O'FALLON, Mo. — People gather every year to honor the fallen heroes of the September 11 attacks.
Many who remember it like it was yesterday, others who weren't even born yet.
The 9/11 monument at O'Fallon, Missouri, City Hall gives a small visual of the massive destruction that happened at the World Trade Center.
For former O'Fallon Battalion Chief Mark Stenger, it's a flashback to the answer he called helping to recover remains amidst all the debris 20 years ago.
"It's something that I'll never forget. It's embedded in my mind forever," Stenger said.
Stenger worked for the O'Fallon Fire District for 35 years. He was also serving on the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the time of 9/11 and was deployed to Ground Zero a week after the attacks.
"When you walk, it was like ankle to knee deep and just ashes and so forth, and what surprised me most, well it didn't really surprise me but you could smell the death," Stenger said.
For two weeks, Stenger worked in the medical examiner's office to identify remains brought in from the destruction.
On his last day, they brought in a firefighter whose body was still intact with facial and chest injuries.
"It was sad. I couldn't really take my eyes off that individual, because it just touched your heart and touched home about how dangerous this job really is," Stenger said.
Stenger now battles health problems of his own from the debris and smoke inhalation from those two weeks at Ground Zero.
"February of 2012, I went to the doctor because I had a lump in my throat, and they come back and did a biopsy and so forth and they told me I had nasal Pharyngeal cancer, and it was stage four," Stenger said.
Through chemo, radiation and three major surgeries, he's been cancer-free for three years, proving to have the same fighting spirit now as he did when called to help his country 20 years ago.
"It's been a very rewarding career for me and I would say, I would do it all over again. That's how much I love my job and what I did," Stenger said.
Stenger retired in 2015 because of his health.
He said if he could, he'd still be working to this day.