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Employees return to '21st-century battlefield' By Robert Schlesinger, and Mary Leonard, Globe Staff, 9/13/2001 WASHINGTON - Firefighters yesterday finally extinguished flames that had smoldered for more than 24 hours at the Pentagon, even as Defense Department officials all but gave up hope of finding survivors. ''The area of the Pentagon where the aircraft struck and burned sustained catastrophic damage,'' the department said in a statement. ''Anyone who might have survived the initial impact and collapse could not have survived the fire that followed.'' Pentagon workers draped an American flag down the side of the building when a solemn President Bush visited yesterday to inspect the damage. ''The nation mourns, but we must go on,'' said Bush, adding: ''Our country will not be cowed by terrorists.'' Across the Potomac River, the nation's capital also tried hard to return to normal. The federal government reopened, cabs reappeared on the streets, and shops were back in business. Parks deserted one day before were filled at noontime with office workers eating sandwiches, reading the paper, or just catching a little sunshine. The shock waves that had rocked the city had subsided. But the tragedy of Tuesday's terrorist strike was just starting to sink in. ''We've lost our sense of security, and we don't know what is going to happen next,'' said Cathy Combs, who works at the National Geographic Society and who lost a co-worker when American Airlines fligh 77 crashed into the Pentagon. ''It's going to take us a long time to try to figure this out.'' At the Pentagon, search and rescue teams sifted through the devastated section of the building, searching for bodies and evidence while officials started to formulate a response to the attack. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that reports of as many as 800 fatalities were probably erroneous. The Associated Press reported that the Pentagon estimates about 150 people, military and civilian, are missing. Thousands of employees returned to work, although many found themselves doubling up in offices as parts of the building remained inaccessible because of either smoke and fire danger or lack of power. Security police with full SWAT gear guarded building entrances. ''We are in a sense seeing the definition of a new battlefield in the world, a 21st-century battlefield,'' Rumsfeld said. ''It is a different kind of conflict. It is something that is not unique to this century, to be sure, but given our geography and given our circumstances, it is new to this country.'' In Washington, more than 800 people packed the lunch-hour Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, a few blocks from the White House, where, to the surprise of the regulars, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick celebrated the Mass. McCarrick, a New York native, said he had a special reason to remember the bravery of the victims: His cousin, New York firefighter Michael Lynch, was missing and most probably had perished when the World Trade Center towers collapsed. The cardinal said he had planned to perform Lynch's marriage ceremony in November. ''It's faith that gets us all through times like these,'' McCarrick said, reckoning that good can come from evil and bring nations and families together. The Rev. Tom Somerville, pastor of First Baptist Church in Washington, organized a network to contact all congregation members and see how they were coping. Everybody knows somebody who works at the Pentagon, Somerville said, and one member was a close friend of Barbara Olson, the lawyer and television commentator who used her cellphone to call her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson, and report on the hijacking of her doomed flight. ''We all feel like we've been hit,'' Somerville said. One consequence of the collective anxiety will be beefed-up security in a city that already has an abundance of iron gates, Jersey barriers, and armed guards. Lee Hamilton, who served in Congress for 34 years, said it was almost impossible for him to get through the barriers and into the Capitol yesterday. ''Tuesday's events will transform the attitudes of Americans,'' said Hamilton, who once chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee. ''They are going to be nervous traveling around the city or getting on an airplane. They are going to think twice before they go to malls and big events. You couldn't get me to work on the 110th story of a skyscraper.'' This story ran on page A10 of the Boston Globe on 9/13/2001. © Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.