The


San Francisco Veterans


Memorial Project


Heart of a Soldier


The past three issues of Crossroads included articles about an ongoing project in San Francisco to fund, design and construct a Veterans Memorial in the San Francisco Civic Center between the Opera and Veterans Building. Completion of this memo- rial will fulfill the promises made by the City 80 years ago. It represents a wonderful level of cooperation among the Veterans, the Opera and the Symphony. In this spirit, the San Francisco Opera will present the final dress rehearsal of the new opera “Heart of a Sol- dier” as a fundraiser for the Veterans Memorial Project. The Opera, based on James B. Stewart’s book of the same name, tells the extraordinary true story of Rick Rescorla, a man who gave up his own life saving thousands on 9/11. “Heart of a Soldier,” scheduled to premier in San Francisco on 10 September 2011, captures the essence of the impact Rick Rescorla’s military training made on the rest of his life. The main aria is titled “Training the Heart”. A photo of Rick Rescorla appears on the cover of Joe Galloway’s award-winning book We Were Soldiers Once, and Young. When Joe spoke here at Marines’ Memorial in 2003, he talked about the Ia Drang Battle and about Rick Rescorla:


“On that battlefield I met many remarkable men, I learned something from all of them. I want to tell you a story about just one of those men, a platoon leader 2nd Company 2nd


battalion 7th cavalry.


“Rick was an Englishman, a native of Cornwall. He was big, tough, cocky. He had served as a London policeman, and then in the British army in Cyprus, and in the territorials in Rhodesia fighting guerrillas. All that before he came to America to join our army and help us fight the communists in Vietnam. Rick was first in his class in everything he did. He sailed through officer candidate school and got his lieutenant bars, before heading to Vietnam with the 1st


Cavalry Division airmobile.


“On the battlefield at LZ XRay, his company took over the lines of Charlie Company 1st


Battalion after it was virtually lieutenant in Bravo


wiped out on the second morning of bat- tle. Rick and his company commander, Myron Diduryk, had time to study their positions. They had the men move in to shorten their lines, then dig deep, three- man foxholes. Then they had them go out and cut the tall grass to clear fields of fire. They set out booby traps and intruder signals. They had the artillery liaison, Lt. Bill Lund, register his fires up, down and sideways on that field.


“…Through a long, scary night… Rick Rescorla moved from hole to hole reassuring his troops. In the wee hours he sang to them…the old songs of the Zulu wars, the old Welsh mining songs. “Early in the morning, the enemy sent a battalion back to smash through the weakened American line,


thinking


the remnants of Charlie Company were still clinging to their positions. Instead they ran into Bravo Company 2/7 Cav. Three times they tried, and three times they failed. They left behind the bodies of several hundred of their best. Bravo Com- pany suffered six men lightly wounded. “Rick Rescorla earned a Silver Star for that day’s work. He soldiered on for a full one-year tour, then came home to America. He took the oath of citizenship, and on that day America gained one of the finest. Rick went to law school, he taught at university for a few years, stayed on in the army reserve and rose to the rank of colonel.


“Some years later, he signed on as chief of security for Morgan Stanley


brokers. Three thousand employees on 22 stories of World Trade Tower Two. “In 1993, Rick was a hero of the


first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. He was the last man out of the building, leaving only after he had gone floor by floor making sure every one of his people was gone. The next week, Rick told his bosses: This building was a target last week. It will be a target again. Most of our workers live in New Jersey. Why not move [there] and build a low-rise, highly-secure headquarters? The answer was that Morgan Stanley had a longterm lease at the Trade Center. OK, Rick said, then I want…to conduct regular emergency evacuation drills. Eventually he got what he wanted, though folks there laughed and called them Rick’s fire drills. “On September 11, when that first


plane hit the first of the Twin Towers, the port authority squawkboxes in Tower Two urged everyone to remain at their desks, that they were safe…


“Rick took one look out the window at that terrible sight across the way and answered: Bullshit! He grabbed his bull- horn and made his way, floor by floor, ordering Morgan Stanley’s people to evacuate immediately…calming them by singing…“God Bless America”…some of the old Zulu war songs…some of the welsh mining songs.


“Rick Rescorla got all but five employ- ees out of that building safely. He went back up to make sure it was clear and that was when it fell down.


“Think about the power of one man to make a difference by his life, with his life. Oh, yes. One more thing. Three years before 9/11, Rick Rescorla was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The docs told him he had perhaps only six months to live. Rick beat that death sentence so that he would be around when he was needed. With a little help from God.” For more information, and to donate to the San Francisco Vet- erans Memorial, please visit www. sfveteransmemorial.org.


Crossroads Spring 2011 27


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