Jason Thomas had already left the Marine Corps when the first plane hit. He had a newborn daughter in a car seat, a new house on Long Island, and a criminal justice class waiting for him at John Jay College in Manhattan. His camouflage utilities were in the trunk of his car because the family was mid-move and he did not want his gear mixed in with the U-Haul.
As he pulled up to his mother’s house to drop off his newborn baby girl, his mother met him on the front porch. He reflected that she never met him on the porch like that. She told him a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. He looked past her at the television, saw the aircraft go in, and knew right away that it was an act of terrorism.
He immediately pulled out his uniform from the trunk and put it on. His mom said a prayer, and then he drove toward the smoke.
Twenty-five years later, Thomas is still in uniform. He is a Master Sergeant in the Air Force Reserve, where he has served as a combat medic since 2012. In an interview with Military.com, he said the Marine Corps is still his foundation. He also said he has still never seen Oliver Stone’s 2006 film “World Trade Center,” the movie that introduced millions to the story of Marines who searched for survivors amongst the rubble.
I said I would watch it on the 25th anniversary, but I still have not
Thomas added: “It’s too emotional.”
‘We Don’t Go Backwards’
Thomas did not grow up in a military family. He was running out of money in college after his school’s football program collapsed. He thought about the FBI. He wanted training that was not watered down.
His parents had heard the Marine Corps programmed people into robots, he wanted the toughest branch anyway.
I knew that if I was going to serve, I was going to serve in the toughest branch of them all.
In a chance encounter, he and his brother met a Marine in civilian clothes at a gas station, high-and-tight, built like a statue. The Marine asked if they had thought about joining and told them what the job entailed.
That was all it took. He went to the recruiting office and told them he wanted the hardest job, and he wanted to leave as soon as possible. The Corps obliged and gave him an infantry spot. He and his brother then shipped together on the buddy program. In boot camp, he served as the platoon guide, and they won every event, including final drill.
On Sept. 11, 2001, freshly out of the Marine Corps, that foundation was sitting right in the trunk of his car.
The road getting into Manhattan was deadlocked, but drivers moved over when they saw the uniform. Driving a black car with tinted windows, he was able to slide into an NYPD convoy and got within three blocks of the North Tower before the brakes in front of him lit up. He got out of his car right as the North Tower collapsed in front of him. He had gone to his high school prom in that building. Thomas recounted how, coming into the city, he got lost for about three minutes on the way in. He figured those minutes kept him from running into the building as it came down.
The debris cloud hit like a freight train. He knelt beside the car, then stood up.
“I said there was no way I’m going out like this on my knees,” Thomas said. Police and firefighters told him not to go into the debris. He told them he was a Marine.
We don’t go backwards. We go forwards.
He pulled people toward triage. Closer to the collapse, he found bodies in the street. One older man was on his side. Thomas checked him, looked at his face, and saw the dent in his skull. He said a prayer and kept moving.
The Hole
By afternoon, he ran into another Marine in utilities, Staff Sergeant David Karnes. Firefighters were spent. Thomas kept hearing the same word: there would be no search and rescue that night. The pile was still settling. That, he said, infuriated him.
Other volunteers, including veterans, gathered at the nearby Century 21 department store. Plans turned into disagreements about if and how the group should move forward. The sun was going down, and the thick smoke made it hard to see. Thomas told them he was going to search and, if they wanted to join, to meet him across the street. The only man who crossed was Karnes.
The first section they tested collapsed. They kept calling into voids they found:
“This is the United States Marines. Is anyone down there?”
At one point, a firefighter yelled for them to come back as they trekked across the pile. Thomas yelled that Marines do not go backwards. The firefighter then told them not to come back that way, as they were about to hit the area with water and would not hear or see them.
Hours later, three-quarters of the way across the pile, Thomas landed on an I-beam over a black hole billowing smoke. He yelled…and finally a faint voice came back. He had already yelled into what felt like a hundred empty pockets. He yelled again. The voice was still there.
