PEGGY NOONAN

Courage Under Fire
The 21st century's first war heroes.

Friday, October 5, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT

Forgive me. I'm going to return to a story that has been well documented the past few weeks, and I ask your indulgence. So much has been happening, there are so many things to say, and yet my mind will not leave one thing: the firemen, and what they did.

Although their heroism has been widely celebrated, I don't think we have quite gotten its meaning, or fully apprehended its dimensions. But what they did that day, on Sept. 11--what the firemen who took those stairs and entered those buildings did--was to enter American history, and Western history. They gave us the kind of story you tell your grandchildren about. I don't think I'll ever get over it, and I don't think my city will either.

What they did is not a part of the story but the heart of the story

Here in my neighborhood in the East 90s many of us now know the names of our firemen and the location of our firehouse. We know how many men we lost (eight). We bring food and gifts and checks and books to the firehouse, we sign big valentines of love, and yet of course none of it is enough or will ever be enough.

Every day our two great tabloids list the memorials and wakes and funeral services. They do reports: Yesterday at a fireman's funeral they played "Stairway to Heaven." These were the funerals for yesterday:

Captain Terence Hatton, of Rescue 1--the elite unit that was among the first at the Towers--at 10 a.m. at Saint Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue.

Lt Timothy Higgins of Special Operations at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church, on Portion Road in Lake Ronkonkoma, out in Long Island.

Firefighter Ruben Correa of Engine 74 at Holy Trinity Catholic Church on West 82nd Street, in Manhattan.

Firefighter Douglas Miller of Rescue 5, at St Joseph's Church on Avenue F in Matamoras, Pa.

Firefighter Mark Whitford of Engine 23, at St Mary's Church on Goshen Avenue in Washingtonville, N.Y.

Firefighter Neil Leavy of Engine 217 at Our Lady Queen of Peace, on New Dorp Lane in Staten Island.

Firefighter John Heffernan of Ladder 11 at Saint Camillus Church in Rockaway, Queens.

And every day our tabloids run wallet-size pictures of the firemen, with little capsule bios. Firefighter Stephen Siller of Squad 1, for instance, is survived by wife, Sarah, daughters Katherine, Olivia and Genevieve and sons Jake and Stephen, and by brothers Russell, George and Frank, and sisters Mary, Janice and Virginia.

What the papers are doing--showing you that the fireman had a name and the name had a face and the face had a life--is good. But it of course it is not enough, it can never be enough.

We all of course know the central fact: There were two big buildings and there were 5,000-plus people and it was 8:48 in the morning on a brilliant blue day. And then 45 minutes later the people and the buildings were gone. They just went away. As I write this almost three weeks later, I actually think: That couldn't be true. But it's true. That is pretty much where New Yorkers are in the grieving process: "That couldn't be true. It's true." Five thousand dead! "That couldn't be true. It's true." And more than 300 firemen dead.

Three hundred firemen. This is the part that reorders your mind when you think of it. For most of the 5,000 dead were there--they just happened to be there, in the buildings, at their desks or selling coffee or returning e-mail. But the 300 didn't happen to be there, they went there. In the now-famous phrase, they ran into the burning building and not out of the burning building. They ran up the stairs, not down, they went into it and not out of it. They didn't flee, they charged. It was just before 9 a.m. and the shift was changing, but the outgoing shift raced to the towers and the incoming shift raced with them. That's one reason so many were there so quickly, and the losses were so heavy. Because no one went home. They all came.

And one after another they slapped on their gear and ran up the stairs. They did this to save lives. Of all the numbers we've learned since Sept. 11, we don't know and will probably never know how many people that day were saved from the flames and collapse. But the number that has been bandied about is 20,000--20,000 who lived because they thought quickly or were lucky or prayed hard or met up with (were carried by, comforted by, dragged by) a fireman.

