One Last Thought
Gordon MacDonald
October 1, 2001
Sunday after the World Trade Center attack, Gail and I spoke to 200 Salvation Army officers and cadets in New York. Then two officers took us downtown.
Our first view of Manhattan came as we passed over the George Washington Bridge. The World Trade Center was missing. For those of us who pride ourselves in being full-time or part-time New Yorkers, who know what it's like to get up each morning and look to see if the Towers are visible or in the clouds, it was the first of many shocks.
We drove down the West Side Highway, passing through checkpoint after checkpoint with our special credentials. The Salvation Army insignia is pure gold.
We parked and walked and then, suddenly, there was Ground Zero, six square blocks of twisted rubble, 110 floors of two imploded buildings, and their entire volume is less than two stories high. It is like a gigantic European plaza with open sky. But each building surrounding the plaza is lifeless, every window (and often the façade) gone.
Then you notice the workmen, several thousand, like ants crawling over the pile, in bucket brigades of a hundred or more in a line. When I asked why such a primitive form of rubbish removal, I was told that it was the only way to get at bodies.
An unbroken line of workers was arriving, like soldiers to the front in a war. Each carried some kind of tool: a shovel, a pickax, electronic equipment. Another line, just as fascinating but far more disturbing, was coming out. Men exhausted, filthy, hardly able to walk.
We joined a small team of SA people at a nearby canteen, just feet away from the crater. Gail immediately set about to organize supplies because they were in disarray. My place was with the workmen.
I simply stepped out as the lines moved by and started saying, ...
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