Never forget

The plane crashed in the E-ring of the Pentagon. Dotson was located 300 feet away from the crash.

Robert Dotson recalls witnessing Pentagon terrorist attack

It was business as usual for Robert Dotson on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

It was a beautiful late summer day in the nation’s capital. He had a meeting in the Pentagon the day before and was supposed to drop by for a follow-up meeting or analysis on that Tuesday morning.

Dotson was no stranger to the largest office building in Washington. He was a retired chief warrant officer in the U.S. Army and worked with the special operations division of Army Operations in the Pentagon from 1992 to June 2000. His wife also worked in the Pentagon.

“I was just catching up with old friends that morning in the coffee shop,” Dotson said. “It just seemed like a normal day.”

That all changed suddenly.

As Dotson rang the doorbell for the meeting, that’s when the explosion shook the building. The shock knocked Dotson on his back and smoke began to fill up the building.

“I said, ‘Oh, my god. They got us,’” Dotson said about his initial reactions. “I thought it was a bomb that had gone off.”

Little did they know at the time that American Airlines Flight 77, which took off from Dulles International Airport in Virginia, had been hijacked by terrorists and crashed into the E-ring, outermost ring, of the Pentagon. A total of 189 died in the attack.

Dotson was about 300 feet from the crash in the C-ring – or middle ring – of the building. However, Dotson and the four others that were in his group immediately wanted to see if they could rescue people before emergency personnel arrived on the scene.

“We could feel the heat and the smoke was very thick,” Dotson said. “It was so hot that it singed the beard of one of the guys in our group. Our white shirts had burn marks on them.”

Hartselle resident Robert Dotson remembers ringing this doorbell at the moment the plane hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. It was later mounted on a plaque and given to him to recognize his service during the search and rescue immediately following the terrorist attack in Washington, D.C. | Brent Maze

They went as far as they could until they turned around and evacuated to the inner courtyard of the Pentagon.

That was the first time that Dotson knew a plane had hit the Pentagon and heard about the hijacked planes and the attack on the World Trade Center. They also learned that another airplane could be heading to the Pentagon or the White House. That’s when the military dispatched fighter planes to protect the nation’s capital.

“We were vulnerable,” Dotson said. “No one knew what was going to happen next, but then I looked up … I saw the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.”

What he saw was an F-15 flying overhead and tipping his wings to acknowledge that he was covering for them.

“He was saying, ‘I got you,’” Dotson said. “I felt secure right then. I knew he was looking out for us from above.”

Dotson said much of the rest of the day is a blur as he and everyone at the Pentagon were all chipping in to help each other. They had make-shift emergency triage areas where they were trying to treat burns and other injuries.

It also took him about six hours before he could send a message to his wife, Janice, who was also working in Washington, D.C. that day.

“We probably did everything wrong that day,” she told the Hartselle Rotary Club. “I didn’t have his cell phone number. He didn’t have my number. All I knew is that he might contact my office in Huntsville.”

So she called her Huntsville office and asked them to answer her phone in case he or someone from his office tried to call.

About an hour later, he did.

“They called me back about an hour later and they said, ‘I think we’ve got the phone call you’ve been waiting on,’” Janice said.

However, the thing Robert chose to focus on is how the people came together for the common good.

“It was truly one of the greatest things I’ve ever witnessed,” Dotson said. “It didn’t matter who you were, what the color of your skin was or where you came from. We were all God’s children. That’s probably the best thing I’ve ever been a part of in my life.”