Excerpt…After the Massacre

The way survivors would later tell it, it was just after lunch when Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan walked into the Fort Hood Soldier Readiness Center, a brown-brick building in the middle of the sprawling Central Texas base. No one inside the bustling processing center took much notice; the balding, dark-eyed major was dressed in the same battle-dress uniform as hundreds of other soldiers lined up for physicals and medical paperwork.

Nidal sat in a waiting area near the entrance. He bowed his head a moment and then stood and screamed “Allahu Akbar!” – the Arabic-language Muslim exhortation “God is Great.” Simultaneously, he reached into his waistband and pulled out a semi-automatic pistol rigged with laser sights. He shot over and over into the waiting area, squeezing off rounds and reloading so fast that the bap-bap-bap of bullets sounded to some people like machine-gun fire.

Some soldiers fell, and others crawled for cover. One of the injured cried out, “My baby!” and pleaded for the life of her unborn child. A 62-year-old physician’s assistant named Michael Cahill charged from a cubicle toward the shooter with a chair in his hands.

Michael Cahill. Photo courtesy of the Cahill family.

A retired Army veteran who had worked as a civilian employee at the readiness center for seven years, “Doc” Cahill was admired for his determination to get any medical support that soldiers might need. His iconoclastic streak had bought him trouble and transfers in more than 20 years in the Army National Guard. His youngest daughter Kerry cracked that she and her older brother and sister could thank their father’s tendency to speak his mind for their wandering childhood as Army brats.

Cahill, ruddy and white-haired in civilian clothes, raised the chair like a weapon. The major calmly turned and fired, hitting Cahill six times. Within 10 minutes, Cahill, the pregnant soldier, and 11 more soldiers lay dead; 32 others were wounded.

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This is one of the most moving articles I’ve read in months, the fact that I share a surname, beard and age with this hero was quite jarring.