Today is September 11

[Ooh-Rah]

It is my JFK moment. I will never forget where I was....in a work meeting and my cunt boss would not give us time to monitor what was happening. I left the company shortly after.

So many documentaries out there. Check this one out.... The Woman Who Wasn’t There.

It will piss you off to no end, but like any great train wreck, you will not be able to look away.


That aside, good morning America!

NSFW

 

[Gunz]

I was at work, standing and watching the TV monitors in stunned silence. I had my arm around the shoulders of an old friend and female co-worker as she wept. I remember her asking quietly "what does this mean?" I said it means whoever did this is going to be annihilated.

September 12th I was at MacDill--which was at DEFCON 3, standing by to ratchet up to DEFCON 2--watching the big C5s lumbering into the air loaded with advance CENTCOM/SOCOM equipment and personnel...headed east.

 

[racing_kitty]

I was a buck private sitting on a little hill on Ft Hood called Post Oak. That was supposed to be a month-long field problem, and it was. That much didn’t change.

I was PMCSing the rat rigs and generator for the morning before I snagged some hot chow. My team leader for this particular exercise walked over and told me to put down my paperwork and come to the tent. Thinking I’d screwed something up, I asked why. He just said that a plane had hit the north tower.

Since we were signal, we had a TV on site. It was a crappy little portable black-and-white, but still... We sat around that little TV, watching the news as it replayed that impact over and over. When the towers started to fall, I stepped into the bushes to throw up. It hurt.

Security on post was insane afterwards. We knew we were going to war after that. It was only a question of who went first.

 

[Diamondback 2/2]

I was working, heard some of it on the radio, but really didn't understand until I got home and watched it on TV. Went to check on my parents, seen my mother crying and wanting to know where to buy a gas mask. Got pretty pissed off and went to see a recruiter the next day. There was about 100 people lined up out side, ended up taking the recruiter 3 weeks to get back in touch with me.

 

[Jaknight]

I was 12 years old and found out in school I remember seeing everyone crying and going what’s happening? It was surreal

 

[Bambi]

I was just a year and a month old. I don’t remember September 11 2001, but as I got older I remember my older cousins going away. My cousins husband missing the birth of two children, I was old enough to remember May 2, 2011, old enough to see my 5th grade teacher weeping through the entire day as she day. Pictures of some bad middle eastern man on the TV with the words dead scrolling along on the news screen.

 

[Ooh-Rah]

Tonight, to remember the other September 11th, I will do my annual re-watch of 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,

As it is every year, I will finish the movie furious, but I will also remember.

 

[Devildoc]

I was in the reserves by that point, no longer AD, and was in nursing school. One of the guys in nursing school told the rest of us about it, he was watching the TV in the break room in between classes when it happened. Everyone started crying.

My reserve unit did a roster recall just to make sure everyone was accounted for, S1 said "get ready for war". I thought we were going the next day LOL, didn't realize is going to be so much later.

In the short-term, how that affected me, was I had to go aboard an Air Force Base a couple weeks later for wedding and reception, it took the SPs 15 minutes per car to clear people through the gate. It must have taken us three hours to get on base.

 

[Ooh-Rah]

 

[Brill]

I was an instructor running late and pulled my students away from the TV in the break room, where they were watching the first tower burning. I got a message over chat a second plane hit and soon one hit the Pentagon. All instructors and students returned to the break room to watch events unfold. Goodfellow AFB was on total lockdown to include landline phone traffic (very very few cells back then). Everyone was talking about a war but nobody knew who the enemy was.

Three weeks later I got an offer by a Federal agency to use my skills to learn something new and I began terminal leave a few days later (my contract was up in late Nov).

Support to CT efforts changed my life and gave me purpose.

 

[Brill]

 

[Kraut783]

I was at my reserve unit making up a day I missed....heard a plane had hit the world trade center, went into the admin room where there was a TV, in time to see the second one hit.....soon after our STU phone rang...flash to Dec 2001 at Bragg doing a train up for deployment....

 

[BloodStripe]

Senior in high school in Spanish class. In between classes people were talking about a plane crash in New York. My next class was photography and the teacher had the news on. We all watched the tv instead of doing anything photography related. I was at MEPS less than 2 weeks depping in. There were already no Marine infantry slots available from June until October of 2002.

 

[Raksasa Kotor]

I was at the office, getting ready to start the day at the trucking company I worked for at the time; we heard rumor of the first impact and turned on the TV just in time to see the second impact. I shut down ops for the day to make sure everyone had time to account for their loved ones and stayed glued to the TV.

I had already finished an enlistment in the Marine Corps and was at the tail end of my IRR commitment, so I called MCRSC the next day and volunteered to extend and deploy as an IMA; they called me back a few weeks later as things were ramping up for Afghanistan and told me I was being activated to augment the MP's at Quantico. I told MCRSC to get fucked and joined the Air Force instead.

 

[BellRinger5984]

I was only 5 years old. In fact, I had just turned 5. Sept 11 is my birthday. That day didn't mean much to me then. I didn't understand what was happening, but every year after I understood more and more what it meant. It eventually had a big impact on me.

 

[DA SWO]

Dual hatted as a navy civilian and AFSOC gained Guard Officer.
The two AG's in my sig block worked in the Pentagon (Navy Ice Center). I actually analyzed grainy satellite shots to find the ice edge, and sent data there.
I was in a SCIF, that was in a windoless building, inside a secure area. We had the only TV and our spaces were filled with people watching TV. I did a minimal analysis that day (meaningless as it turned out) and posted my work as a fuck you to the terrorists.
DefCon 3 and all RC SOF units getting a 72hr PTDO made the day more stressful as my (now ex) was attending a course next to Camp David, and I didn't know how she was getting back.
Called school to tell them my kids couldn't stay for after school activities, and called my emergency contact to ask her to grab my kids.
I-10 was clear of traffic going home that night.

 

[Dame]

I was getting the youngest ready for his day at his Jewish pre-school. The director called and I told her to say the word and we were there to stand with them. She told me to keep him home.

Everything I am today, everything I do, my 13 hour day at work, the man who loves me, it came about because of what happened that day. I had to get into the fight. I thank God for the opportunity to continue supporting you warriors.

 

[LibraryLady]

I worked in a high rise in downtown Seattle. They closed down most of the tallest buildings in the city that day. Ours wasn't closed, but we had the option to stay home.

I remember walking inside the house after my morning 2 miles, turning on the TV, seeing the first burning and then watching the 2nd get hit and thinking, "our world will never be the same again."

LL

 

[Gunz]

The Sheeple were terrified. They were clinging to people with military/war experience. "What does this mean?" Armageddon was upon us. They got over it soon enough. Maybe too soon. Ten years later half of them couldn't give a shit. And it became fashionable to defend and befriend anybody wearing a hajib.

It'll happen again someday. Bio, chem, suitcase nuke or some other Larry Lightbulb improvisation.

 

[Kaldak]

Senior in high school. I was asked to leave class after correcting my teacher who claimed the Korean war was resolved.

I went across the hall to a classroom where the teacher was grading tests, and had CNN on his TV. The first plane had just hit. When the first tower fell, it was the first time I heard a teacher cuss, "holy fuck". My parents were in the air flying to DC. It wasn't until 1500 that we finally heard they were safe.

I was in a recruiter's office the next morning.