(Washington, D.C., U.S.A.)

A couple of months ago, I applied to take a tour of the Pentagon.  You need to apply at least 6 weeks (preferably more) in advance…and then you wait.  You are screened for security reasons and, if approved, only receive notification of that approval 1-2 days before your requested tour date.

It was by no means a sure thing.  After all, the Pentagon is the command centre of the U.S. military and is a highly sensitive facility.  Not being an American citizen, I didn’t expect my visit to be a priority for the Pentagon.  However, shortly after arriving in Washington, I found out that my application had been approved and that I would be able to take the tour.  After passing through an airport-style security check, I was in the Pentagon and about to begin my tour with a group of students from Georgia (the state) and a family from the U.K.

The tour is not for the feeble.  You walk almost constantly for just under an hour.  You cannot stop, not even for a drink of water.  The leader walks backward throughout the tour to keep an eye on the group, with a second “leader” following at the rear to ensure that the group keeps moving and remains intact.

The Pentagon is huge.  23,000 people work there, consisting of 7,000 officers, 4,000 enlisted personnel and 12,000 civilians.  At one point, we were walking down a hallway that was more than 3 football fields long.  The Pentagon is essentially a self-sustaining city; once inside, it almost feels like you are in a suburban mall…except that almost every customer is in uniform and is striding with an unusually strong sense of purpose.

Much of the commentary consisted of general information about the various branches of the U.S. military.  We did not visit many specific sites within the complex, although we did see the internal memorial to the 184 victims of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.   It is located at the point of the plane’s impact.  To get there, we walked down a hallway (now completely rebuilt) that was wiped out by the plane after it first struck the building.  At one point, we even saw some scorch marks on a wall that were left by the burning aircraft once it came to a halt.  We also learned that the death toll would have been much higher (perhaps several thousand more), but the area hit by the aircraft was being renovated at the time and most of the personnel from that area had been relocated.

For obvious reasons, photography is prohibited inside the Pentagon except in the tightly-controlled visitor centre (see photo at the top of this post).  Outside, photography is not allowed either, except at the 9/11 Memorial.

The external 9/11 Memorial does not require pre-approval; anybody can visit it without making advance arrangements.  The Memorial consists of one “bench” for every victim (one of whom was only 3 years old) of the attack.  The angle of each “bench” is 43 degrees, being the plane’s angle at the moment of impact.  As each victim’s name and year of birth is part of the Memorial, the tragedy is personalized.   I saw that 5 of the victims were my age; each one was a member of the military and would have been working at the Pentagon when the plane struck.

After visiting the site of one of the 9/11 attacks, any discussion of the remainder of my day can’t help but seem rather inconsequential.  Among many other things, the Pentagon visit reminded me how much the world changed on that day in 2001 and what a profound and continuing effect it has had on our American neighbours in particular.