Army Staff Sgt. Peter Rosie with the 1st Infantry Division pulls
security duty during his unit's deployment to Iraq in 2009. Rosie
had served as a civilian paramedic with the New York City Fire
Department during 9/11. Courtesy photo |
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FORT RILEY, Kan., Sept. 7, 2011 – A decade ago, then-paramedic Peter
Rosie was on his day off hanging around his apartment in New York
City.
Rosie was in his eighth year with the New York City
Fire Department, where he served the residents of the Harlem
community. A phone call from his girlfriend instructing him to turn
on the television caused Rosie to spring into action.
"I saw
the first plane hit [the North Tower] on the TV. We had a small TV
so you couldn't make out the magnitude of it," Rosie recalled. "All
I had to do was walk one flight to the roof, and then I saw the
second [plane] hit in front of me. My first thought was, 'I better
go to work.'"
Today Rosie is an Army staff sergeant serving
here with the 1st Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 4th Cavalry
Regiment. On Sept. 11, 2001, he experienced the horror of the
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center's Twin Towers.
Rosie is native of Scotland who'd previously served in the U.S.
Army and later with the British Army before joining the New York
City Fire Department. On 9/11, he hopped on his son's bicycle to
report to Bellevue Hospital Center. Throughout the following
Weeks, the facility would be one of New York's busiest centers to
treat the wounded and later assist with identifying the deceased. |
Within 10 minutes Rosie was handed a two-way radio and
assigned to a partner and an ambulance for assistance at the
World Trade Center.
"They threw a radio at me and
said 'Here's your partner' and we started going down [to the
WTC]," he said. "All I knew was it was bad."
He would
soon be a first-hand witness to the sheer magnitude and
danger of the day's tragic events when his ambulance began
to arrive on the scene just as the South Tower [the first of
the two towers to collapse] began to fall and nearly struck
his vehicle.
"We were driving into it as it was
coming down. We're talking seconds,” he said “If we had been
a little bit earlier -- goner. Then, it just went black."
Rosie recalled that the closer they traveled to what is
now known as "ground zero," the harder it became to keep
their bearings due to the amount of smoke and falling
debris. The first patients he assisted included a police
officer suffering from a heart attack and another person
who'd lost a limb.
"It was that first transport that
was the worst," he said. "We backed up into Bellevue and
there's just a sea of scrubs, just people waiting.”
When Rosie returned to the site, the second tower had also
collapsed and he recalled how first responders were still
attempting to establish a command post and a means of
communications between emergency personnel.
"By that
point, no one knew what was going on,” he said. “We were
hearing and getting all kinds of information. At one point
we thought the Holland Tunnel was blown up."
Rosie
recalls he functioned on “auto-pilot” the rest of the day
and ensuing night, with numerous patient transports to the
hospital and treating patients' respiratory distress and eye
injuries.
He recalled that smoke would continue to
rise from the site for weeks and by then emergency crews had
switched from rescue missions to recovery missions to
retrieve the deceased from the debris.
For the
following year when Rosie wasn't on his scheduled shift at
the fire department, he would be found volunteering for
recovery missions at ground zero.
"For the next year
if I wasn't working at Harlem, then I was working down at
ground zero," he said. "There was a lot of camaraderie. It
was good, but tiring.”
There were 343 New York City
firefighters who'd lost their lives on 9/11, Rosie said. His
experiences during 9/11 in New York City caused Rosie to
eventually rejoin the U.S. military.
"I knew that
everything had changed,” Rosie said, “and I wanted to go
back into the Army."
Unfortunately, Rosie's age was
working against him. He was over the Army's maximum
enlistment age. However, as though fate granted his wish,
the policy was temporarily changed. Rosie again donned a
U.S. Army uniform after nearly 26 years.
"I guess
they were getting hard up and taking old men," he chuckled.
Four years later, Rosie finds himself assigned to the
historic 'Big Red One' here, preparing to embark on his
third deployment with the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team.
"I thought I had bit off a little more than I could chew
initially. But I persisted and I ended up doing real well,"
Rosie said of his success in achieving the rank of staff
sergeant after returning to the Army as a specialist.
Rosie visited New York this July. The trip, he said,
marked the first time he'd returned to the city since
re-enlisting in the Army.
"I don't think about Sept.
11 too much,” he said. “I'm not sure if it's some sort of
coping mechanism, but I think it's why I never went back to
New York [before].”
By Stephanie Hoff, 1st Infantry Division
American Forces Press Service
Copyright 2011
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