I was re-reading "We Were Soldiers" a while back (for a recent blog post), and came across a certain individual involved in the Ia Drang battles. One of the officers in charge of some of the troops was 1st Lt. Cyrus "Rick" Rescorla. He was an interesting individual who definitely made his mark on American military and civil history.
Rescorla was born in England in 1939 and by 1943 was surrounded by US GI's and this made a great impression on the young Brit. So in 1957 he enlisted in the British Army and served with the paratroopers, a great asset to his future military endeavors. He served with the paratroopers in Cyprus before leaving the military to join the Metropolitan Police force in London. He served there until 1963 when he moved to a YMCA in Brooklyn in preparation to join the US Army in 1963. Rescorla underwent basic, OCS and airborne school before being assigned as a 1st Lt. as a platoon leader in the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Air mobile).
Deployed to Vietnam, Rescorla's company wasn't a part of Hal Moore's battalion, but was attached later and he displayed personal bravery in face of tremendous odds at Ia Drang's X-Ray fight. He was nicknamed "Hard Core" for his excellent combat leadership and also caught the eye of Hal Moore who called Rescorla "the best platoon leader I ever saw." One piece of note from the movie "We Were Soldiers" that was attributed to someone else, but Rescorla was the one who actually did this. After the final big attack, actor Ryan Hurst (Sgt. Ernie Savage) picked up a brashttp://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3355211812998328476&postID=9218765582902801025s bugle. This one was a French Army bugle from around the turn of the century. In fact, it was Rescorla who recovered this instrument while policing the battlefield after the fight. His company commander asked him to hang onto the bugle and play it at the battalion's reunions in the future, which Rescorla gladly did.
After leaving the US Army in the early 1970s, Rescorla attended University of Oklahoma where he got his bachelors and masters' degrees. He worked in academia for a bit before moving to the financial sector. After a big savings and loan scandal, he moved to New York and took a position with Dean Witter Reynolds. In 1997 when Dean Witter Reynolds merged to form Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, he was offered the post as director of security.
Unfortunately, his security duties with Dean Witter Reynolds also brought him into the limelight. In 1992, Rescorla believed that his DWR's offices in the World Trade Center were vulnerable by a truck bomb that could be detonated in the parking decks under the towers. His theory was indeed proved correct by the first attempt on the WTC in 1993. In that attack, Rescorla was the last man out, ensuring everyone else made it out ahead of them.
Rescorla reasoned that the threat to the building was not over and believed that it would be a plane flying into the building. He convinced his bosses that they had to move to New Jersey in a four story building to be safer, but the lease in the WTC would not be over until 2006. In the interim, Rescorla instituted manditory evacuations to be practiced every three months.
On September 11, 2001 at 8:46 am when the planes struck the WTC, Rescorla activated the evacuation plans and got 3,700 MSDW employees out of the burning building, ignoring the official's advice to stay put. When Rescorla got his people out, he went back in and last was seen on the 10th floor headed up, trying to ensure others who worked on the floors above them. It was rumored he made it as high as the 72nd floor before at 9:59 when WTC 2 came crashing down. While the loss of life was great in WTC 2, the fact that among the 3,700 Morgan Stanley employees, only six were killed on 9/11: four of them were Rescorla and three of his deputies. This is a testimony to a great American, yes, while born in Britain he is indeed an American, both in combat and on America's toughest day.
To conclude this post, it is scheduled to post at 9:59 am on 9/11/11, ten years to the minute when WTC 2 (the south tower) collapsed, presumably taking "Hardcore" Rescorla with it. Over 3,700 people owe him their lives.
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