I say fireman and not "firefighter." We're all supposed to say firefighter, but they were all men, great men, and fireman is a good word. Firemen put out fires and save people, they take people who can't walk and sling them over their shoulders like a sack of potatoes and take them to safety. That's what they do for a living. You think to yourself: Do we pay them enough? You realize: We couldn't possibly pay them enough. And in any case a career like that is not about money.

I'm still not getting to the thing I want to say.

It's that what the New York Fire Department did--what those men did on that brilliant blue day in September--was like D-Day. It was daring and brilliant and brave, and the fact of it--the fact that they did it, charging into harm's way--changed the world we live in. They brought love into a story about hate--for only love will make you enter fire. Talk about your Greatest Generation--the greatest generation is the greatest pieces of any generation, and right now that is: them.

So it was like D-Day, but it was also like the charge of the Light Brigade. Into the tower of death strode the three hundred. And though we continue to need reporters to tell us all the facts, to find out the stories of what the firemen did in those towers, and though reporters have done a wonderful, profoundly appreciative job of that, what we need most now is different.

We need a poet. We need a writer of ballads and song to capture what happened there as the big men in big black rubber coats and big boots and hard peaked hats lugged 50 and 100 pounds of gear up into the horror and heat, charging upward, going up so sure, calm and fast--so humorously, some of them, cracking mild jokes--that some of the people on the stairwell next to them, going down, trying to escape, couldn't help but stop and turn and say, "Thank you," and "Be careful, son," and some of them took pictures. I have one. On the day after the horror, when the first photos of what happened inside the towers were posted on the Internet, I went to them. And one was so eloquent--a black-and-white picture that was almost a blur: a big, black-clad back heading upward in the dark, and on his back, in shaky double-vision letters because the person taking the picture was shaking, it said "Byrne."

Just Byrne. But it suggested to me a world. An Irish kid from Brooklyn, where a lot of the Byrnes settled when they arrived in America. Now he lives maybe on Long Island, in Massapequa or Huntington. Maybe third-generation American, maybe in his 30s, grew up in the '70s when America was getting crazy, but became what his father might have been, maybe was: a fireman. I printed copies of the picture, and my brother found the fireman's face and first name in the paper. His name was Patrick Byrne. He was among the missing. Patrick Byrne was my grandfather's name, and is my cousin's name. I showed it to my son and said, "Never forget this--ever."

The Light Brigade had Tennyson. It was the middle of the Crimean War and the best of the British light cavalry charged on open terrain in the Battle of Balaclava. Of the 600 men who went in, almost half were killed or wounded, and when England's poet laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson, learned of it, he turned it into one of the most famous poems of a day when poems were famous:

Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd:
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

I don't think young people are taught that poem anymore; it's martial and patriarchal, and even if it weren't it's cornball. But then, if a Hollywood screenwriter five weeks ago wrote a story in which buildings came down and 300 firemen sacrificed their lives to save others, the men at the studios would say: Nah, too cornball. That couldn't be true. But it's true.

Brave men do brave things. After Sept. 11 a friend of mine said something that startled me with its simple truth. He said, "Everyone died as the person they were." I shook my head. He said, "Everyone died who they were. A guy who ran down quicker than everyone and didn't help anyone--that was him. The guy who ran to get the old lady and was hit by debris--that's who he was. They all died who they were."

Who were the firemen? The Christian scholar and author Os Guinness said the other night in Manhattan that horror and tragedy crack open the human heart and force the beauty out. It is in terrible times that people with great goodness inside become most themselves. "The real mystery," he added, "is not the mystery of evil but the mystery of goodness." Maybe it's because of that mystery that firemen themselves usually can't tell you why they do what they do. "It's the job," they say, and it is, and it is more than that.

So: The firemen were rough repositories of grace. They were the goodness that comes out when society is cracked open. They were responsible. They took responsibility under conditions of chaos. They did their job under heavy fire, stood their ground, claimed new ground, moved forward like soldiers against the enemy. They charged.

