September 14, 2001

Since I have been a member of the Nam Knights, I have been asked many times, "Just what it is that makes the Nam Knights special? What makes you guys different?" I have formed several different answers over the years, but the cowardly attack on the United States on September 11th has crystallized my thinking about what it means to be part of the Nam Knights of America, an American military veteran and law enforcement motorcycle club.

About 50% of our members are veterans of military service. Many of us are veterans of the Vietnam War and/or other conflicts in places like Panama, Grenada and Southwest Asia during Desert Storm.

The balance of the Nam Knights are with various law enforcement agencies up and down the East Coast of the United States. Several are members of the New York Police Department, and as far as I know all of them are involved in some way with the rescue effort now underway in New York City.

When the call came, hundreds of New York City's Finest and Bravest moved directly to the site of the World Trade Center finding one tower burning furiously from a direct hit by a fuel-laden airliner. Without regard to consequences, they moved into the burning building. Others set up a perimeter and began organizing rescue efforts within the shadows at the base of the giant 110 story towers.

We all know what happened next. Another plane struck the other tower. That tower collapsed in a heap of fiery steel and glass; followed shortly thereafter by the crash of the first. Hundreds of New York Firemen and dozens of New York Policemen are missing in the rubble, in addition to the thousands of persons they were sworn to protect and to serve.

And that is the key to the difference between the Nam Knights and other bike clubs. Once you have sworn an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States, which is really a symbol for the people of this country, or once you have sworn an oath to serve and protect the citizens of your community, often something happens inside you that makes you different from other people.

I remember when the Desert Storm campaign was moving rapidly toward the land battle most of us knew was coming. I couldn't sleep or fully concentrate on those things I should have. I later found I shared this feeling with many other veterans I knew when I said, "Send me! I know what I'm doing. Those kids don't know! Send me…" Of course they didn't send me, and "those kids" did know what they were doing, but the point is the oath I had sworn over two decades before was at work in me.

In an e-mail conversation Allen "LT" Ferg, (a former Marine lieutenant who once earned his pay in a place called Khe Sanh in Vietnam and now our Chapter's Vice President) he and I agreed that there was this almost overwhelming desire to "do something." We joked back and forth about wanting to run to the "sound of the guns."

But it is no joke. It was the call to duty that has become an ineradicable part of each of us.

In New York the other day, law enforcement members of the Nam Knights didn't need to say "send me." They went with their colleagues into the precincts of disaster.

I think that is the essence of the Nam Knights. Almost all of us have, at one time or another, risked our lives, or were prepared to risk ourselves in the service of others. Out of that shared willingness to deny "self" in favor of "community" has grown the brotherhood of the Nam Knights.

After hearing and seeing what my brothers and their fellow officers, fire fighters and EMTs are doing in New York, and knowing the urge-to-serve that struggles in the rest of us, I recognize the pride I have as a member of this special band of brothers which recognizes duty over self.

Dave "Wrongway" Lewis