They were back on the streets and back at work here yesterday but the mood was subdued. As friends and workmates met the questions were the same. Where were you? Do you know anyone? Everyone knows someone who works in the Pentagon.
Dan, a worker in the Veteran's Administration was still in shock. Asked about retaliation he shook his head sadly: "It's a question of them taking this country seriously." His office was reopening, but on a voluntary basis.
Ken, a communications company manager, said that most of his workmates had turned up for work but the mood was sombre: "Productivity will not be high." The company had postponed a press conference about a product launch. .
Among journalists gathered at the State Department for a briefing it was no different. They talked in hushed tones of missing contacts in the Pentagon and the wait for news of friends working in the World Trade Centre.
On the streets the traffic seemed to flow better than usual and the presence of the police and army was more pronounced than usual. Outside the home of the Vice-President and the British embassy, neighbours on Massachusetts Avenue, there were half a dozen blue and whites.
Almost half of the Pentagon's workforce went back to work in the still burning building. However, most were evacuated again as the still uncontrolled fire that had taken hold in the roof spread to the inner ring of the building. The Secretaries of the Army and Defence were moved to the basement.
Between the building and motorway that links it and the nearby town of Alexandria to Washington, FBI teams combed the grass on their knees for even the smallest debris from the plane that gouged into the northwest side of the building.
Search-and-rescue operations led by as many as 200 firefighters were trying tentatively to get into the building to recover the dead whose numbers are still unknown.
