XDate: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 16:21:15 -0500
To: "Robert Ursano" <rursano @usuhs.mil>
Fee: WTC, /jm/BIOG

Subject: Fwd: survey HQMC; perosnal note

Fri Dec 27 13:38:21 EST 2002

<<<

Josh- Thought the attached would be of interest to you =AF a study
the Center for Study of Traumatic Stress did as a follow up of the
Pentagon, about one year after the plane attack.

>>>

Thanks, Bob. I was moved by reading the comments. [ll give you a brief memoir of my
own.

On 9/11 I was at NIH (across the road from you) that day, exceptionally *not* at the
Pentagon. I was pretty sure my wife knew where I was, but my chief anxiety was to find a
way to reassure her about that. That took a few hours.

Our apartment in NY overlooks the East River and Southern Manhattan, and the WTC peaks
were a prominent part of the ’scape. It’s almost 10 clicks away, so I was not too concerned
about my wife’s own safety as soon as the TV/internet reports clarified the locus of the
attack.

It was another couple of days before I was able to get (rail) transport home.

My immediate (and enduring) reaction was not fear, but resignation and empathy for the
immediate victims -- flashbacks of the TV images of people flinging themelves out of the
upper stories ... At my age (near 78) personal mortality is a lesser issue; but despair and
"resignation" was about the lapse of the world of security and the luxury of high moral
standards we had been accustomed to. About a return to the jungle, where in self-defense we
would be inflicting atrocities on other innocents or pawns, .., to war interminable, that that
was the legacy my children and grandchildren would have to learn to adapt to.

I had an episode of dysrhythmias (ExtraSystoles) that gave me some concern, until I had a

reassuring EKG and realized that I had been somaticizing! They then abated. Have you
looked out for that in your surveys?

contr
Ot Srner