Commentary: Pentagon Reflections

Since then, I have served at the nation's military headquarters several times, and now I'm back yet again, albeit but briefly, as a reservist. But things have changed, and my beloved old building is no longer just a place that houses great professional and personal memories. It is now hallowed ground -- it is now also a battlefield.

Before Sept. 11, 2001, each corner I turned at the Pentagon and almost every corridor I walked reminded me of a co-worker's friendly smile, a joke shared with a friend, a pat on the back from an old boss, a tour of the building with my family. Now all of these memories are bookends holding up an unfinished book: Volume 9/11.

Last night, as I wrapped up my duties, something inexplicable pulled me outside and around to the west side of the building. Something tugged at me, forced me to reflect, and made me acknowledge the tragedy that happened there.

As I wandered closer to the area, the lump in my throat grew with each step I took. I paused and gazed from a distance at the spot where hatred had met humanity, where evil had ambushed innocence, and where patriots had died solely because they lived under the flag of freedom.

As I stood there and stared at the now-healed and well-manicured walls of the Pentagon, my own emotional walls started to heal as I finally allowed myself to embrace the horror that this ground bore witness to. The walls, barriers, defense mechanisms -- whatever label you want to apply; the emotional pillars I built to try to make sense of all of this incomprehensible madness -- now were dissolving like sand.

For two years after the attack I had watched the slow trickle of Guard and Reserve mobilizations turn into a deluge of citizen-soldiers scattered throughout the globe. Many have not seen their homes for more than a year. Our forefathers once left their homes, farms, shops, mills -- in short, their lives -- to defend this soil from tyranny from abroad. Today, we hunt tyrants abroad to keep them off our soil.

We are in the profession of arms, and our job is to close on the enemy and destroy it. But nothing in my nearly 19 years of service, even the 10 years I spent as an enlisted man with a rifle slung over my shoulder, prepared me for the horrific images of innocent people being murdered as they were on 9/11.

Children meeting a death that certainly did not intend to come for them for at least several more decades is something for which you cannot prepare. Somehow the words "children" and "death" don't belong in the same sentence. It is a perverse juxtaposition. It is even harder for me to imagine that the men who carried out these heinous acts were once children too, but they were. They laughed and played as children do. What spawned such hatred in them that caused them to grow up and become murderers?

Our presence in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, I think, fosters and nurtures compassion and humanity in children, instead of hatred. This is a consolation. Daily in my duties in public affairs, I see images from military photographers around the world: Iraqi children playing with soldiers, holding their hands, hugging them and sharing smiles with them. The blanket of fear that once chilled these children at night has been replaced by the warm security blanket of freedom. Good men and women are hunting the monsters under their beds and in their closets.

I continued to stare, and a cool fall breeze blew in from Arlington National Cemetery just across the road and stirred me to move along, nudging me with the rustling leaves -- seemingly guiding me away from the site. My mission was to provide public affairs support, but my journey was cathartic. Quietly, I walked away.

This is why I came back to the Pentagon -- not for an answer, or an epiphany, and certainly not for a resolution, but instead, maybe for hope and for reassurance. Absent of logic in such a malicious puzzle, I realized the only thing I can count on for certain is love -- love of family, love of humanity, and love of country. I headed for my hotel.

Later in the evening, my wife phoned and we talked mostly about my son. In the background, I could hear him cry. It was close to his bedtime, and his evening fussiness began as my wife and I chatted.

My absence has "thrown him off track," my wife says. In the evening I ordinarily help put him to sleep by reading him "Goodnight Moon," his favorite bedtime story. He's normally nodding off as the book nears the end, before I can whisper the line, "Goodnight, noises everywhere."

In a few weeks I'll be home. Just as he's getting used to my absence, I'll resurface and he'll have to readjust to my presence again. At least I'll be back, but for many, that's not the case.

On Sept. 11, many people boarded planes, drove to their offices, and went about the happy routines of their daily lives; and then, and then, and then, and then

Tonight I wonder, how did their wives, husbands, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, co-workers, and friends prevail through this tragedy? I have no answer.

Last night, after I talked with my wife and son, I thought a lot about those who died on Sept. 11, some whom I knew. I also thought about those who are dying each day -- so a father they don't even know can read his son a bedtime story, because somewhere, somebody is standing a post, hunting very bad people, and making this world a better and safer place.

Goodnight, noises everywhere.

(1st Lt. Steve Alvarez is an Army reservist working for DefendAmerica.mil.)