Chuck Bergen

Pastor. Husband. Father of 3. Sports enthusiast. Rock 'n Roller. Bearded4Lyfe.

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

Twenty five years ago today, a 62 year old man with cancer in his bones walked 2,687 people out of the South Tower, and then he went back inside.

Rick Rescorla was born in Hayle, Cornwall in 1939. British Parachute Regiment in Cyprus at 18. Colonial police in Northern Rhodesia. Then he came to America, enlisted in the US Army in 1963, and in November 1965 he went into the Ia Drang Valley as a platoon leader with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry.

Hal Moore called him the best platoon leader he ever saw. His men called him Hard Core. He sang to them in the dark, Wild Colonial Boy in an Australian accent, because he had worked out that men who are singing are not men who are panicking. That is Rescorla on the cover of We Were Soldiers Once and Young, bayonet fixed.

Thirty five years later he was head of security for Dean Witter, later Morgan Stanley, in the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

In 1990 he brought in his old friend Dan Hill and the two of them walked the basement. He warned the Port Authority that the parking garage was wide open, that somebody could drive in a truck full of explosives, walk out and light it off. Nothing was done. Three years later the 1993 bomb went off about thirty feet from the spot he had flagged.

After that he told Morgan Stanley the towers were still a target and the next attack would come out of the sky. He wanted the firm to leave Manhattan. The lease ran to 2006, so they stayed. Twenty two floors of the South Tower, roughly 2,700 people.

So he drilled them. Every three months, everyone, no exceptions, down the stairwells two abreast while he stood there with a stopwatch. Traders pulling seven figures resented being marched down concrete stairs by a Cornishman with a clipboard. He kept doing it anyway.

8:46 a.m. The North Tower is hit. Port Authority comes over the South Tower loudspeakers and tells everyone the building is secure and to go back to their desks. Rescorla picks up a bullhorn and tells his people to get out.

He phones Dan Hill. "The dumb sons of bitches told me not to evacuate. They said it's just Building One. I told them I'm getting my people out of here."

9:03 a.m. The second plane hits the South Tower, floors 77 through 85. His people are already in the stairwells, moving exactly the way they had been drilled, and Rescorla is on the bullhorn singing to them. Cornish songs. A version of Men of Harlech he had rewritten for Cornwall. Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming, can't you see their spearpoints gleaming.

He called his wife Susan from the stairs. They had been married two and a half years, met jogging in New Jersey. He told her to stop crying, that he had to get these people out safely, and that if something happened to him he wanted her to know he had never been happier, that she made his life.

Someone told him to get out. He said, as soon as I make sure everyone else is out.

2,687 Morgan Stanley employees went home that day. Thirteen did not, and four of those were Rescorla and the men who stayed in the building with him: Wesley Mercer, Jorge Velazquez, Godwin Forde.

He was last seen on the 10th floor, walking up.

The South Tower fell at 9:59. They never found him.

[Rory Cooper @rorycooper]

Still hits the same

[Chuck Bergen @THE_ChuckDiesel]

@Ken_Rosenthal Definite W for the Orioles there. Not a serious franchise....

[Chuck Bergen @THE_ChuckDiesel]

@huskersjames So close

[Chuck Bergen @THE_ChuckDiesel]

WVU is headed to Omaha. Apologies to @huskersjames if we dont act right

[Chuck Bergen @THE_ChuckDiesel]

Every time I have a cup of @Starbucks, it just tastes like disappointment. Burnt disappointment. Which is about once a year. That reminder of sadness.

@blckriflecoffee is just so much better.

[Chuck Bergen @THE_ChuckDiesel]

@huskersjames

[Chuck Bergen @THE_ChuckDiesel]

Nearly 5 decades of @Ford in one driveway. We should get a plaque or something. Maybe a certificate?

[Colin Redemer @RedemTheTimes]

God bless Ben for taking a good chunk of his last days on earth to share this.

And fair thee well Senator.

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Restore Britain has been called ‘far-right’ and ‘racist’ by the Guardian, Reform and the whole host of soapless socialists over the last few days.

I cannot be clearer in our official party response.

We do not care.

The illegals will go. The hotels will be emptied, the HMOs closed. Foreign sex pests, criminals and invaders will be rounded up, and they will be sent home.

Far more legals will leave than enter. Those foreign nationals here already will pay their way, they will contribute, they will respect our culture. If they don’t do that? Fine. Their choice. They will leave too.

If that’s racist to these people? Then so be it.

This is a logical policy platform that the British people agree with. They’ve just never had it seriously offered before.

Our political party is going to tell the brutal truth.

Get used to it.

[Paul Anleitner @PaulAnleitner]

Here’s an uncomfortable truth about the Epstein accusations:

We only find them morally reprehensible because of Christianity.

Before the spread of Christianity, “civilized” Greek and Roman elites openly flaunted underage s*x slaves. This was normal.

Emperor Hadrian built an entire city in honor of his favorite boy.

We’ve heard for decades that Christianity is a barrier to moral progress, but if you undercut the moral foundations of Christianity from the West, culture reverts back to pagan norms.

[Chuck Bergen @THE_ChuckDiesel]

@PigTownSports No respect for Deano

[Baltimore Orioles @Orioles]

We got next 😏

[Chuck Bergen @THE_ChuckDiesel]

@jamespruch Easy when you have a bunch of "former" pros out there...

[Chuck Bergen @THE_ChuckDiesel]

@joelschlenke Only going to get worse...

[Gerald Mengel @GMengel]

People getting People getting
Snow: Ice:

[FOX College Football @CFBONFOX]

Put it in the Louvre. 🎨

[Collin Hansen @collinhansen]

Your church doesn't need to be large or famous to need a security plan, especially in light of what we saw yesterday with our friends in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Here are some guidelines to get you started:

https://t.co/dCgyl5C0sF

[ReformedAndDangerous @ReformedRap]

Sinner's in the Hands of a (Holy) God by Jonathan Edwards... but the metal version. Enjoy!

[Sana Ebrahimi Ledene @SanaELedene]

This is Tehran. Let that sink in. You are watching a revolution unfold live while the world’s media stays dead silent. Legacy media has become nothing more than a propaganda machine, because what news could possibly be bigger than this?
@FoxNews @CNN https://t.co/1X5PlzQAhw