CUMBERLAND COUNTY, Pa. (WHP) \u2014 A Cumberland County man who volunteered with the Salvation Army during the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, said the experience is something he will carry with him for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n
That year, Melvin Eichelberger lived across the street from the Salvation Army in Harrisburg and would sometimes help out. Then, he said, he got a call that changed everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe commander got ahold and said, ‘hey, the Pentagon got hit.’ We were ordered to go to the Pentagon,\u201d Eichelberger said.<\/p>\n
Eichelberger said he pushed past his initial fears and arrived at a chaotic scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re right there at the building and seeing smoke coming out, and everybody that was there, they were just going all directions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Eichelberger said he helped first responders and others at the scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was on the canteen helping them out with hot dogs and food, drinks to the fire company, ambulance people, the military,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Eichelberger said he stayed at the Pentagon until the evening and that the hours he spent there left a lasting impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to go away from it, walk away from it,” he said. “It\u2019s something that you\u2019ll remember the rest of your life.”<\/p>\n
Now 81, Eichelberger said the memory remains vivid. <\/p>\n
Eichelberger said he has not been back to the Pentagon since that day, but added, \u201cSomeday, I would.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CUMBERLAND COUNTY, Pa. (WHP) \u2014 A Cumberland County man who volunteered with the Salvation Army during the attacks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-283940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}