It is hard to cite any one person here since there were many. Most of their actions have gone ignored, primarily for the reason that they were military and therefore people expect them to act this way. These people bravely charged in and out of a burning building to rescue people and were only stopped when sufficient numbers of civilian first responders could physically restrain them. One name that does spur controversy from this day is Donald Rumsfield. Most people don't realize he was at the Pentagon that morning and he did indeed help get some of the wounded out, and there are pictures of him assisting in the moving of one victim who had died.
Lt. Col. Ted Anderson carried two of the injured away from the burning building. Then he re-entered the smoke-filled Pentagon through a broken window to drag out two more injured employees, one whose clothes were on fire.
Anderson kicked open an interior door and with the help of two others, carried a heavy woman out of the building and boosted her through the broken window. Then back inside a dark corridor, Anderson said he saw a flash go by and realized a man's clothes were on fire. He tackled the employee and rolled him on the ground to extinguish the flames.
After helping the burn victim out through the window, Anderson turned to go back in again, but was stopped by two firemen who grabbed his shoulders and struggled to keep him from returning into the flames that had ignited from the jet fuel. Anderson said he was upset with the firemen for not letting him go back.
Spc. Beau Doboszenski also helped provide first aid to the injured immediately following the plane crash.
A soldier with B. Co., 3rd U.S. Infantry, Doboszenski had been trained as an emergency medical technician before joining the Army. He served as a volunteer firefighter and EMT in Loretto, Minn., before enlisting.
"I come from a family of fire fighters," Doboszenski said.
Doboszenski was working in the Pentagon as a tour guide the morning the aircraft struck the building. The Tour Guide office is on the opposite end of the building from where the plane hit, so Doboszenski didn't even hear the explosion. But he heard a Navy captain screaming for anyone with medical training.
Doboszenski ran around the building, was stopped by police, so he went around barricades and ran down the George-Washington Parkway. He reached Pentagon North Parking where medics from the health clinic were beginning to perform triage on victims of the blast and fire. He joined in to help.
He treated a woman who was having trouble breathing and placed a tube down her throat. Then he helped load the woman and about 20 others who were injured into automobiles so they could be taken to a nearby hospital.
Doboszenski then went with a six-man team into the building where the fire was still blazing. They placed doused rags around their faces and spent an hour in calf-deep water searching for survivors.
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