There is another great poet and another great charge, Pickett's charge, at Gettysburg. The poet, playwright and historian Stephen Vincent Benet wrote of Pickett and his men in his great poetic epic of the Civil War, "John Brown's Body":

There was a death-torn mile of broken ground to cross,
And a low stone wall at the end, and behind it the Second Corps,
And behind that force another, fresh men who had not fought.
They started to cross that ground. The guns began to tear them.
From the hills they say that it seemed more like a sea than a wave,
A sea continually torn by stones flung out of the sky,
And yet, as it came, still closing, closing, and rolling on,
As the moving sea closes over the flaws and rips of the tide.

But the men would not stop:
You could mark the path that they took by the dead that they left behind, . . .
And yet they came on unceasing, the fifteen thousand no more,
And the blue Virginia flag did not fall, did not fall, did not fall.

The center line held to the end, he wrote, and didn't break until it wasn't there anymore.

The firemen were like that. And like the soldiers of old, from Pickett's men through D-Day, they gave us a moment in history that has left us speechless with gratitude and amazement, and maybe relief, too. We still make men like that. We're still making their kind. Then that must be who we are.

We are entering an epic struggle, and the firemen gave us a great gift when they gave us this knowledge that day. They changed a great deal by being who they were.

They deserve a poet, and a poem. At the very least a monument. I enjoy the talk about building it bigger, higher, better and maybe we'll do that. But I'm one of those who thinks: Make it a memory. The pieces of the towers that are left, that still stand, look like pieces of a cathedral. Keep some of it. Make it part of a memorial. And at the center of it--not a part of it but at the heart of it--bronze statues of firemen looking up with awe and resolution at what they faced. And have them grabbing their helmets and gear as if they were running toward it, as if they are running in.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Her new book, "When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan," will be published by Viking Penguin this fall. Her column appears Fridays.

They Answered the Call
Tim Bryant - Watauga, Texas

I could not agree more. These men heard the call to battle, and ran to the sound of the guns. No unit in our military (or anyone else's) can say any more than that. God has blessed our nation with such men, and I salute them.

It Was Byrne That Got Me
Paul Rankin - Lincoln, Neb.

When I reached the point in your article about Patrick Byrne, I actually began to cry. Your picture of his life, his history, taken only from a name, and your admonition to your son never to forget his life, was as good as any poetry. Thank you.

I Hope I Would Climb the Stairs
Ab Jones - Roanoke, Va.

Your friend's comment "Everyone died who they were" is profound. My father went "up the stairs" in WW II and survived Iwo Jima that defined "who he was and is" to me. I hope that if I am ever put in harms way that I by the grace of God will go "up the stairs." Thank you for an inspiring article.

First Battle Dead
Chris English - Chicago

Great article. I agree with the idea of a monument in New York City. I have another suggestion as well. Since I also believe that these brave men are the 1st War Heroes of the 21st Century how about a monument to them at Arlington National Cemetery. It strikes me as ironic that forensics have almost guaranteed that all battlefield dead will be identified today. Some of these firemen never will be.

Talk About Reaching Out and Touching Someone
Miranda Devine - Sydney, Australia

You wrote so beautifully about the firemen, it made me cry here in Sydney. I am awestruck by your talent. You have done those men proud. Congratulations.

I Didn't Know Words Could Say So Much
C.H. Ross - Nashville, Tenn.

One bare hour ago I would have said that the praising of these men, though peremptorily necessary, was impossible--that in their glory they were inaccessible to us, that the best of us could do no more than stand mute and trembling in tears.

And now? Now I think inescapably of that other man at Gettysburg, who said: "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." Those words should have been true, but the great soul of the speaker made them an everlastingly beautiful lie. And you have done likewise.

Yours is the most fitting gift to their memories: unadorned words of beauty and grace, offered from the heart in awe, reverence and gratitude, perfectly capturing the invincible honor of the country, the city, and the people for whom they died. In so doing you have earned the prize of your own phrase: as you are, so you have given. Thanks be to God for their lives, and yours.

