That he had been sent there to minister to the savaged psyches and spirits of others hardly seemed to matter in the moment. The young Army chaplain in the back of the tent was clearly overcome, the weight of what he had seen and heard over a long day of pain-letting now crushing him from the inside.

A Navy chaplain himself, though of much lengthier experience, Doug Waite saw the young man and went to his supervisor and suggested he talk to him. The colonel ignored him. Waite persisted.

“You could tell (the young chaplain) was traumatized,” said Waite, a part-time Hawaii resident who will be featured on the Tuesday episode of the PBS series “We’ll Meet Again.” “He just couldn’t function. I went back to the colonel, but he just blew me off. So I went back myself.”

It was Sept. 14, 2001. Three days earlier Waite had been in his office at U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C., when he heard American Airlines Flight 77, under the control of Al-Qaida terrorists, crash into the Pentagon. After helping to accompany the dead in transport to Dover Air Force Base, he had been dispatched to New York to work with first responders, families and others at ground zero.

Like the young chaplain, Waite had accompanied officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in debriefing those working amid the still-smoldering scene of chaos and destruction. Unlike him, however, Waite had already acquired hard-earned experienced in dealing with “the bad stuff.”

“I went and put my arm around him, and we hugged and prayed together and cried together,” Waite said. “I never saw him again after that. We didn’t even know each other’s names.”

Waite didn’t give the encounter much thought. For the next week he ran teams to what was then known as “the Pile,” the remains of the World Trade Center, ministered to exhausted first responders and disaster relief workers, to survivors and their families. When his time was over, he returned to his post in Washington.

A month or so later, there had been an article in the New York Post about an Army chaplain named Tim Mallard who described an encounter with an older chaplain who consoled him during a moment of crisis. Waite deduced that it was him. Fine. He didn’t think much about it.

Two years later he was promoted to captain, the Navy equivalent of a colonel in other branches, and ran the Coast Guard’s Chaplain Corps operations west of the Rockies. He served his last post in Hawaii before retiring in 2012. Life went on.

Then last year the Military Chaplains Association sent out word that the BBC was looking for people with stories about Operation Desert Storm. Waite had served aboard the USS Nimitz during the conflict and thought he might be able to contribute a worthy story or two. But after discussing his background, producers at the BBC decided they didn’t want Waite’s Desert Storm stories; they wanted to know more about what happened at ground zero.

The producers located Mallard, who indicated that he’d like the opportunity to see Waite again. Some 16 years after they reached out to support each other in a chaplain’s tent in middle of the worst destruction either man had ever witnessed, Waite and Mallard reunited at St. Paul’s Chapel near the 9/11 Memorial.

The meeting was brief, just longer than it took to complete filming for what would become the “We’ll Meet Again” segment, but the two men have stayed in touch, their bond extended by an unforeseen consequence of the service they have provided.

“We both have PTSD,” Waite said.

Over a military career that spanned some 34 years, Waite had seen much that tested not just his ability to cope with emotional distress, but also the depth and breadth of his faith.

He once watched as a jet crashed into a deck just above his office on a naval ship.

“I understood then that because of my faith I’m not afraid to die,” he said. “I don’t want to but I’m not afraid.”

He also was aboard the USS Lincoln in the Persian Gulf when suicide bombers attacked the USS Cole in Yemen, killing six U.S. sailors.

“As chaplains we get to experience a lot of bad stuff,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff before. You learn not to look in the body bags. You can pray but you can’t look. That stuff stays with you forever.”

In New York, however, Waite said he saw “acres of destruction,” the aftermath of cruelty he could not fathom. He saw sights and heard firsthand stories that he couldn’t shake. In vulnerable moments he wished he could take his cross and exact vengeance on those who had perpetrated the attacks.

Waite said the protocols of duty helped him to survive. He had a partner for debriefings, he had a roommate, he was never alone. At the end of each day, each chaplain was required to attend a debriefing of their own. No one could get away with saying they were OK.

Still, when Waite returned home, his wife took one look at him and told him to find someone to talk to; she knew she couldn’t stand to share that particular burden.

But it wasn’t until Waite was sent to minister to people in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that he started to understand just how much 9/11 had affected him.

“Then everything came back to me,” he said. “I felt overwhelmed with sadness and horror.”

And so Waite and Mallard text and email regularly to check in, to make sure each is never really alone.

Waite remains active as a volunteer chaplain both in Honolulu at Tripler Army Medical Center and at the Veterans Administration hospital in Seattle, where he spends part of each year.

“I’d like it if civilians would just pray for the servicemen and women who are out there representing them,” he said. “And I want to encourage veterans who are experiencing PTSD to seek help.”