I’ve been feeling guilty all day because I haven’t written anything about 9-11 today. There’s really not much more to write than what’s already been said in a million places today. I could tell you about my experiences that day, but that goes against the Big Number One Policy of this blog, it’s never been about me, it’s been about the men and women who stood up that day and drew a line in the sand.
I never felt so small and insignificant than when I watched the video of the troops pouring out of the smoldering and shuddering Pentagon, several blocks from where I was. And then someone called for volunteers to help the injured and like a giant lime green sea, they all, hundreds of them, turned and rushed back into the building.
So, yeah, never forget the first casualties of this particular phase of our war against terror, not the first phase nor the last, but also never forget those who rushed to fill the void they left. Many of whom are you, many of whom I’ve had the pleasure and great pride to call my friends.
My niece was a nurse at Walter Reed when that happened. I called her late in the day to find out how she was doing. She said it was a war zone, more triage than she had ever seen, IDs being demanded everywhere, soldiers wearing body armor and carrying weapons. She said she was bone-weary but had to go back in a few hours, so I sent her some comfort food things. She shipped to Iraq shortly after that.
A gal my wife worked with had a brother, who was a Colonel, that worked in the Pentagon on that day. This gal’s family was quite upset, because they couldn’t get in touch with him and hadn’t heard from him for the first couple of days (I can’t imagine why).
I have an 11 year old airline ticket and a travel itenerary in my top desk drawer. It has my name on the front in the fine script of my secretary and a sticky that reads “Fair weather, Class B’s”, with a smiley face.
It was sitting in the middle of my desk when I arrived at work on Sept 11th. I was scheduled to fly to the Pentagon early on the 12th to brief LTG Maude. He was the highest ranking officer killed in the attack.
But for the grace of God and 24 hours….
“Let’s roll.”
Amen, COB6!!!
Those of us who were on Paratrooper.net back then remember that our friend had just been appointed as the undersecretary of secret squirrel stuff and it was his first day on the job, but he was in Colombia on his first recon of his duties. The word is that the plane hit in the vicinity of his office.
@4, Those two words never fail to give me goosebumbs.
11 years later and I still can’t watch anything related to 9-11 without getting angry. No amount of therapy and liquor is enough to quench the rage I felt that day and feel today.
I have deeply mixed feelings. Outrage is secondary: Outrage about the attacks, outrage that even though it well outweighs Pearl Harbor in several ways, we STILL haven’t fought back with THAT level of fury, and outrage that our folks are STILL paying the price for half-assed measures.
Primarily I feel pride. Giants abounded on that day. Many of them were US.
I was enroute to a live fire range that morning…when we got there the news started coming in and the range got canceled, everyone went back to the unit area and post went into total lockdown.
I remember everyone was watching the news non stop and my 1SG telling us ” You’ll all be going to war soon!” He was right.
This morning was so clear and eerily calm, just like that morning 11 years ago.
Let’s remember that the first actual attack on the World Trade Center was in February 1993, orchestrated by Ramzi Yousef.
From the FBI’s website:
2/26/1993: At about 17 minutes past noon, a thunderous explosion rocked lower Manhattan.
The epicenter was the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center, where a massive eruption carved out a nearly 100-foot crater several stories deep and several more high. Six people were killed almost instantly. Smoke and flames began filling the wound and streaming upward into the building. Those who weren’t trapped were soon pouring out of the building—many panic-stricken and covered in soot. More than a thousand people were hurt in some way, some badly, with crushed limbs.
It was Friday, February 26, 1993, and Middle Eastern terrorism had arrived on American soil—with a bang.
As a small band of terrorists scurried away from the scene unnoticed, the FBI and its partners on the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force began staffing up a command center and preparing to send in a team to investigate. Their instincts told them that this was terrorism—they’d been tracking Islamic fundamentalists in the city for months and, they’d later learn, were tantalizingly close to encountering the planners of this attack. But hunches weren’t enough; what was needed was definitive proof.
They’d have it soon enough. The massive investigation that followed—led by the task force, with some 700 FBI agents worldwide ultimately joining in—quickly uncovered a key bit of evidence. In the rubble investigators uncovered a vehicle identification number on a piece of wreckage that seemed suspiciously obliterated. A search of our crime records returned a match: the number belonged to a rented van reported stolen the day before the attack. An Islamic fundamentalist named Mohammad Salameh had rented the vehicle, we learned, and on March 4, an FBI SWAT team arrested him as he tried in vain to get his $400 deposit back.