And the Retired Too
Michiel van der Voort - New York

Wonderful Ms. Noonan but let's make sure we include the retired firemen, employees of various firms that happened to have EMS training that were in the buildings and even two blocks away at their desks who raced in and helped. We will indeed never know the true level of their heroism.

Thank you Peggy Noonan.

They Did a 'John Wayne'
W.L. Peavy - Houston, Texas

John Wayne would have understood these firemen. In the military, when someone does something heroic, he's said to have "done a John Wayne." John Wayne was an icon for heroism. He'd have understood. He'd have honored them but not gaudily. He'd probably say something like "Make sure their kids know how brave their dads were. Make sure every kid knows how brave those men were. We owe it to them."

I Know Heroes
Scott Lyons - Diamondhead, Miss.

I've been in the Navy for over 20 years and have served beside heroes in war. Ms. Noonan comes the closest to enabling one to visualize what these heroic fireman did. They ran in. Thanks Peggy Noonan for a powerful article, a written tribute to heroes, a personalization of who they were.

The Making of a Poet
Joy Loth - Houston, Texas

When I viewed the gaping remains of the Morrow Building after the Oklahoma City bombing, and not so much later, those spires rising above the smoking refuse of the World Trade Center, I felt that out of the horror, the monuments to the dead had risen from the remains. Somehow, there was a symmetry which was evocative of life rather than death.

After the last vestiges of the Morrow Building had been removed, I visited the site. The only evidence which remained was a grassy field, a crumbling wall, and a fence that seemed to stretch on forever. Visitors had poked stuffed toys, flowers, poems, something of themselves into the wire as tributes.

There among these humble gifts was a finely honed piece of wood on which a pair of burned and tattered, heavy gloves were attached. I was told they were from a fireman who had hurried in from out of state to do his part in the rescue.

He had burned into his plaque, with one of those kits that boys used to get as gifts when I was a child, his message to the victims. "I wish that I could have done more." Sometimes people become poets and artists after taking part in great tragedy.

And She Comes Roaring Back
Scott Williams - Columbus, Ohio

I begin each day by quickly reading OpinionJournal. I look forward to these few quiet moments of thought before the day starts. Friday is the best day because that is the day for Peggy Noonan's column. (Although I am anxiously awaiting her new book, her absence from Opinion Journal has been hard on her readers).

Today is Friday, but it is different. Ms. Noonan's column has returned. But she has done more than just return. Today I read her words with watery eyes. No one else could give meaning to the bravery and sacrifices of the heroic firemen as she has done today. I will show her column to my children and tell them that this is what makes a real man--not the career and professional successes that we all chase, not the athletic achievements that seem so important at the time.

What is truly important is the willingness to serve, to help, to take responsibility and the understanding that doing these things may require personal sacrifices. The idea that the victims of this tragedy died as the people that they truly were is chilling. It makes each of us pause and ask ourselves just what we are and what we would be. Thank you Ms. Noonan for many enjoyable Friday mornings, but my true thanks and debt go to you for your words and thoughts today. I trust that those who lead the efforts to memorialize these brave men will realize that displaying today's column is the way to show future generations what great men did and sacrificed on that day.

They Weren't Play Hero on TV
Marian Booker - Conroe, Texas

I have been distressed for some time about the cheapening of the word "hero," especially when used to define an overpaid, poorly-behaved, pampered prima donna basketball or football player, or especially an actor (I'm not a real hero, but I play one on TV). Some of those people may actually be humanitarians, donating a part of their wealth and time to causes, to help those less fortunate. But none of them lives in a 1,500 square foot apartment or tract house with an aging car in the driveway and a family to feed, nor would they donate their wealth until it hurt.

Ms. Noonan continues to help bring the true definition of the word back to those who deserve that description, average Joes who struggle to make ends meet, but still find in themselves the spark of greatness that bursts into the flame of heroism when the need arises. The firemen all knew that this day might come, but did not choose accountancy or engineering to escape that possibility.

