My daughter and I agree that we learned about her grandmother’s death by a telephone call that I took while she and her brother stood nearby. That is all that we agree on. She says that we were at the beach, and I was on my cell-phone. She has a vivid memory of having just discovered a tidal pool teeming with baby fish when she heard the change in my voice and knew something bad had just happened.?I remember the call coming in on our landline. I?have a vivid memory of?what my ex-husband’s voice sounded like as he told me the news. I remember that as he spoke, I was?looking down at my hand as I ran my fingers over cracks in the lid of the old piano in our living room.
One of us is right, and the other has somehow conflated two memories. But neither of us is lying. We are both reporting the truth as we remember it.
And making me remember that memory is recent publicity about another’s memory.
Last Friday during a broadcast of NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams reported on the public tribute to a man who had saved his life, Command Sergeant Major (CSM) Tim Terpak. Williams had arranged for Terpak to be honored at a New York Rangers game the two attended.
Williams set the stage for video of the tribute by telling the story of how he had met CSM Terpak:
?The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG,? Williams said on the broadcast. ?Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded, and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.?
Almost immediately veterans who had been in the chopper that?took fire took to social media to deny Williams’ version of events. He was not in the helicopter that was shot down, but in the one behind it. (It’s since been confirmed that Williams’ helicopter was, in fact, struck by small arms, leaving dents in the craft. And its pilot Rich Krell confirms that, too.) Williams has since apologized, blaming the fog of memory for causing him to conflate his chopper with the one that went down.
No one, it seems, believes that a person can misremember such a significant event. How could he remember a brush with death that he never actually had?
The answer is that Williams had a very real brush with death, one that lasted more than 50?hours.
The?Chinook helicopter that Williams was riding in was burdened with a large bridge component so it was flying slowly and low to the ground. He said that he knew that they were in trouble when he heard a broadcast over the radio.
In a news broadcast aired later, we can hear a recording of the same thing that Williams heard one of the pilots say:?”We were under fire as we came in. We currently are not under fire now.” The pilot went on and says that they were going to need some sort of protection.?You can imagine how the atmosphere in that helicopter changed. They had just gone from a supply run to a war zone.
Minutes later, and with no explanation, the helicopter that Williams was riding in was ordered to set down in the desert. It was around that time that?Williams learned that they were north of?the front lines in a territory still teeming with enemy combatants. William’s helicopter landed near another chopper from the same platoon. The shaken pilots and crew from the other Chinook told Williams that a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) had pierced the tail of their helicopter and winged one of the pilots in the ear.
The two choppers, their crews, and Williams were all in the same boat. They sat there in the desert like the proverbial ducks, virtually defenseless in enemy territory.
And as luck would have it, the mother of all sandstorms was on its way towards them. While it might make it more difficult for the enemy to find them, it would also make it impossible for even the?undamaged?helicopter to take off. Worse, it would render all of their communication equipment virtually worthless.
To everyone’s?relief and gratitude, an infantry?unit in Bradley fighting vehicles showed up. Led by CSM Terpak, the unit protected and surrounded the passengers and crew of the grounded helicopters. For two nights and the better part of three days, Williams hunkered?down with crew members inside the helicopters while all holy hell blew outside. The infantry soldiers stood guard the whole time.
For Williams, who is not a soldier or even a war correspondent, the entire experience was one long game of dodgeball with the Grim Reaper. He was behind enemy lines in an emergency weather situation. Soldiers might have been able to shrug off his experience as a non-event. But Williams, who did not have a weapon or any training, was utterly helpless in a truly dangerous situation.
Human brains do not accurately process or record?traumatic or life-threatening events.?We know this from studies of eyewitness accounts of crime. Things that seem very important to other people are often lost as a detail.
Let me give you another example from my own experience. I was escorting a domestic violence survivor through a very difficult court proceeding last summer. What I remember about the day is the survivor’s face, how horrible the attorney for the defendant treated the survivor, and the judge’s irritation at the survivor’s emotional responses. I have an especially vivid memory of how miserably uncomfortable I was because I was sitting virtually motionless on a wooden bench for hours.
Here is what my friends remember about that day. I met them at a nearby Starbucks when the court was in recess for lunch. ?A young woman in line in front of us collapsed from the heat. According to my friends, I caught her, got her into a chair, and yelled for ice before they?could really process what was happening.
I have no memory of anything that happened at the Starbucks. In fact, I don’t even remember going there. That is because a woman fainting was an insignificant detail in a day filled with serious concern for another woman’s safety.
It seems entirely probably that the announcement that “we?were under fire” is what stuck in Williams’ mind. The bone-deep fear that could?caused would utterly eclipsed?the later report that?the only helicopter hit was the one ahead of them in the convoy.
How Williams’ experience was recorded and reported played a large role in creating Williams’ false narrative.?When Williams was able to restore communication with NBC, he reported on the incident. His report focused on two things: The hole in the tail of the chopper made by the RPG, and CSM Terpak, who Williams seemed to credit as both his savior and hero. What is especially important about that broadcast, however, is that at the time, he reported that he was not in the chopper that went down.
However, the angle that the network took was that “one of [our] own” was in serious danger. So there is almost no differentiation between what happened to Williams and what happened in areas where he was no present. In one report Tom Brokaw?described the situation by saying that Williams “had a close call in the skies over Iraq.”?In a later report he said that Williams “suffered a harrowing ordeal” in a “helicopter mission that turned dangerous.” The report is entirely factually correct, but the way it is edited and presented gives the mistaken idea?that the entire convoy was under fire and that?the helicopter carrying Williams was damaged. Remember that this is the same report in which Williams has told an accurate account. This creates what the Washington Post calls “a muddle” over?which helicopter Williams was in.
This report is?what Williams’ family and friends saw. The muddled narrative became the official account that Williams would see repeatedly.
What further convinces me that Williams was not lying is that the person who helped him reconstruct his memory for the past 12?years probably got the story?wrong.
Memory is not a recording like video footage. Instead, memories are reconstructed each time that we recall them. This leaves memory very plastic and highly susceptible to distortion by suggestion.
People who are rescued from life-threatening situations also have a real?need to reach out to their rescuers. Part of that need is about gratitude. But another part of it is the very real human need to have another person bear witness to our lives, especially the big moments. Momentous events whether they are our wedding or?a?near death experiences, can become a blur of emotions and sensations. Having someone as?a witness is deeply comforting because they can often fill in the gaps in our memory.
Williams and?CSM Terpak have stayed in touch ?since the desert ordeal.?They hung out together and exchanged emails and pictures on the anniversary of the event. Terpak, not the pilots or crews of the helicopters, was Brian’s witness. It’s?his version of event that has refreshed Williams’ memory in the 12?years that have passed.
Unfortunately, Terpak arrived after the choppers had landed. It seems highly likely that his memory of events is equally flawed.
Everything that we know about how memory works tells us that William’s claim to have misremembered is not only possible, it is highly plausible. And I, for one, believe him.
