Wiregrass men some of first responders to 9/11 attacks

It is 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, more than 10 hours after the first attack on the World Trade Center.

Shock has turned to anger for most of the nation’s citizens as families gather around the dinner table and parents try to explain to their children what has happened.

Wiregrass residents Johnny Littlefield and Wayne Gulledge do not have that luxury. They are part of a convoy leaving from Mobile, headed to Ground Zero.

They have a 30-hour drive ahead — plenty of time for anger.

But Littlefield is not angry. Perplexed and baffled, maybe. He is trying to process the new idea that oceans are no longer a guarantee of safety from enemy attack.

“We in America, we think we are safe and if there is one thing it made me aware of, we are not safe,” said Littlefield, a Shorterville resident who responded to the 9/11 attacks with Gulledge as part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Deployable Tactical Operations System, a responder unit that help set up field operations headquarters for firefighters and FEMA.

“If we look at what took place, they (the terrorists) were trained by Americans to fly airplanes,” Littlefield said. “How in the world they did that, hijacked that many planes simultaneously ... It just blew my mind how that could take place in America.”

Littlefield shared his recollection of his 9/11 experience with the Dothan Eagle recently while deployed again in response to Hurricane Irene. His memories are vivid and he speaks with the security that a distance of 10 years can only give.

“At the time, it was a very weird feeling. I just knew God was sending me for a purpose,” Littlefield said.

Gulledge, however, is only comfortable sharing his memories with family and close friends. He recently shared memories with his wife, who relayed them to the Dothan Eagle.

“At the time I arrived at Ground Zero, it was obvious that the New York City firefighters were still pretty much in shock and doing anything humanly possible to rescue their buddies as well as any other survivors,” recalled Gulledge, who lives in Fort Gaines, Ga. “It was a surreal feeling to watch them desperately clawing at the rubble and seeing the disbelief in their eyes as they told their stories.

“Each morning as I left my motel to report to duty at Ground Zero, people would line the sidewalks outside the barricades and cheer the workers coming in. They would hold signs, shout encouragement, and sometimes even throw packs of crackers or other snacks into our vehicles just to be a small part of helping out.”

Once the field operations units were set up, Gulledge said he and Littlefield helped provide firefighters with water, generators, satellite phones, Internet service and anything else they could.

“Breathing the dust in the air, even though we used dust masks and ventilators, made me so hoarse, my wife could barely understand me when I got a chance to call home,” Gulledge said. “An average work day for the first week or so was typically 14 to 18 hours. It was sometimes 3 a.m. when I arrived at my hotel room and was able to call home.”

Littlefield said he was taken aback by the sheer size of the rubble.

“No one knows unless you see it with your own eyes, the size of the beams in these buildings that were rolled up on account of the weight. To see that pile of rubble and metal and see how it just ... I think seven floors underground and then the rubble was huge, it was something I didn’t think anybody could have ever done that inside our borders,” said Littlefield, who also responded to New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina the day after the levy broke and the city flooded.

Overall, Littlefield and Gulledge spent 29 days at Ground Zero.

“It is a period of time that is forever imprinted in my memory,” Gulledge said.