Karl Olszewski A September 11th, Hero

I found about Major Olszewski at random on the ANYSoldier.com site.

I don't know why but I googled him from his post there, but I found out more about him.

Word's can't express my admiration for him.

I can't help wondering about the thousands of untold stories of September 11,2001, like his.
I remember.

Every day is September 11,2001.

I don't need a reminder or a ceremony to tell me that. And Yes, I stopped and prayed and my flag is out since dawn.

From The Any soldier post :

MAJ Karl J Olszewski
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20 May 2006
HI FOLKS,
MY NAME IS MAJ KARL J. OLSZEWSKI. BACK HOME, IN NJ, I'M A POLICE OFFICER FOR THE PORT AUTHORITY POLICE DEPT NY/NJ (PAPD). THE WORLD TRADE CENTER (WTC) WAS THE CENTER PIECE OF OUR POLICE DEPARTMENT AND IN ESSENCE - GROUND ZERO, FOR "OUR COUNTRY'S" WAR AGAINST TERRORISM AND TERRORISTS.

HERE IN AFGHANISTAN, I'M AN INFANTRY OFFICER FOR OPERATIONS/LOGISTICAL SUPPORT. THE MISSIONS ARE MANY AND THE DANGER, AT TIMES - EXTREME. AFGHANISTAN IS SAID TO HAVE WITHIN THE FOUR CORNERS OF HER SOIL, OVER TWELVE MILLION MINES. THESE MINES, IED'S, VBIED'S (VEHICLE BORNE EXPLOSIVE DEVICES) HAVE TAKEN THE LIFE OF MANY OF AMERICA'S BRAVEST TROOPS. HAVING COVERED NEARLY ALL OF THIS COUNTRY, I ERNESTLY SEEK TO ENGAGE AND DESTOY "OUR ENEMIES."

I WAS THERE ON 9-11 AND FOR THE NEXT NINE (9) MONTHS; I WORKED ON BOTH "THE RESCUE AND RECOVERY TEAMS "AT GROUND ZERO." IT IS, FOR THE MOST PART - WHY I'M HERE, WRITING TO YOU FROM KABUL, AFGHANISTAN AND BEYOND.

I CAN NEVER TALK OR WRITE ABOUT THIS, WITHOUT TEARS IN MY EYES, SO PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR ANY SPELLING ERRORS.

SINCE ARRIVING, I'VE HAD MEN DIE AROUND ME,(FIRE FIGHTS,DIRECT/ INDIRECT FIRE)) IN DEFENSE OF MY, YOUR'S AND YOUR FAMILIES SAFETY AND FREEDOM. IF YOU CAN OFFER SOME SUPPORT, OF WHATEVER IS WITHIN YOUR MEANS - (A LETTER, EYEWASH, A BAR OF SOAP, ETC) IT WOULD BE APPRECIATED BY THOSE WHO COUNT MOST - THE AMERICAN FIGHTING MAN AND WOMAN.

STRENGTH & HONOR,

MAJ KARL J OLSZEWSKI
US ARMY/ INFANTRY
"ENGAGE, DEPLOY, DESTOY!!"

9-11 NEVER FORGET 9-11

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From the Google Search
Start of Karl Olszewski Story...
1. Beaver County Times/Allegheny Times
Karl Oszewski Port Authority Police Officer
Published on: 9/11/2002 Last Visited: 9/11/2002

Karl Olszewski, Port Authority police officer.
It is a pit now, 16 acres long and wide, seven stories deep and huge enough to hold the hatefulness and hurt humans create.

If Sept. 11, 2001, had been just another day, the World Trade Center site could be mistaken for a construction area closed on a Sunday morning, waiting for crews to return Monday to start working.
Except for the stillness.

"This is like going to a church or something," says Port Authority officer Karl Olszewski.

Since Sept. 11, he's been assigned to the authority's Special Operations, a logistical unit that supplies the rescue, recovery and post-recovery efforts. He has located buried vehicles, searched for bodies, worked in the morgue and, on this August morning, escorted visitors inside to the perimeter of the site.

Olszewski was across the Hudson River at his home in Jersey City when disaster stuck. He arrived in Manhattan that afternoon and has been assigned to that duty since then.

Since the last piece of girder was removed on May 30, there's been time for routine calls.

On this Sunday morning, the Port Authority police, who are responsible for the site, answered a call about a homeless woman wielding a knife. Two months ago, they made an arrest because someone was harassing the vendors who sell World Trade Center memorabilia. He is no fan of the vendors, he says.

That day, Olszewski says, emergency crews began the task of sifting through a site that was seven floors deep, and 15 stories high, of jagged debris that was a mix of mangled and meshed steel and concrete, and, most important, people.

"Where do you begin? No matter where you turned, the same carnage existed." He pauses as he looks out into the landscape. "A gigantic pile, a pile of death." The crews began in an area that was once the Vista Hotel.

The rescuers lined up to form brigades of about 100 men who stood in straight lines slowly passing buckets. From there they moved on to small machinery, then to larger grapplers that picked up items with claws and carefully dumped them into trucks.

Body part, body part, after body part," Olszewski says. It was worse, several Vietnam veterans told him, than anything they had seen in that war.

The effort continued nonstop, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. More than a million man-hours were spent trying to tackle the problem, he says.

Statistics noted, Olszewski cuts to the point: "More people were lost here that day than in Pearl Harbor Olszewski says.

