BALTIMORE — Twenty-five years later, Command Sgt. Maj. Patrick Metzger can still remember the smoke.
It was September 12, 2001, less than 24 hours after American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Metzger and fellow members of the Maryland Army National Guard’s 200th Military Police Company were driving toward Washington when he looked into the distance.
“You could see this trail of smoke in the air and you just knew that that was the Pentagon on fire still,” Metzger said.
For Metzger, the events of September 11 began at home.
A friend called and told him to turn on the television. Metzger watched as the second plane struck the World Trade Center.
“I got up and I went and turned the TV on and I turned the TV on as the 2nd plane hit the World Trade Center,” Metzger recalled. “So I was home just chilling and life was never the same.”
Metzger had already spent four years in the U.S. Marine Corps before joining the Maryland Army National Guard in 1998. By 9/11, he was also working as a Maryland State Trooper.
He knew either the State Police or the National Guard would call.
The Guard called first.
Metzger and the 200th MP Company arrived at the Pentagon the next morning. He described the scene as “organized chaos.”
His unit was assigned to interior and exterior security posts, controlling access to the crash site while first responders and investigators worked.
The unit initially spent 17 days there. After another assignment at Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia, Metzger and the 200th returned to the Pentagon, where they spent months securing the damaged section as it was rebuilt.
Even now, certain sights and smells take Metzger back.
“You know that smell in the air and sometimes that smell in the air like immediately, like you’re like, ‘Oh, I know what that is,’” Metzger said. “And it’s like, man, that’s exactly what the Pentagon smelled like.”
Remembering those who served beside him
The memories are also tied to the people Metzger served alongside.
Among them was Kenny Cropper, a fellow Maryland Guardsman from the Eastern Shore who died while the unit was activated.
“He had this infectious laugh and just good spirit about him,” Metzger said. “And I can still hear that laugh every once in a while.”
Cropper’s name would later be given to Camp Cropper, a detention facility established in Iraq. Metzger said a sign from the facility now hangs in the Salisbury Readiness Center.
“So every time I go in there and see that, you know, I think about him,” he said.
For Metzger, another decision made at the Pentagon would shape the decades that followed.
His enlistment contract expired while he was there.
“My enlistment contract ran out while I was at the Pentagon,” Metzger said. “So for like a week or more, like, I was there as like volunteering. But I knew I had to stay.”
He stayed.
Metzger would go on to deploy twice to Afghanistan. His first Afghanistan deployment began in 2003. Nearly a decade later, he returned and eventually flew out of Afghanistan on September 11, 2013.
Today, Metzger serves as the Command Sergeant Major of the Maryland Army National Guard.
When he looks at a photograph of the 200th MP Company taken at the Pentagon, Metzger believes he is the only member pictured who is still serving in the Guard.
“Looking at this picture, I think I’m the only one left in the Guard,” he said.
This November will mark 34 years in uniform for Metzger.
Now, much of his focus is on the soldiers who will come after him — including a generation that has no memory of September 11, 2001.
Some were not yet born.
“A country of September 12th”
As the nation marks 25 years since the attacks, Metzger says he wants younger Americans to understand not only what happened on September 11 — but what happened the next day.
“I want us to be a country of September 12th,” Metzger said. “Because I feel that we were, we were the most united that day. You know, we all had a purpose.”
He remembers Americans looking for ways to serve — whether by joining the military, becoming first responders, helping at Ground Zero or rebuilding the Pentagon.
Twenty-five years later, that sense of unity is what Metzger hopes people carry forward.
“We all have different learned experiences and different values and come from different cultures,” Metzger said. “But, you know, there’s common ground. We’re all Americans.”
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