Remember This Name

Remember the name of CAPT Jack Punches as well.

Trapped by Flames and Smoke in the Pentagon's C Ring, Jerry Henson Thought He Was Going to Die. Then a Man He'd Never Seen Before Performed an Awesome Feat.

By Tom Philpott

SOME MINUTES AFTER 9:30 AM, JERRY HENSON, HEAD OF a Navy office in the Pentagon, was talking on the phone, canceling a hotel reservation, but his eyes were glued to the television set mounted on the wall above the desk of his deputy, Jack Punches. On the screen, the networks kept replaying an incredible scene: a second airliner exploding into the World Trade Center.

Henson, 64, and Punches, 50--both retired naval aviators--led a seven-person staff that coordinated Navy efforts in counter-drug operations and emergency relief. Their offices, part of the Navy Command Center, were on the first floor in the middle ring--the C ring--of the Pentagon.

As they watched, Punches answered his telephone. "What's going on?" Janice Punches asked her husband.

"I don't know," he replied. "We're trying to find that out."

Neither Punches nor Henson could comprehend what they were seeing: a televised attack by airliners.

Henson continued talking on the phone. Standing beside his desk as the shocking scenes in New York were replayed, petty officers Christine Williams and Charles Lewis waited for guidance to revise travel orders. Suddenly there was a deafening roar. The world went black. It was 9:38 AM.