a minute after the plane struck, Wallace jumped inside the burning crash truck and tried to move it, but it wouldn't budge.

"That's a shame because I believe we could have made a difference in stopping the spread of the fire with the foam. But that obviously did not happen," he said.

Wallace then began assisting people as they escaped the building through broken windows on the first floor. 

A painting that shows a person helping a woman out of a window.
Window Escape Painting
This painting depicts Alan Wallace helping a woman escape the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, after Wallace realizes the firetruck and a nearby tree are on fire.
Credit: Illustration by Mike Howard, DOD
VIRIN: 210802-D-ID864-002

At one point, a woman jumped out of a window and landed on him, knocking him backward to the ground, he said.

After less than 10 minutes of helping people out, Wallace grabbed a breathing apparatus, lantern, and a 20-pound fire extinguisher from the crash truck and rushed through the smoke and into the building.

A painting showing a fireman kneeling outside of a burning building.
Flight 77 Painting
This painting shows where American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, and where Alan Wallace had parked his fire truck beforehand. After helping people get out of the building from the window, Wallace put on his gear and went inside. Here, he is kneeling.
Credit: Illustration by Mike Howard, DOD
VIRIN: 210802-D-ID864-003

"I was the first firefighter to go into the building. I had no idea what I was going to do with a damned, 20-pound Purple-K dry chemical fire extinguisher in a five-alarm fire," he said.

Inside, Wallace turned on the extinguisher. It made a loud noise, which caught the attention of a woman who was lost in the smoke and couldn't find her way outside, he said. She got out safely.

Wallace stayed and assisted until about noon before being transported to a hospital for treatment of first- and second-degree burns and a neck injury caused by the initial explosion and fireball.

A painting of a person with an injured arm sitting on a bench.
Man on Bench Painting
A painting of Alan Wallace later in the day on Sept. 11, 2001, sitting outside the Fort Myer Fire Station in his hospital gown after being treated for second-degree burns.
Credit: Illustration by Mike Howard, DOD
VIRIN: 210802-D-ID864-005

In October 2003, Wallace retired from the Fort Myer Fire Department. He now lives in Lithopolis, Ohio.

Reflecting back on 9/11, he said: "It's a miracle I wasn't killed in the explosion. I wasn't a hero. I was just an ordinary American doing his job."

On 9/11, 189 people were killed in the attack on the Pentagon, including 125 civilian and military personnel inside the building. Many others, including Wallace, were injured.

Artist's Statement

After interviewing firefighter Alan Wallace who was at the Pentagon on 9/11, Mike Howard, a Pentagon press officer, was inspired to recreate those moments in time in his personal artistic style. He wanted to tell the visual story of human spirit and patriotism in a life-threatening situation.

"From those conversations with Al, I imagined the emotions I would have felt had I been there with him as a photojournalist with my camera and the job of capturing those events in history. I created in my mind the images through my imaginary lenses. Then I drew these five images with my oil pastel sticks on 19"X24" pieces of paper as if they were photographs from what I saw," Howard said.

With more than 40 years' experience as a photographer, Howard uses an artistic style of traveling back in time to visit scenes as a photographer and draw rudimentary, primitive images with oil pastel sticks to tell stories that are out of bounds of the real camera.

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