Servicemembers remembered on fifth anniversary of Khobar Towers blast
By Ron Jensen, Stars
and Stripes
Bob Hagen / Courtesy to Stars and
Stripes
A color guard honors the 19 servicemembers who died when a bomb blew off the face of
the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1996. The fifth anniversary of the terrorist
attack was Monday. |
Tech Sgt. Rudy Grimm planned to go about his business as a normal
Monday, reporting to his job as dental technician at RAF Upwood, England, and pushing
away, if possible, thoughts of what happened exactly five years ago.
“I know what day it is,” he said Monday morning soon after
reporting to work.
Monday was the fifth anniversary of the terrorist bombing of Khobar
Towers in Dahran, Saudi Arabia, an act that killed 19 servicemembers, injured hundreds of
other people and sent a shock wave through the military.
Exactly five years ago, Grimm treated a fellow servicemember and
watched him die right before his eyes.
“I wrote a letter to that person’s family,” Grimm
said. “I wanted them to know he didn’t die alone.”
That night of chaos started when guards spotted two men running from
a parked fuel truck outside the fence, but barely 80 feet from the base of the building.
Suspecting something was wrong, they pounded on doors, trying to
alert servicemembers.
When the truck blew up, it did so with power equivalent to 20,000
pounds of TNT.
U.S. Army Col. Keith McNamara recalled that night on Monday as well.
He was keynote speaker for an afternoon ceremony in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia, honoring the memory of those who died.
Bob Hagen /
Courtesy to Stars and Stripes
Col. Keith McNamara, commander of U.S. Army Central's Command (Saudi Arabia), talks about
the bombing at Khobar Towers. |
McNamara, commander of Army Central Command (Saudi Arabia), was in
charge of a Patriot missile unit in Dahran when the bomb blew the building to bits.
“I had over 400 soldiers in Khobar Towers,” he said Monday,
recalling the day in 1996.
Eight soldiers and one civilian in his command were wounded, but,
McNamara said, “I did not lose any soldiers.”
McNamara was nearly two miles away in a small building at the
airfield, bidding farewell to some of his soldiers returning to Ansbach, Germany, when the
blast hit just before 10 p.m.
“It just shook the building so much, it felt like a truck had
hit it,” he said.
Several hundred yards from the blast, one of McNamara’s soldiers
was jogging. The concussion of the explosion burst the soldier’s eardrum.
Grimm was about a half mile from the blast, sitting in a chair in the
medical building. The blast knocked him from the chair, and he was showered with shattered
glass from a nearby balcony door.
He thought the troops, who were part of Operation Southern Watch,
were under attack.
“That was the first thing that went through my mind,” he
said.
He went to the door of the building to see what was happening and saw
a wave of wounded coming for help.
The dental assistant went to work.
“We’re trained to be medics,” he said. “You know
what you’ve got to do. Everybody there did something they weren’t used to
doing.”
McNamara’s first thought was to account for his troops, which he
did in 60 to 90 minutes. But he could not abandon the mission of Task Force 6-52 Air
Defense Artillery, so he ensured that the Patriot units were manned.
And although his unit’s lack of fatalities was reassuring, there
was sobering news, as well.
“We lost servicemembers, bottom line,” he said. “That
became apparent very quickly.”
But McNamara saw “heroic things” as people jumped into the
fray to care for the wounded, saving many lives, he said.
After McNamara called to Ansbach to report that all of his troops
were alive and accounted for, he ordered his soldiers to call home as soon as possible to
let the family members “hear a voice.”
He is now back in the desert and commanding troops there once again.
The threat level in the Middle East rose to Delta last week, meaning
there is evidence of a likely attack.
During that fateful night, Grimm was faced with a wounded military
member with cuts on his chest and “pretty beat up.”
Despite Grimm’s efforts to revive him, the man died. It was
later determined the man suffered a severed aorta, a wound that is almost always fatal.
Grimm calls that a “key memory” of that night five years
ago. He wrote a letter to the man’s parents telling them their son had died defending
freedom and died for “the best country in the world.”
“I had a need to do that for the parents,” Grimm said.
“I hope they got the letter, and that it meant something to them.”
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