By Lisa Burgess and Sandra Jontz, Washington bureau

WASHINGTON The Defense Department created a historic new medal, the civilian equivalent of a Purple Heart, to honor Pentagon employees killed or injured during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday.

There was little doubt that active-duty military members killed or injured in the attack would receive the traditional Purple Heart, but the Defense of Freedom medal marks the first time in U.S. history that civilians have been formally recognized for wounds received in combat.

"For most of our history, war has been something that has largely taken place on foreign soil," Rumsfeld said. The Sept. 11 attacks "brought the battlefield home to us."

Ninety people have been identified as eligible for the red, white and blue-striped Defense of Freedom medal, according to Charles Abell, assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Management Policy.

That includes not only Pentagon employees, but civilians who worked in the World Trade Center or flying on government business aboard one of the hijacked aircraft, Abell said.

The obverse and reverse of the Defense of Freedom Medal.

Rumsfeld also has the option, on a case-by-case basis, of awarding the new medal to civilian contractors working for the Pentagon at the time of the attack.

Eddie Rowenhorst, 32, an Army civilian, will be one of the recipients of the unprecedented award.

"I think he deserves it. He gave 11 years of civilian service for the Department of the Army, and to be taken this way, well, this is something my children will cherish," Traci Rowenhorst said.

Her daughters, ages 3 and 7, dont quite understand what has happened to their father. Shes done her best to educate without terrifying them.

"But they understand hes not coming home," Rowenhorst said. "They are small children and do what they do to get by."

Rowenhorst, 27, applauded the Pentagon for establishing the award.

"They are honoring the people that put in a lot of hard work to make the government and [Department of Defense] run as much as the military itself does," she said.

"I had been thinking that he should have a medal, they all should, but I figured that may not happen. This is a small consolation that he was honored in the whole tragedy."

At least 6,347 people were killed or are presumed dead when terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners on the East Coast. Two jets crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed into a field in Somerset County in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Abell did not know how many of the 90 civilians identified so far were working in the Pentagon at the time of the attack and how many were elsewhere. Nor was Abell able to provide a breakout of how many individuals were killed versus seriously injured.

Abell warned, in any case, that the number of people awarded the medal might change. The Pentagon is still searching for individuals who were wounded and sought medical treatment on their own.