Twenty-nine years later, the tape made in 1966, in a claptrap officers’ club, made its way into my hands, and for the first time I heard the voice that I had only read of in history books. It was a strong voice, booming out the solos and leading the chorus of young American officers trying to forget, or perhaps to remember with honor, their soldiers who now lay still. I doubt there was a sober voice in the pack. In the background there is the recurrent booming of 105mm howitzers firing. This was the 1st Cavalry Division, in war. It was eerie to know that nobody had heard this tape in almost 30 years. I made seven copies so the tape would not disappear into history, and sent one to Rescorla himself.

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I am really lucky. Over the course of my life I have met men who, to my eyes, have walked into the room off the pages of a history book. Sometimes I get to meet my heroes.

A few months after receiving the tape from An Khe, I had the chance to attend the annual reunion dinner of the veterans of the fighting in the Ia Drang. That weekend I also had the honor of meeting Rick in person. He was bigger now, rounder and downright jolly actually, but in his eye I caught the glint of mischief that so many of his former soldiers talked about. He was now a civilian. After returning to the States in 1966 he had spent a year teaching at Fort Benning and then got out — sort of. He stayed in the Army Reserve, advancing to colonel before he retired in 1990. Along the way he had picked up a master’s degree and a law degree. But something in his makeup would not allow him to entirely abandon the idea behind our profession. Rick Rescorla had become the director of security for Morgan Stanley in their offices at the World Trade Center.

Nor had he forgotten his origins as a warrior poet. Approaching him almost as a religious supplicant, I asked him to sign my copy of We Were Soldiers Once…and Young. He asked me to wait a moment, got himself a drink, and sat staring into the middle distance for a moment. When he handed my copy back, the inscription read: ‘To: Captain Bob Bateman / Old Dogs and Wild Geese are Fighting / Head for the Storm / As you faced it before / For where there is the 7th / There’s bound to be fighting / And where there’s no fighting / It’s the 7th no more. / Best, / Rick Rescorla, Hard Corps One-Six [his radio call sign in Vietnam]‘

When Islamic fundamentalists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, Rick was there. Apparently songs don’t work as well on civilians as they do with us soldiers, and so Rick had some difficulty in getting people’s attention, to stop the panic and get them the hell out of there. And so (or at least so the legend goes), he jumped up onto a desk and bellowed out to the flower of American capitalism and propriety that he would moon them all unless they listened.

Nobody I ever met said Rick could not make a statement. People stopped, that’s for sure, and Rick proceeded to do his job, saving lives by moving people out of the tower. And that’s what he was doing again on September 11. Various employees of Morgan Stanley report his presence across all 20 floors occupied by the company. Just as in combat, he was everywhere — calm, jocular in the face of panic, reassuring in his personal presence. There is no way to exaggerate the number of human lives he saved that day. Not just the Morgan Stanley employees, but every single person on a floor above theirs owes a nod in his direction. Thanks to him, just about every one of the employees of his company made it out of the building, all 20 floors of them. Of their thousands, all but seven got out. Think about that. His legend in the company helped (people remember when somebody on an executive salary threatens to moon the staff), and that was enough to keep those people moving, which allowed others to follow, to leave — and to live.

Rescorla would no more have left that tower before every single person was outside than I would start singing show tunes from Broadway. When he called his wife not long after the first plane hit the other tower, he told her not to worry, he was getting everyone out. Despite the fact that an announcement was made over the building speakers telling everyone to stay put after that first strike, Rescorla apparently said, ‘Bugger THAT!’ and started the evacuation immediately. When it appeared that everyone was out, he went back in, heading up those stairs with the rescue workers. That is where he was last seen. He was inside, being himself, when the tower came down on him.

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