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The fireball occurred when the jetliner's
full fuel tank exploded on impact and roared down corridors so fast that "90%
didn't know what happened to them," he said.
Many were sitting at their desks or behind partitions.
One woman was found frozen in a sitting position, her arms posed as if reading
a document.
Several bodies were found huddled in groups near televisions.
Pentagon workers were apparently watching the carnage taking place at the World
Trade Center when the hellish scene on TV became reality for them, too.
When Williams discovered the scorched bodies of several
airline passengers, they were still strapped into their seats. The stench of
charred flesh overwhelmed him.
"It was the worst thing you can imagine," said Williams,
whose squad from Fort Belvoir, Va., entered the building, less than four hours
after the terrorist attack. "I wanted to cry from the minute I walked in. But
I have soldiers under me and I had to put my feelings aside."
The Pentagon said Thursday that an "initial, preliminary"
count found 126 military and civilian personnel were missing, in addition to
the 64 aboard the hijacked jetliner, American Airlines Flight 77, which was
en route from Washington to Los Angeles.
The missing include:
- Army. 74 soldiers, civilians and contractors, about half of them
women. An Army official said about 20 of the missing were assigned to the
office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, which took an almost direct
hit from the jetliner. Its director, Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude, 53, was the only
general or admiral unaccounted for in the attack.
- Navy. 42 sailors and civilians. They worked for a command center
that tracks ship movements, a space information warfare office, the naval
warfare staff and the deputy chief of naval operations for plans, policy and
operations.
- Others. 10 defense agency employees, among them, according to a Pentagon
official, seven from the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The Air Force and Marines reported no missing personnel.
As of Thursday morning, search teams had recovered 70 bodies.
The remains were being carried by helicopter to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware
to be identified.
William's seven-man squad from the Military District of
Washington's combat engineer company at Fort Belvoir was there to work alongside
nearly 250 civil search-and-rescue crews from Maryland, Virginia and Tennessee
to find survivors in the rubble. After the first few hours, there were none.
"You always hope to find survivors," said Sgt. Aaron Oakes,
22. "But when you see it, then reality sets in."
Their recovery effort paused for about an hour near dawn
Thursday when teams were evacuated following a bomb threat. The threat turned
out to be unfounded and work resumed as Pentagon employees streamed in for the
first nearly normal day of work since the attack.
Williams and his soldiers emerged from the cordoned-off
recovery area to talk to a USA TODAY reporter. Wearing black cotton jumpsuits,
soot-covered boots and helmets with flashlights, the men looked tired but wanted
to share what they had seen.
Williams said they first entered the building at 1 p.m.
ET Tuesday. At first, they could stay only 20 minutes at a time in the 120-degree
heat amid smoldering metal debris too hot to touch. Eventually, working under
halogen lights, they managed to shore up the unstable structure with wooden
beams. They did not want to share the deadly fate of hundreds of rescuers in
New York buried when the World Trade Center collapsed Tuesday.
Using handsaws to cut through concrete-and-metal debris,
they moved methodically from room to room to make sure no area was missed. Within
minutes, they came upon three victims.
Members of Congress who toured the site Thursday said rescue
officials reported that much of the fuselage of the hijacked airplane remains
intact in the ruins.
By the time the sun rose Thursday, the "senseless murdering"
of Tuesday's unprecedented attack and the grim work of recovering its victims
had "taken a great toll on me emotionally," Williams said. It was one thing
to recover the remains of enemies in shelled-out buildings in Bosnia, where
he had served as a peacekeeper. But this was different.
"There is somebody in there who I knew," Williams said
quietly. The victim was the husband of one of Williams' co-workers, a senior
enlisted soldier who worked right near the point of impact and is almost certainly
among the dead.
Yet, as he looked up into the black chasm torn into the
symbol of the mightiest military on earth, Williams saw a sign of hope.
On a second floor, right next to where the jet sheared
off a section of the building, was an undisturbed stool. And on it was a thick,
open book. Fellow searchers who had gotten a close look said it was a Bible.
It was not burned. Nor was anything around it or on the two floors above it.
"I'm not as religious as some, but that would have me thinking,"
the soldier said. "I just can't explain it."
Contributing: Dave Moniz
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