He'll tell you that in the morgue, rabbis, priests and pastors would be spent after saying prayers over each and every body or body part that was brought in. And he'll give you details of how workers looked at and catalogued each body part. His detail is much more than you want to know.

At the site, the workers got what Olszewski describes as the "thousand-yard stare."

Olszewski says he has moments of sorrow and depression and crying.

"And I didn't see probably half of what some people saw who were here (that morning). The people falling from them (the towers) and bursting onto the ground like balloons filled with water. Body parts strewn all about."

When a body was found, the goal was to dig carefully to keep the remains intact. If possible, a medical examiner would identify the victim.

Olszewski barks the ceremony's commands as if it were happening now.

"Detail attention. ... Detail present arms. ... Detail cover." The stretchers were then taken to an ambulance, then to the morgue, then the hospital, and finally the remains, when identified, were given to the families.

It is 11:25 a.m. when Olszewski answers a call on his radio. He talks for several seconds then excuses himself. The group is escorted into a small building that overlooks the site. The guess is there's a missing child.

Minutes later, Olszewski returns, grinning. A little girl visiting the site with her parents had roamed away from them. She has a learning disorder.

She wandered," Olszewski says. "You never know. Some creep picks her up and when we get to them, by that time, it might be too late." Then adds, "I didn't mean to be rude."

No one minded. 2. The Guidon
No One Minded [Cached]
Published on: 9/11/2003 Last Visited: 9/14/2003

For Army Reserve Capt. Karl Olszewski, the memories of the next 8 1/2 month will also be forever imprinted on his mind. A New York/New Jersey Port Authority police officer, Olszewski was one of 43 officers who stayed at Ground Zero, taking only short breaks, until May 30 when the clean up officially came to an end. Shortly after attending a reserve component chemical officer advanced course at Fort Leonard Wood, Olszewski talked about the painful and grueling experience.

"They asked those of us who were the first ones there if we wanted to stay," Olszewski said. "There was no question I would stay." he said the Port Authority lost 37 officers, while the New York Police Department lost 23 and 343 New York city firefighters died in the collapse of the towers. Olszweski said he saw the first images of the first tower being hit by what was believed at the time to be a small biplane while watching television at his Jersey City home.

"I thought, 'Gee, a biplane isn't going to do much damage to the tower,'" Olszewski said. He said it wasn't until quite a while later that he went back to the television and saw that a second plane had slammed into the second tower.

"The first plane hit at 8:48 a.m. and the second tower was hit at 9:05 a.m., Olszewski said. "It was at that point that we all knew, that we, as a country, were under attack - that this was no accident. By 10:29 a.m. both towers had disintegrated into the pavement 110 stories below.

"The south tower fell at 9:50 a.m. and the north tower came down at 10:29 a.m.," Olszewski said, with the typical preciseness of a police officer. As soon as Olszewski realized what was happening, he rushed from his home a few miles away to what he knew would look like hell on earth. We (police officers) didn't have to be called in," Olszewski said. "All of us knew we were going to be needed down there."

"When we first arrived, we set up a mess, supply, command post and triage," he said, "but there were hardly any wounded coming in.
...
Olszewski said the two men suffered extremely serious injuries, but survived. He said the volunteers who worked day after day digging out the rubble, hoping against hope they'd find someone alive, got to know each other and soon had a "mantra" they spoke to one another.

"'We will never forget,we will never forget,' that's what we said to each other. We'd be walking by one another and that's what we would say," Olszewski said. "That became our overall theme, the message while we were down there. It was sort of our battle cry if you will," he added. Olszewski said while working at Ground Zero, there wasn't much chance to really digest what had happened.

"Half of me, like a lot of people, couldn't believe it, yet you had to accept that it happened and carry on and do your duty," he said. "It was my training in the U.S. Army that helped me to do what I could to help.

"A lot of images down there have been erased from my memory. But, there are moments I'll never forget in terms of the death and destruction.," Olszewski said.

He said there was some good that came out of the terrible tragedy. "I think before 9-11, there wasn't enough interest and enough love for our country, for the American flag itself. I think that has all changed for the better," he added.

3. The Guidon
The Guidon - [Cached]
Published on: 8/21/2003 Last Visited: 8/25/2003

Capt. Karl Olszewski, presents a Twin Towers flag that was flown at Ground Zero in New York City, to Col. (P) Stanley Lillie, Chemical School commandant, during a school gradation ceremony.
...
Chemical School Commandant Col. (P) Stanley Lillie accepted the flag from Capt. Karl Olszewski, who is an officer with the New York Port Authority.
...
Olszewski was among 42 police officers who spent more than eight months continuous at Ground Zero searching for bodies and cleaning up debris.

"We never rotated out," he said. "Because of the passion we felt for that particular job, we stayed until the last dish pan, last shovel of dirt, was removed."

Olszewski said the idea for giving the school a flag that had been flown at the site came from a class discussion. The reserve officers talked about why they chose to serve the military.

"We talked about 9-11 and I shared some of my experiences at Ground Zero with them," Olszewski said. "I had the guys (port authority police officers) fly one of the Twin Towers flags at Ground Zero and then send it to me.

The specially-designed flags depict an American Flag laid across the Twin Towers on a white background.

Olszewski said he hoped displaying the flag at the Chemical School would serve to motivate future students and remind them of why serving the military is so important.

End of the Google Search