For David King, Sept. 11, 2001, started with perfect weather for his morning run in preparation for the Army Ten-Miler. The now-retired Army Special Forces major then reported to an Army G-8 office on the Pentagon’s first floor.

He was assigned to an office of seven people next to a recently renovated wedge of the building, and was among only a few still stationed in that portion of the Pentagon. On the morning of the attack, only three people were in his office.

While in his office, he heard on the news about the first plane that struck one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City.

“Of course, everybody just thought it was a fluke, (assuming) a Cessna ran into it,” he recalled.

But that, of course, wasn’t the case as a second plane hit another tower moments later.

Realizing this was an attack, he first reached out to his ex-wife in North Carolina, warning her to be on alert, and moments later got an email from a retired service member and friend working overseas who was hoping he had more information.

“I said, ‘Two strikes already. They don’t know what’s going on, but there’s other airplanes in the air, and actually, this is probably a target waiting to happen.’ And like 2 minutes later,” King said. “The whole place burst into flames.”

Everything around him was on fire, but not his small office. He believes what he described as safe-like filing cabinets and a support column protected him from the blast.

“At first, I thought it was a truck bomb. Then I realized when I smelled the jet fuel what it was, and I ran over to get to my sergeant, and never saw her. The ceiling collapsed, I was on the first floor, and the ceiling collapsed right at her desk,” he said.

He then tried to find the other person in his office at the time, his colonel, but he couldn’t find him either.

While not burned by the initial blast, he would receive severe burns in his search for his co-workers.

Seeing photos of his three sons, King realized he had to find a way out.

“My pants had started melding to me because they’re, you know, nylon pants, and dress, and so I got back there and I looked down, saw my pictures of my three boys and I went, I got to get the hell out of here,” he recalled.

A hole had been blown through a wall near him, giving him a possible way out, though he was unsure what was on the other side. He expected to enter another office, but instead found himself looking directly at the helipad. The blast had blown away all the walls in between.

As he made his way toward the helipad, he helped several people escape before hearing a Pentagon police officer he knew call out to him.

“He was yelling, ‘Hey, come to the light! Come to the light!’ And it wasn’t Elvis, so it wasn’t the light, so we walked down that way,” he said.

He would next find himself in a triage area, and his concern at that point was that he might go into shock because of his injuries, so he got the attention of a military member who was helping the wounded.

“He said, ‘Get on the stretcher now.’ An ambulance pulled up. They put me on the ambulance, and Ihere was somebody else in the ambulance, and we were the first two people to arrive at the Washington Hospital Center,” he recalled.

King suffered burns over 22% of his body. He said his head swelled from second-degree flash burns to his face and ears, and his skin remained “all crinkled and messed up for several weeks.” He spent about five weeks in the hospital recovering from his injuries.

“The nurses were just dynamite. The doctor was right there on top of me,” he recalled of his time at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.

King said all these years later, he still realizes how fortunate he was to have survived the attack. Of the three people in his office when the plane hit, he was the only survivor.

He said he still thinks of those who were killed, including Staff Sgt. Maudlyn White, whom he searched for but never found.

“Memorial Day, Veterans Day, go over there and visit, and I always go to Sgt. Maudlyn White’s grave. She’s buried over there in that 9/11 section,” he said.

King participates in 9/11 talks and attends events in the hope of keeping the memory of those who were lost alive, and also making sure what happened that day is not forgotten.

“I just wish people would not forget what happened and the evil that caused that,” he said.

Source