Like another responder, I am profoundly grateful that several guys who did choose another profession, who were on a flight over Pennsylvania, decided to act like firemen in the last few minutes of their lives. Maybe the example of all these people will remind us that Americans have their faults, but when pressed into duty, have before and will again save the world.

Our Heroes Carried the Day
David Dwyer - San Antonio, Texas

A lovely sentiment, Ms. Noonan; but unlike the Light Brigade or Pickett's Division, the firefighters of New York did not fail in their charge. They carried the day and as you point out saved over 20,000 lives.

To Be a Man
Euclid Black - Las Vegas

Incredible article, I cried, stopping to clear my eyes before I could go on. I was proud to be an American, a man and not the least a witness from the New Jersey shore that fateful day. I watched without knowing that such heroism was unfolding and to this day wonder that such beautiful bravery isn't seen as the essence of what being a man is really all about.

There Were Others
Wesley Riggs - Merriam, Kan.

I hesitate to diminish such a fine article with a hint of criticism, but weren't there many police officers who charged in as well? I am sure there were some women among the rescuers, even if the firemen were all male as you wrote. It was a superb article, though.

America's Heroes
Michael J. Morris - Carrollton, Va.

Straight to the heart! I was unable to get through this with dry eyes. There were surly similar heroes on Flight 93. We may doubtless never know the details of their courage, but it was courage just as surly taken from the same source. May God bless them all!

Thanks for Noticing
Margaret Whitcomb - Salem, Ore.

Before, we complained that Americans no longer had heroes.
We have heroes, always have, now we're noticing. Thank you, Ms. Noonan. I'm grateful that you've put our feelings into these eloquent words.

Let's Hear It for City Employees
Andre Radnoti - Los Angeles

I'm glad city employees are finally getting some praise for a job that they do everyday. Before Sept. 11 city employees and there departments were either derided or neglected with budget cuts. Here in Los Angeles, both the fire and police departments need major investments in communications and other hardware, as well as, increases in personal and pay. In the past, important city departments took a backseat to fulfill tax cut policies of politicians and their constituents.

Most people call the fireman heroes but they only did their duty. Fire and policeman risk there lives everyday. The only difference between Sept. 11 and other days was the magnitude of the situation and its cause. Many city departments can look forward to budget cuts as sources of revenues shrink. Hopefully, the enthusiasm generated by the fireman will remind some people of the importance of tax policy, revenues and its relation to the proper funding of important government services.

Poetic Prose
Katherine Cook - Atlanta

How appropriate that Ms Noonan should call for a poet to pen praise for the brave firemen of New York. But her beautiful piece today would qualify as just that. Well done, Ms. Noonan, well done.

Damn Judges
Gene Anderson - Danville, Calif.

I was very touched by your article. I am a retired Battalion Chief from the San Francisco Fire Department. The FDNY is the best. My admiration before, during and after the evil 11th is impossible to express fully. The before was their fight to prevent the lowering of standards by the courts (ours was Judge Patel) to accommodate the women. The during was in the highest traditions of the service, I have seen heroism but never any as great. The after was the bone weary, mind numbing, hard nosed rescue efforts that required stamina and strength. The standards that were established many years ago were for a reason, and we all saw on live television the reason. I hope all of the "out of control" Federal judges who would lower the standards for politically correct reason will have second thoughts.

New York's Finest
Russ Emerson - Apex, N.C.

Once again, Peggy Noonan has validated the opinion I've held since I began reading her work. She (along with Tony Snow) is the finest writer in journalism today.

The bravery of these firemen (and police) while facing imminent death is hard to fully grasp, perhaps because it is rarely so well documented, yet face it they did--even to the point of many receiving last rites before going into the towers.

They knew what they were up against, what they risked; yet they ran into the fire knowing of their own peril and regardless of their own fears. That is the definition of courage.

