Soldiers jumped into action after D.C. crash

Courtesy photo Chief Warrant Officer 4 Dennis Oglesby used his experience in the Special Forces to help assist passengers injured in a June accident on the Washington Metro system's red line.

Thomas Brown / Staff Martin Griffith, who was on active-duty for 14 years, now works at the Pentagon. Griffith was on the Metro Red Line train that crashed in June and provided triage for fellow passengers who were injured in the crash.

Soldiers jumped into action after D.C. crash

By Matthew Cox - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Aug 23, 2009 8:32:24 EDT

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Dennis Oglesby and former Army Master Sgt. Martin Griffith didn’t realize right away that a Metrorail train had smashed into the rear of the train they had just boarded June 22.

“I heard a loud noise from the rear of the car ... what the [expletive] was that?” Griffith recalled saying.

No one was hurt in their car, the fifth on the six-car train, so Oglesby said “let’s go.”

Griffith followed.

“We took off and ran for the rear of our car and opened up the emergency doors between that car and our car,” Griffith said.

“The people in that car were all lying on the floor in various states of picking themselves up.”

Griffith and Oglesby, who both work at the Pentagon in the Army’s Personnel Recovery Branch, had no way of knowing it at the time, but they were in the middle of the worst Metrorail train crash in the Washington, D.C., subway system’s 33-year history. When it was over, nine people would be dead and more than 70 injured.

The two men began assessing injuries and helping passengers toward the front of the train.
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Soldiers jumped into action after DC crash