It was April 19th, 1995. At 9:02am, a Ryder Rental truck, chock full of a mingle of homemade and commercial explosives, detonated in the unloading zone at the Alfred P Murray Federal Building. It was right below a nursery. In the deadliest terrorist attack the United States had ever seen at the time, 168 people were murdered and more than 600 were injured.

19 of those killed were children.

The Oklahoma City bombing forever changed the face of this nation. Today we don’t revel in the later convictions of perpetrators, Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols (McVeigh was put to death via lethal injection on June 11, 2001, and world has been better for it since) but instead remember the victims. While no doubt some of you reading this weren’t alive when it happened, others remember it well. The main minion, David Reeder, was there for the immediate aftermath. We came across some of his remembrances of that time on Facebook and decided we would share it with you. Mad Duo

20 Years and 168 Lives Ago

by David Reeder

By the night of April 21st most of downtown was empty, surrounded by a makeshift fence and patrolled by LE and National Guardsmen who – thankfully – never had to deal with looters, secondary attackers or imitators.

Every morning we watched lines of hopeful rescue workers, many of them big men with huge mustaches, troop into the rubble, coming out later, slump shouldered in tears and slinging snot, sometimes bearing body bags (too often tiny ones).

By late afternoon on the 22nd there was a line of people from around the country filing around the perimeter to pay their respects and put tokens of love or remembrance into the fence. That line was literally unending, even into the wee hours of the morning. Someone on an Oklahoma City radio station said responders needed batteries, cold weather layers, thermoses and the like – within a couple of hours every battery, flashlight, thermos, sets of long underwear and pair of gloves within a hundred miles or more of Oklahoma City had been bought up and brought to the site.

There were people driving to Tulsa and Dallas to buy things, then bringing piles of supplies in on foot because it was hard to get close in a vehicle. That was heart wrenching and awesome. One night while I was posted at the chapel I had to tell a man and his little boy about 4am that no, we had not yet heard anything about their wife/mom and no they’d yet to pull any survivors out (that I was aware of) since the first day, then watch them leave, disconsolate and eerily resigned – that was heart wrenching and terrible.

20 years ago we saw the worst and then the best in people. It’s unrealistic to think we’ll “never forget.” Everything becomes more faded with time and the edges get a little more worn off every year, but take a minute today to think about all those we lost and everyone who responded to help. Spend a few minutes showing your kids what happened, good and bad, and if you ever get the chance, visit the memorial. If you can’t do it in person, do it virtually.

http://www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org/

 

—

Mad Duo, Breach-Bang& CLEAR!

Comms Plan

Primary: Subscribe to our newsletter here or get the RSS feed.

Alternate: Join us on Facebook here or check us out on Instagram here.

Contingency: Exercise your inner perv with us on Tumblr here, follow us on Twitter here or connect on Google + here.

Emergency: Activate firefly, deploy green (or brown) star cluster, get your wank sock out of your ruck and stand by ’til we come get you.

About the Author: Someone has to corral the writing team, handle business expenses and bail the Mad Duo (and their minions) out of jail. For years the Pentagon, JSOC and the International Association of Chiefs of Police sought an impeccable man to lead the pedagogic and frequently obstreperous team of Breach Bang Clear writers. They needed someone charismatic, a warrior, able to maintain mental acuity under the worst stressors. Unfortunately the program suffered severe budget cuts so they ended up with David Reeder. Reeder is the Mad Duo’s Chief Wretched Flunky and Breach-Bang-Clear’s HMFIC. A LEO for many years and former AF Security Forces SNCO, his mastery of tactical sesquipedalianism is unmatched in modern times. He’s a self-professed POG who taught MOUT at the Bold Lighting Urban Warfare School and later combat tracking to members of all branches. As a LEO he worked patrol, training, SWAT and counter-narcotics and was on the OC-evaluation team at the National Homeland Security Training Center. You can read more about him here.