Thank you, Peggy, for your superior work, and for so eloquently writing that which the rest of us wish we knew how to say about New York's (and America's) bravest

There Are Heroes After All
Mark Malone - Sarasota, Fla.

Somewhere along the way, Hollywood and the intellectual types redefined the word hero to include any craven individual who protests for a political issue they favor. As a result, animal-rights activists now become freedom fighters, simply because they break into labs, destroy stuff and release rodents from their cages. With people like these, it's no wonder average Americans like myself think that "real heroes" don't exist anymore.

Peggy Noonan's column about the New York Firemen clearly showed me two great things. First, real heroes do exist. Firemen work in just about every town and neighborhood, and they would risk their own life to save mine. And second, putting our heroes beside these awful terrorists (and their sympathizers and apologists) makes me realize what an epic struggle that exists between good and evil.

All that's left now is to ask what us average Americans can do to help strengthen the hand of the good guys.

'Just Doing His Job'
Carolyn C. Delmar - Missouri City, Texas

I have been married for 24 years to a fireman and now our 22-year-old son has followed his dad and grandfather in what I consider to be the most noblest of professions. I have watched my husband charge into a burning building more than once; I have seen him breathe life into an unconscious child. He would tell you he was "just doing his job." I await the time I witness my son performing the same courageous acts as he "just does his job."

'Let's Roll!'
Jim McDonnell - Baton Rouge, La.

The firefighters and all the other emergency response people at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 deserve more praise than they can possibly be given, but the first heroes of this war would have to be the guys who took down that doomed flight over Pennsylvania. "Let's Roll" should be the signal for the start of operations in Afghanistan.

Well Donne
Alice Felt - Walla Walla, Wash.

What a very moving tribute to men whose faces we very seldom see, hidden behind masks and uniforms, but who are always there waiting now and over the years to assist when needed. On Sept. 11 we saw the risk they are willing to take and now we see some of their faces. Was is John Donne who wrote centuries ago that "no man is an island, entire of itself . . . that each man's death diminishes me because I am a part of mankind." I'm not sure I have that right but I wonder if that is how these firemen felt, a connection and duty towards the victims they tried to save because they and we are all a part of mankind.

The Right Side Won
Jim Nelson - Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Ms. Noonan's tribute is ruined by bringing up Pickett's charge. Whether your actions are praiseworthy or not depends on what you're fighting for, and fighting to maintain slavery is nothing at all like rescuing people from disaster.

The Right Side Won
Jim Nelson - Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

My Father, the Fireman

Raymond G. Riesterer - Romeoville, Ill.
I am a 51-year-old man who read your column through misting eyes. The father of my brothers and sisters and me, the husband of our mother, was a fireman who lost his life in the line of duty in a Detroit suburb over 25 years ago.

The loss of one fireman is a tragedy. The loss of 10, as suffered in Massachusetts a few years ago, is a calamity. The loss of 300, even for the FDNY, is a horrific loss.

I was planning to treat the character of these men in a book that I am working on, but I'd like to share what I have written with you. "If greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for his friends, what can be said of a man who would lay down his life daily for strangers? You say that firefighters are well-paid for their trouble, but there really isn't enough money to pay these people for what they do. You don't believe it? Put on the turnout gear and ride the engines with these men. Fight the enemy who has no scruples, just appetite. See if you are big enough. And then come back to work on the next day."

Thanks for all of your good work.

They're Heroes
Shelley Taylor - Tucson, Ariz.

Almost every day I pass the fire station near our home. The flag is still at half staff to honor those heroes Ms. Noonan describes in her excellent article. I am sure that each fireman in America hopes that he would act as honorably as the ones that responded to the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept.11. They died so that others could live.

When my sons were small, each in their turn wanted to grow up and become a fireman. Now they are grown and they are an engineer, an accountant, a food scientist and a college student studying range management. I would be very proud if they had followed those dreams of years ago and if at least one of them had become a fireman. Heroes are made at those fire stations.