He stripped his gear and went in. He fell about 10 feet, knocked the wind out of himself, and looked left at a piece of steel glowing yellow and red. He could not understand how anyone under that was still alive. He cut himself on the way in and knew he needed stitches. He never got them.
The voice belonged to Port Authority police officer Will Jimeno. Jimeno said he had two other officers with him, but that he had not heard from one of them since the collapse. His sergeant, John McLoughlin, was next to him. Someone had come by earlier and had promised to come back, but had not returned.
“We are Marines, and we are not going to leave you,” Thomas told Jimeno.
They moved concrete in the heat and smoke, occasionally pulling themselves out to breathe. Thomas still feels guilty about pulling himself out as the police officers below had been stuck for hours. Eventually, Staff Sergeant Karnes reached his sister by phone, who was able to call police so they could triangulate their location on the pile.
As they continued to help reach the officers, Thomas took pictures. Thomas described the moment as emotional: He thought they were going to die, and he wanted his four children, including a daughter, only just born on July 17, to know that her father had been trying to save lives.
When they finally got Jimeno uncovered, the first thing the officer asked was whether Thomas was an angel.
“No,” Thomas told him. “I’m a Marine.”
Jimeno’s next concern was his sergeant. While Karnes left with Jimeno, Thomas went back down and started tunneling toward McLoughlin. In the dark, they came upon another police officer, Dominick Pezzulo, who had been mortally wounded in the collapse. Thomas immediately recognized that they would need to clear Pezzulo’s weapon to avoid a discharge as they continued tunneling. He attempted to clear Pezzulo’s weapon, but the slide was bent and jammed. Ensuring it was safe, Thomas passed the weapon back to other volunteers who had arrived and told them to get it to a cop.
It was about 3 a.m. when he walked off the pile. Miraculously, his car started. The roads were now completely empty outside of emergency response traffic. When he got home, he tried to rinse off with a garden hose in the backyard, slept for four hours before waking from a nightmare of glowing faces and arms reaching for him. He recognized that still others may be trapped in the pile and that his mission was not over. He put the uniform back on and drove straight back to ground zero.
The hole where he rescued the officers had now been covered. Others now on scene informed him that it had collapsed.
He stayed on scene for 20 days. Some nights he slept in buildings in Manhattan. He credited his years in the infantry as setting the foundation for him to do what needed to be done. After almost three weeks, he knew his family needed him. He had four children at home.
The Movie He Still Has Not Seen
For five years he was just “Sergeant Thomas.” Karnes knew the rank and the last name. The rest of the official record did not. Thomas has said he did not want to relive it. His mother’s line sat under the Marine one: you are your brother’s keeper. Never leave a brother on the battlefield.
In 2006, a trailer for “World Trade Center” put two Marines with flashlights on his television. An aunt pushed him to come forward, bringing his story to the public’s attention.
He has still not watched it.
He tells other people to see it. He knows his own version. Thomas says he hopes others see the tragedy, sacrifices, and bravery of that day. He stays in touch with the others from the rescue but only at a distance. They have had surgeries and families to get back to, and Thomas says he wants them to spend the time they have with their families. Every Sept. 11, though, he still gets a call or a text.
Still Serving
The part that stayed with him was not the movie. It was the men in the street he could not help the way he wanted. He had no medical training when he checked that first pulse.
“I never wanted to ever feel like I couldn’t help others again when they needed help,” he said. “I felt guilty for years for not having that medical background.”
He joined the Air Force Reserve in 2012 as a combat medic. The path back in as prior service is a door a lot of Marines look at and never take. He took it in another uniform on purpose.
Military.com first wrote about Thomas in 2021, when a National Geographic series put him back on camera. The Marine Corps memorial at Quantico still marks the 17 Marines who were among the New York firefighters killed that morning. Thomas lived. He went home. Then he put on another uniform so the next time someone was down in the dark, he would know what to do with his hands.
He does not call himself a hero. He calls himself a Marine who went forward. Twenty-five years later, that mission has not changed.
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