I feared it the minute we heard the news that a Metro rail train crashed on the Red Line on Monday evening. We saw the grainy images on the television screen of the crushed train on the line near, and I wondered: Were there any soldiers, Marines, airman or sailors on board? After all, the train was coming from the direction of Walter Reed hospital, and most days it is impossible to ride Metro without seeing someone in uniform.

As it turned out, there were at least two servicemen. One was Chaplain David Bottoms who serves at Walter Reed who reached out to the injured immediately after the crash and offered prayer. The other was Maj. Gen. David F. Wherley Jr., 62, the former commander of D.C. Army and Air National Guard. He and his wife were among the nine killed.

On 9/11, Wherley commanded the 113th Wing at Andrews Air Force Base, and on that ordered he scrambled to get jets over the nation’s capital to protect it from further attacks. According to a 2002 interview he gave the Washington Post, his is “first inkling that the attacks would go beyond New York was when one of his officers, whose husband worked at the Pentagon, saw on television that the building had been hit and began shrieking.”

He retired in June 2008 as commander of the D.C.'s National Guard.

His story doesn’t fit directly into the kind of reporting we do at N&S but I wanted this with you, dear readers, as I know many of who would want to know more about him.