The terrorist attacks on the US, particularly on the Twin Towers in New York, are still vivid in our memories.

It is a day retired Rear Admiral Simon Harrington, who now lives in Kangaroo Valley, will never forget.

The former commanding officer of HMAS Creswell (1991-92) was the defence attaché and head of the Australian defence staff based in Washington, a position he held from 1999 until 2002.

He was based in the Australian embassy, just across the Potomac River from the Pentagon, which also came under attack.

Just three days earlier he had been in the Pentagon, during one of his regular visits to the building (usually about three times a week).

“We had the head of the navy and the Prime Minister in the country at the time,” he said.

“We had had a busy time, the day before at the Naval Yard, the naval base in Washington, President George W Bush had presented our PM with the ship’s bell of the USS Canberra.

“We had a survivor of the HMAS Canberra, Mackenzie ‘Mac’ Gregory present. He and his second wife Denise were due to fly home on September 11, but Prime Minister Howard invited them to visit the grave of the only Australian serviceman buried in Arlington Cemetery.”

They deferred their flight and later learnt American Airlines Flight 77 which crashed into the Pentagon without any survivors was the plane they were due to fly home on.

“They were very lucky and there were hundreds of stories like that,” he said.

“I remember we were having a meeting in the embassy with the head of the navy giving staff updates as to what was happening in Australia and my secretary came in and said ‘one of the Twin Towers is blowing up and is on fire. It looks like a plane has flown into it’.

“We all stopped to watch the TV and saw the second plane fly in and it was quite clear it was a terrorist attack.”

It was the start of a very busy day, with Rear Admiral Harrington and embassy staff having to account for all the Australians around Washington and New York.

“It took us about five hours to find everyone. Washington was gridlocked, people were walking home. The mobile phone network system was overloaded and broke down,” he said.

“We also had to let Australia know what was going on as far as our perspective went.

“The embassy sits on on a busy road, Massachusetts Avenue on a roundabout at Dupont Circle. The initial attack happened fairly early in the morning, so peak hour was still going on. Suddenly peak hour went the other way and within an hour Massachusetts Avenue was deserted, except for the odd armoured personnel carrier and military vehicle.

“We sent everyone home who was worried about family and friends and a few of us stayed around and accounted for everyone and then the plane flew into the Pentagon.

“We could see the smoke over the Potomac.

“There was at least one Australia, an army colonel, in the building at the time. We were worried about him but he got out alright other than being a  bit shell-shocked but physically okay.”

He said the Pentagon basically shut downed for a week to 10 days.

“I managed to talk to a couple of contacts in there so I could report back to Australia,” he said.

“They were very understandably internally focussed, looking at what was going on.

“They were working in a badly damaged building.

“The embassy was shut. Being right on the road front we couldn’t secure it in a physical way but security tightened dramatically.”

He recalled his wife Kathy’s cousin was visiting at the time and was going to visit the Pentagon that day.

“You could do guided tours up until then. I remember ringing Kathy and saying ‘don’t leave home, don’t go anywhere’. We didn’t know if this was the start of something much bigger.”

It was also a scary time for the couple’s three children, then aged 20, 18 and 16, who were all back in Australia.

“One of the boys was very worried,” he said “they had been woken up in the middle of the night to this and all knew I spent a fair bit of time in the Pentagon and were worried what may have happened.

“I remember sitting there and thinking this is all a bit surreal.

“There was so much going on, you didn’t have time to sit back and speculate or think too much. We just had to account for people.”

In his role, Rear Admiral Harrington was responsible for anyone associated with the Defence Department.

“That included quite a few civilians and their families,” he said.

“The ones who weren’t in New York or Washington were easy to get hold of but around Washington were people working in obscure areas or not around the embassy. We had people working at places like Crystal City, a big defence area outside the Pentagon. We had to make sure we had found them.

“I can remember going to the Ambassador Michael Thorley about 2pm saying ‘yep we’ve got them all’.

“The last person we found was actually someone the ambassador knew so that was a big relief for him.

“It was most surreal when the Towers came down. We watched that on TV and couldn’t believe it.”

He said he knew one woman who was driving past the Pentagon as AA77 flew over and a piece of the aircraft fell into her convertible car.

“Pieces don’t fall off aeroplanes so I don’t know what was going on,” he said.

“She reported it to someone, the FBI etc and they had a look at it and said ‘no you can keep it as a souvenir’.

“One of our nephews was visiting and three of his friends. They were in New York and were actually going to the World Trade Centre that morning. They never got there, the trains stopped - they were very lucky.

“Everything changed after that. The security around the Pentagon change dramatically.

“All the attache’s did a lot of flying around the country they had random searches of passengers in line. We’re not sure how random they were - we were always the ones who were pulled out and we had a feeling they were identifying foreigners.”

Within the defence community he said there was the understanding they were in a different ball game to what they had been in before.

“The next war or conflict is never the same as before. They knew non state players were far more important. They didn’t know how it was going to pan out and there had always been a lot of talk about asymmetrical warfare. No one was going to take on America. They knew that in a conventional sense.

“America was just too powerful, even now for people to try and take them on in a conventional military sense.

“They always knew it was going to be something unconventional.

“The struggle for them and still is, is to work out how to be more responsive and able to deal with asymmetrical threats.

“Right across America there was a huge outpouring of patriotism.

“This was a unifying event for America. It’s a very diverse country. This united them in a way very few other things did, certainly in the time I was there.

“No one does that to the United States and gets away with it.”

Prior to September 11 there had been East Timor, which Rear Admiral Harrington said in terms of strategic politics was an interesting time.

“We worked closely with the Americans on what was going on and how it was going happen,” he said.

“They were very keen for Australia to take the lead and they would play a supportive role which is very different for them in not taking the lead.”

At the completion of his US posting in 2002 he retired, just short of 40 years service.

He became a repatriation commissioner for the Department of Veterans Affairs before eventually retiring to Kangaroo Valley in 2006, where he and Kathy are heavily involved in a number of community organisations and events.

Rear Admiral Harrington said walking into the Pentagon for the first time was “awe inspiring feeling”.

“Once you have been there a few times you become a bit blase I suppose,” he said.

“It is huge. It is a city under one roof. But is also a rabbit warren of offices.”

With the Minister of Defence he met Donald Rumsfeld and William Cohen when they were secretaries of defence.

“I got to sit in on some pretty high level meetings,” he said.

“It was very interesting to sit at the end of those tables. There are certainly many conversations I couldn’t tell you about.

“I got to work with the assistant secretaries and deputy under secretaries and they worked in tiny little offices.

“It really is a rabbit warren and easy to get lost

“There are five centric rings. The offices of the senior people are on the outside and to get from one office to another you have to go through the spokes of the building.

“You have to make sure which spoke you are on and which floor, it was easy to get lost.”

He said his experience of having served on various ships was certainly an advantage.

“You have got to learn your way around and how to read directions and make sure the map address of the office you are visiting,” he said.

Inside the Pentagon is five acres of parkland.

“There is a great  story about when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Bloc countries were given access to the Pentagon for the first time,” he said.

“The parkland has a kiosk where you can buy coffee, hamburgers and donuts.

“The Soviet Bloc people couldn’t believe it was a kiosk. They thought it was an escape route for everyone to get out when the nuclear bombs started raining down.”