Posted on 03/04/2005 6:50:43 AM PST by Jakarta ex-pat
Rick Rescorla may be remembered forever as a hero who led hundreds of people to safety from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, but he will be immortalized at Fort Benning as a young soldier in Vietnam.
A portrait of the former Army colonel was unveiled Thursday in a special ceremony honoring Rescorla, a decorated Vietnam veteran who died in the terrorist attack after helping evacuate 2,700 employees from the World Trade Center.
The 62-year-old Rescorla, a Fort Benning Officer Candidate School Hall of Famer, was security chief for Morgan Stanley working in the south tower. After the first plane hit the World Trade Center, Rescorla made sure that employees left the building. He was last seen going up stairs, looking for stragglers.
"He was a soldier ... and a warrior," his widow, Susan, whispered shortly after an Al Reid portrait of Rescorla was unveiled at the National Infantry Museum. "He made one last sweep, as he'd learned at Ia Drang, and was determined not to leave a single soldier behind."
Rescorla was awarded both the Silver and Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart for his service in Vietnam. He also was a key figure in the book "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young," which was made into a Mel Gibson movie.
His medals, along with the portrait of a 26-year-old Rescorla fighting in Vietnam, will be part of the museum exhibit.
Six Morgan Stanley security men died that day, including their chief, Rescorla.
"But if he hadn't done his job the way he did," said journalist and author Joe Galloway, "the death toll at the Trade Center would probably be twice what it is today."
Galloway, who was in town earlier this week, met Rescorla at the 1965 battle at Ia Drang. It is Rescorla, carrying a rifle with a fixed bayonet, who is pictured on the cover of Galloway's best-selling Vietnam War book, "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young."
That picture inspired Reid, a staff artist at the museum, when he was given the task of painting the portrait.
Rescorla was born in England. After Vietnam, where he served with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, he became a U.S. citizen.
"Rick was proud to call himself an American," Susan Rescorla said. "And I'm proud that he was, too."
She said she is doing everything possible to keep his memory alive.
"I make speeches, both here and in England," she said. "I visit injured troops at Walter Reed, many of them injured in Vietnam. I've never really associated that much with the other victims of 9/11. But I have seen the pain in their eyes."
She often gives Walter Reed patients a copy of "Heart of a Soldier," a book written about Rescorla by James Stewart. And she'll give a copy of the book to those who donate $25 or more for the Rescorla statue.
Outstanding!
That's the Army that I know.
He probably would have preferred to go that way, rather than dying in bed (of course, the preference is really for neither). I've read quite a few articles about the man, and each has made me even more impressed.
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