PHOTO BY PAUL HARING FOR WASHINGTONPOST.COM & JOINT BASE MYER-HENDERSON HALL PAO PHOTO BY NELL KING
The next 48 hours were by turns violent – in their struggle to breach the lines of defense, protestors threw rocks and bottles, smashed windows, and scuffled with guards, resulting in about 45 injuries – and absurd. Abbie Hoffman, co-founder of the Youth International Party (Yippies), threatened guards with a water pistol filled with LSD. At one point, Hoffman and beatnik poet Allen Ginsburg led a crowd of about 100 in a chant aimed at “levitating” the Pentagon. One of the protestors, the novelist Norman Mailer, chronicled the rally in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Armies of the Night, in which he described the Pentagon as “the true and high church of the military-industrial complex . . . Every aspect of the building was anonymous, monotonous, massive, interchangeable.” The 1967 protests worsened the climate between the government and anti-war protestors, to the point where the Pentagon was attacked. On May 19, 1972, a day chosen to honor the birthday of the late Ho Chi Minh, the anti-war group the Weathermen placed a bomb in a women’s restroom at the Pentagon. Nobody was hurt, but the bomb caused $75,000 in damage. As Mailer’s words attest, the Pentagon is one of the rarest of icons, symbolizing different things to different observers – or different things to the same observer, depending on changed circumstances. One can see whatever he or she is determined to see in it. In the remarks he delivered at the May 12, 1993 ceremony celebrating the Pentagon’s 50th anniversary, Gen. Colin Powell, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, eloquently described what he saw in the building: The Pentagon has stood … for more than half a century as a powerful and renowned symbol of America’s convictions, America’s power, and of America’s willingly accepted obligation to the world. In its somber and unpretentious way, it has weathered time, it has weathered wars, it has weathered innumerable crises, and it has weathered the storm of politics. Less than a decade later, the Pentagon weathered far worse. On Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda terrorists, determined to destroy precisely what the Pentagon represented to Powell, hijacked a passenger airliner and flew it into the western façade of the building. The attackers died along with 59 other people aboard American Airlines
A photograph of the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2011, after the building was hit by a commercial airplane in a terrorist attack is merged with a photograph of the Pentagon on Sept. 8, 2015.
The Pentagon’s
HALL OF HEROES
T
he Pentagon was built under a strict no-frills pact between Congress and War Department leaders, as recalled by Alfred Goldberg in his 50th anniversary book of Pentagon history and lore: “Throughout World War II and for some years afterward the halls remained Spartan – stark and unadorned. Gradually, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the military departments decorated rings and corridors in their separate areas and common areas in the A ring.” Today, many Pentagon hallways and alcoves feature exhibits, portraits, and memorials. One of the most often visited is the Hall of Heroes, dedicated to the 3,460 recipients of the nation’s highest military decoration: the Medal of Honor. While it’s often used for solemn public events such as promotions, retirements, and other award ceremonies, the hall’s most notable ceremonies occur when a new nameplate is added to its walls. The first such ceremony took place on May 14, 1968, on the day the Hall of Heroes was first dedicated by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who added the names of four service members, one from each armed forces branch, for their actions in the Vietnam War: Spc. 5 Charles C. Hagemeister, U.S. Army; Sgt. Richard A. Pittman, U.S. Marine Corps; BM1C James E. Williams, U.S. Navy, and Capt. Gerald O. Young, U.S. Air Force. “They will place their names now in a new Hall of Heroes,” said Johnson, “created here in the Pentagon as a memorial to all who have earned their country’s highest award for courage in combat.” It was the first time all four services had been represented in a Medal of Honor Ceremony, and the medals were bestowed in the Pentagon’s center courtyard. After the ceremony, Johnson climbed a staircase behind him and cut a red ribbon in front of the entrance to the new hall. The Hall of Heroes has been moved three times since its dedication, and is now in the Pentagon’s main concourse: 2nd floor of the D ring, in corridor 10. Visitors to the hall will see that some of the names have an asterisk next to them – these denote service members who received two Medals of Honor for two separate acts of bravery. Other names are marked with dots to denote Marines who were under the command of the Army during World War I, and who received both the Army and Sea Service versions of the Medal of Honor for a single act of bravery.
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