One clue led to another and we soon had in custody three more suspects—Nidal Ayyad, Mahmoud Abouhalima, and Ahmed Ajaj. We’d also found the apartment where the bomb was built and a storage locker containing dangerous chemicals, including enough cyanide gas to wipe out a town. All four men were tried, convicted, and sentenced to life.
The shockwave from the attack continued to reverberate. Following the unfolding connections, the task force soon uncovered a second terrorist plot to bomb a series of New York landmarks simultaneously, including the U.N. building, the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, and the federal plaza where our office in New York is housed. On June 24, 1994, FBI agents stormed a warehouse in Queens and caught several members of a terrorist cell in the act of assembling bombs.
Meanwhile, the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing was still on the run—and up to no good. We’d learned his name—Ramzi Yousef—within weeks after the attack and discovered he was planning more attacks, including the simultaneous bombing of a dozen U.S. international flights. Yousef was captured in Pakistan in February 1995, returned to America, and convicted along with the van driver, Eyad Ismoil. A seventh plotter, Abdul Yasin, remains at large.
We later learned from Yousef that his Trade Center plot was far more sinister. He wanted the bomb to topple one tower, with the collapsing debris knocking down the second. The attack turned out to be something of a deadly dress rehearsal for 9/11; with the help of Yousef’s uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al Qaeda would later return to realize Yousef’s nightmarish vision.
Ramzi Yousef was arrested in 1995 and is now incarcerated at ADX Florence, Colorado, in case anyone wants to go and visit him and pound the living crap out of him, or take him a nice meal of pork sausage.
My husband and son were watching the news that morning to see how Ed McCaffrey of the Denver Broncos was doing with his broken leg. When I stepped out of the shower, they called me to watch the TV saying that a plane had flown into the WTC. At that point, most people thought it was a small commuter plane. As we were watching, the second plane hit. I said “My God, they’re doing it on purpose!”. My son and I looked at each other and said “Debt of Honor”. We had both read Tom Clancy’s book years before in which the Japanese flew a 747 into the Capitol. I was pretty angry when government officials said they couldn’t imagine turning jets into missiles. Well, Tom Clancy thought of it in 1994 and clearly, so did the terrorists. Maybe they read Tom Clancy.
I spent the rest of the day frantically trying to find out if my former co-workers in WTC 2 had gotten out OK. I had left the company the year before. Thankfully, every one of them was OK. Most people weren’t in the office yet (the 33-35 floors) and those that were remembered 1993 and got out quickly. My boss was coming up from the subway when the buildings were being evacuated. As he went outside, he saw the people falling/jumping. It was just horrifying.
I had been there the year before. We always flew out for budget meetings during the first week of September. I just couldn’t believe that such an immense complex was completely gone and my heart ached at the terror those poor people who were trapped must have felt. On previous visits, there were frequent bomb threats including one at which we had a meeting scheduled. People who experienced the 1993 bombing didn’t forget and that may have saved many on 9/11.
The following May, we were in DC for my uncle’s MOH ceremony, part of which was conducted in the Hall of Heroes at the Pentagon. Needless to say, we were a sober group as we drove up to the building in the bus and could see the repairs underway.
My gratitude to all of those who answered that call to action in the following days and to this day. Your sacrifice keeps us safe here at home.
I can’t describe how it felt. Knowing that *I,* proverbial ball grabber could not go and help somehow. My brother and I wanted to go to the nearest recruiter, convinced that our age and wisdom would be paramount when war came.
In June, I finally saw Ground Zero. The depth of the horrors of that day really hit me then in that small proximity of space as I wandered each square memorial fountain. I had no words and was incredibly stunned. I get verkelmpt just thinking of it.
And so it goes that the fabric I bought on September 11th, 2001, emblazoned with Old Glory sits where it was placed in solidarity, and now remembrance. Todd Beamer, Andrew Golkin, Father Mychal Judge…I won’t forget.
In hindsight, I am grateful to have been on duty and had some specific things to do. Others had to simply endure, wondering how to contribute something of significance. At least all I had to do was just do my job.
Except that it became a job in DC, where things were chaotic, among other things. And quiet. So very, very quiet. When I finally had part of a day off to drive around and clear the cobwebs, it was that quiet which was almost frightening.
I happened to be at the Wall the evening before National reopened. A Viet Nam vet and I were chatting about this and that when we heard an airplane coming in. We were briefly terrorized at the sound before we realized that if flights were to continue the next day there had to be some airplanes brought in. Then a helicopter landed next to us. Well, we each quickly decided that there were other places we needed to be – decided there was less stress back on base than playing tourist for a couple of hours!