Two sisters who were rescued from the Pentagon's daycare center on 9/11 are both now serving their country as members of the United States military.
Hanna and Heather Born were two of approximately 140 infants and toddlers playing in the Defense Department's Child Development Center when horror struck on September 11, 2001.
A plane crashed into the Pentagon building just 200 yards away from the children.
Heather was only four months old when the attacks took place and as such has no recollection of the events that unfolded that day, however, her older sister Hanna says she remembers some horrific moments.
In an interview with CBS News, Hanna, who was three at the time, said: "I was in the daycare center playing and dancing with some of my classmates.
"We were playing with those dance ribbons, and then the next thing I can remember was kind of being in the hallway."
Hanna said she experienced "sensory overload" as she saw a "groundswell of people" rushing out of the Pentagon.
She recalled hearing fire alarms and "basically every type of emergency vehicle" alongside the "really acrid smell from the burning jet fuel and smoke."
The children at the daycare center were evacuated by service members, and though Hanna said she doesn't know the names of those involved in the efforts, she said, per CBS, she hopes that "they know how their actions have inspired" herself and her sister, and how they both hope to "pay it forward".
Hanna, who is now a Second Lieutenant, graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2019, while her sister Heather is now a midshipman in the Naval Academy's class of 2023.
Discussing their decision to join the military, Hanna said: "There's been so many lives that have been forever changed by the events of that day and everything that has ensued afterwards, so I think for us, it's just constantly about remembering and figuring out what we can do to best honor them."
The sisters were born to parents who both also have military backgrounds, but thankfully they were not in the Pentagon on the day of the attacks.
In the days after the attack their father, a retired marine, took the young girls to a hill overlooking the Pentagon so he could try to explain what had happened, per CBS.
Hanna explained that she also tried to comprehend what had happened through drawings with her mother.
Hanna said that the more her mom, retired Brigadier General Dana Born, drew, "the less anxious she appeared, since she was gradually piecing things together from that horrific day that was difficult for even adults to comprehend."
