Never Forget

[Green2Blue]

It was my senior year of high school. I was watching the news as I did every morning before I went to class. I remember the confusion after the first plane hit. I remember watching the second plane hit live, and the shock and terror that ensued.

Four days later I had my right hand raised in front of a flag and made an oath. An oath that I do my very best to uphold to this day. No event has had such an impact on the course my life would take.

I'd be interested to hear other stories from the likeminded individuals here, of either how you remember the event or how it affected you.

[grouchyjarhead]

I was stationed on Okinawa, still pretty green to the Marine Corps at the time. It was late (Okinawa is 13 hours ahead of EST) and we were watching a movie in one of my buddy's rooms as there was a typhoon blowing over outside. Next thing you know the whole barracks starts yelling "turn on your TVs, a plane hit the World Trade Center!" We started watching and then saw the second plane hit and realized what it was.

Needless to say, there was a lot of pandemonium that night. Lots of anger and getting gear ready - we didn't know who/what/where/when/why/how but we knew we would be going after SOMEbody. And we were itching to do it. Our First Sergeant asked for volunteers and I can guarantee every swinging you-know-what volunteered.

[NFARCH]

Just want to say thank you both and everyone else on the board for your service, regardless of country.

[Green2Blue]

I was stationed on Okinawa, still pretty green to the Marine Corps at the time. It was late (Okinawa is 13 hours ahead of EST) and we were watching a movie in one of my buddy's rooms as there was a typhoon blowing over outside. Next thing you know the whole barracks starts yelling "turn on your TVs, a plane hit the World Trade Center!" We started watching and then saw the second plane hit and realized what it was.

Needless to say, there was a lot of pandemonium that night. Lots of anger and getting gear ready - we didn't know who/what/where/when/why/how but we knew we would be going after SOMEbody. And we were itching to do it. Our First Sergeant asked for volunteers and I can guarantee every swinging you-know-what volunteered.

I can only imagine what it was like to be in at that time.

I still miss Oki sometimes. A lot of good memories there!

[Barkadion]

I was on the West Coast at the time. My roommate woke me up screaming: "Turn on the TV". I did. Very close friend of mine worked at the twins. I started to call her right away. She didn't pick up. It turned out that she got sick night before and she took day off. She turned her phone off and slept most of the day. I was able to get in touch with her late afternoon. You can imagine my feelings.

I can't believe it's been 15 years..

[Green2Blue]

I was on the West Coast at the time. My roommate woke me up screaming: "Turn on the TV". I did. Very close friend of mine worked at the twins. I started to call her right away. She didn't pick up. It turned out that she got sick night before and she took day off. She turned her phone off and slept most of the day. I was able to get in touch with her late afternoon. You can imagine my feelings.

I can't believe it's been 15 years..

Yikes. Glad she was ok.

[lennarn]

I was fourteen and had gotten off school early for a dentist appointment. I can't remember when I heard, but I turned on the TV in time to see the second impact live. I had never even heard of the World Trade Center. I stayed glued to the TV for the rest of that day and I think it was one of the events that shaped me to adopt a more realistic world view. The jumpers made me cry with empathy.

[Tym87]

I was stationed on Okinawa, still pretty green to the Marine Corps at the time. It was late (Okinawa is 13 hours ahead of EST) and we were watching a movie in one of my buddy's rooms as there was a typhoon blowing over outside. Next thing you know the whole barracks starts yelling "turn on your TVs, a plane hit the World Trade Center!" We started watching and then saw the second plane hit and realized what it was.

Needless to say, there was a lot of pandemonium that night. Lots of anger and getting gear ready - we didn't know who/what/where/when/why/how but we knew we would be going after SOMEbody. And we were itching to do it. Our First Sergeant asked for volunteers and I can guarantee every swinging you-know-what volunteered.

I can only imagine what it was like to be in at that time.

I still miss Oki sometimes. A lot of good memories there!

Some of the greatest memories of my life come from Okinawa

[J-Madd]

My wife was sitting stuck in the morning traffic on 395 just a few hundred yards from the Pentagon when the plane crashed. She saw it swoop low and bank around and then disappear into a cloud of fire. I've always chuckled whenever ever I met a conspiracy theorist who claims it's all a hoax: Am I to believe that my wife is in on it?

She had dropped me off at a library about a mile from our apartment in Alexandria, VA (I used to go there to work on my dissertation while my wife was teaching at George Washington) just a few minutes before she got on 395. We heard on the radio about a plane "accidentally crashing" into the World Trade Center in NYC. A young lady right next to me was really shaken up over the "air attack" here in Norther VA, and I told her she was confused because "it was really an accident in NYC." About fifteen minutes later I realized I was the one confused when an F-16 swooped over head as I was waling home and I could hear about two dozen sirens going off. I thought "Holy shit, we are being attack! I hope we aren't getting gassed." Even though I was a fat powerlifter at the time, I bet I covered that mile in about 5 mins on my way home!

It was pretty scary, because I knew my wife would've likely been in the vicinity of the Pentagon at that time, and I didn't hear from her all day. The District was an utter mess. We didn't have a cell phone at the time. She called me once on a land line when she got to GW finally, but then I didn't hear from here again after she decided to go back to VA. You might remember, that for most of the day there was worry over whether the missing plane was coming back for DC, and everybody was trying to get back over the Potomoc ASAP. She ended up spending something like six hours trying to get back to Alexandria.

We had a friend of ours living with us at the time who was in the USMC. We just sat on the couch all day worrying about my wife and wondering how long it would be until he got deployed to some place very sandy.

[grumpy4669]

I was on board the USS CONSTELLATION, two days out of Pearl Harbor on the way back to San Diego after having done a six month deployment to the Gulf. I was one of the few pilots on board that didn't have a "tiger" aboard. Tigers were family and friends the Navy would let you bring aboard to ride the ship the last week of the cruise. I had woke up for the mass brief for the air power demonstration when I ran into a buddy who said a plane had flown into the WTC. I was still shaking my head thinking "how in the f@$k did a controller let an airliner fly into a building?" as I walked into the ready room to see the second jet hit. You can only imagine the pandemonium that swept through the ship. We all expected to turn around and get sent back right away, but eventually it was decided to just bring us back a day earlier than planned as there was chatter of another attack on us as we came home. It was every landing back at NAS North Island and we were the only helos (or aircraft for that matter) flying. Lindbergh field was shut down across the bay, as no commercial traffic was flying either. We landed, shut down and the only people there to meet us was another squadron CO and our Wing Commander, not your typical post cruise receptions of wives and girlfriends. One of the other pilots who had come home early from Hawaii came in with a case of beer and told me his wife was bringing my fiancee (at the time) on base, which caught me by surprise because she had left Tampa FL two days earlier and I wasn't expecting her until at least the next day, b
ut no sooner did he say she was coming then I could hear her running across the hangar. I put my shit away and we made a beeline for Vegas so we could get married in case we got sent back out. It's surreal every time I think back on it.