Just finished watching a excellent show called 9/11: The Lost Hero about Marine Corps Sgt. Jason Thomas who, along with Staff Sgt. David Karnes, found two survivors of the collapse of tower 1 during 9/11.
The tale of the policemen, the only survivors of the buildings’ collapse to be found more than a few minutes after it ended, has been told many times, but always with one key component missing: The identity of a mysterious U.S. Marine sergeant who found them in an unauthorized search late the night of September 11 after police and firemen were ordered out of the unstable ruins.
Nobody knew who the Marine was, what he was doing there, or what happened to him. As one of the rescued cops, Will Jimeno, says in The Lost Hero: “He just went off into the woods afterwards and went about his business.” Port Authority detectives searched for him for years without finding even a trace, and increasingly the sergeant was relegated to urban myth status, omitted from many accounts of the rescue. Reporters mostly made heroes out of the medics who treated the cops—who all could be identified and interviewed—and simply snipped out the troublesome dangling thread of who located them in the dark, smoldering wreckage.
The full episode can be seen here:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taHrjGLFOyk[/youtube]
It’ll cost you $1.99 to watch it but well worth it. Or try to record it via your service provider.
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