9/11

[02ducky]

I have posted this in the past on this terrible day in thr past.

What were you doing on 9/11/01

RIP to those that lost their lives during the terrorist attack and to those that have been lost defending this country.

God bless the United States of America!!

[StagLefty]

Hard to believe its been 14 years. I was driving into work when the first plane hit and pulled into the parking lot when the 2nd hit. Knew then that something more epic was taking place.

[ClangClang]

I lived approximately 11 miles from Ground Zero at the time. My grandma was visiting and woke me up to tell me that a plane had hit. I watched the towers fall from my buddy Jeff's rooftop. Jeff lived on a hill.

Two days prior, on Sunday evening, I had just done my first ever shift as an EMT. When our squad sent in trucks, I ran down to HQ, but they laughed (in a nice way of course) and told me that noobs aren't allowed. I wound up staying at the building for 3 days covering shifts so other guys could go to the Javits Center for rehab operations. I helped clean the trucks as they would come back. I remember being pretty resentful at the time, but I was a punk kid. Now I know better. Glad I don't have lung cancer.

Whole thing was (and still is) surreal.

Three wars. Patriot Act. CISA/CISPA. TSA.

[Great-Kazoo]

I have posted this in the past on this terrible day in thr past.

What were you doing on 9/11/01

RIP to those that lost their lives during the terrorist attack and to those that have been lost defending this country.

God bless the United States of America!!

Doing? The same thing we do today NEVER FORGET. With so many friends & family personally involved. It's something we don't take lightly.


Remember..........................
PATRIOTISM IS MORE THAN JUST A BUMPER STICKER.

[cstone]

Celebrating my 11 year old's birthday before going back to work.

September 11th will never be a terrible day for me.

Bad things happen on most days to somebody. Remember those we have lost and do what we can to keep bad things from happening to good people.

Be safe.

[ruthabagah]

I will always remember where I was. it was kind of surreal. Driving down Arapahoe going to a ford dealership for a service appointment. Get to the bay and nobody is here.... bunch of cars idling in the bay with the door open, coffee mug still on the desks with hot coffee and nobody in sight. I can hear some people talking in the customer lungee, so I make my way there and I see maybe 50 people standing, some of them visibly in shock looking above the entrance, watching on 2 large (for the time) flat screen the direct of the first tower burning.... Everybody was there: Customer, service folks, mechanics.... Then the second plane hit. I took off, trying to call my wife who was driving my old beater car with no radio, asking her.... I went to work, Citibank at the time, and because the head office in NY was evacuated they told us to leave for at least the day.... The kid school called and told me to come and pick up the little one.... It was pretty bad. A couple of weeks before I remember discussing how easy it was to get inside DIA’s concourse without passing any security, compared to how it was in other country…

[Doc45]

My older son and I watched the second plane hit in disbelief. The events that day as a high school senior sent him on his military path which continues to this day. I can honestly say I don't have a single close friend that wasn't directly impacted.

Never Forget.

[davsel]

Eating breakfast in the cafeteria on Schriever AFB watching the second plane hit live on CNN.
I remember hearing the broadcaster stating that there may be something wrong with their navigation instruments.
Later watched them fall on the big screen in a conference room.
Got sent home for two weeks.
They actually brought in metal detectors to the portals afterward. If you know about Schriever, you understand how ridiculous this was.
Every morning, we'd wait in a line stretched across the parking lot for our turn to have our bags searched and a pass through the detector.

Not seeing/hearing any planes in the sky for a while afterward was strange to me.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl6YOYdBiQ4

[Big E3]

Celebrating my 11 year old's birthday before going back to work.

September 11th will never be a terrible day for me.

Bad things happen on most days to somebody. Remember those we have lost and do what we can to keep bad things from happening to good people.

Be safe.

My mom turns 85 today. She has been sad since 2001, saying now everybody will remember my birthday for something terrible.

Cstone, make sure you let your son know he will always have to deal with that on his birthday as he gets older. Just don't let his birthday become a sad event for him, he may have a hard time understanding why adults seem to not be happy around him.

Tell him happy birthday for me.

[cstone]

Thanks.

Other than 2001, we have always gone out of our way to celebrate his birthday. He is my oldest and the day of his birth was the proudest and happiest day of my life. He knows it because I remind him of it.

Let the dead mourn the dead. Life is for living.

[cmailliard]

Never Forget

Two Words

Seems Pretty Simple

But today I think many have forgotten, not just what what was taken from us, that should be enough to Never Forget, but the bigger picture. Facebook is smeared with #neverforget. This is not a one day thing to #neverforget.

14 years ago I was at the Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston AL. The cover of our course book had the World Trade Center in crosshairs. It was a target, we knew it was a target, it had been attacked before. The first day of class, Monday was fairly straight forward with background on WMD's and terrorism. FBI guys were teaching most of that. They gave the normal stuff about terrorism and what the goal was, what we had heard many times before - Fear, it was all about fear.

Tuesday started normal, we were finally told about WTC and the Pentagon around 1200 a good 4 hours into the day. The rest of the day, hell the rest of the week was worthless, nothing we were learning seemed to matter anymore. That's right the curriculum we had in front of us just became outdated.

Wednesday one of the FBI guys walked in and said "Remember what we said on Monday about terrorism being about fear?" "Fuck That! They want to kill as many of us as possible." That is what changed, that is why not much mattered anymore. We had to change our mentality about our enemy, we had to change our idea of what is prepared, we had to take the fight to them, so this shit never happens again on our soil.

Many have forgotten so much, what we learned that day, what led up to the events of that day, what we learned after that day. We have a short term memory problem anymore. People forget the pain of that day. We need to remember to lesson of history so we do not repeat them, and September 11, 2001 was one of the biggest lessons we will ever learn.

Never Forget

[TheGrey]

I was at work (a veterinarian clinic), and had been working for about an hour. My husband called me at work, told me there had been a plane that hit the WTC and to turn on the news. I'd never heard the tone in his voice before, and it worried me. The television and phone were located in the room where the surgery takes place. I told the office manager to turn on the TV, and they did...just in time to watch the second plane hit. I told my husband to come home right away- RIGHT AWAY, and I started making frantic phone calls. Several of our friends were supposed to be at he Pentagon, but they were all out of the building that day. Thank god.

I remember how my perspective shifted that day. My job was such an insignificant thing, in the scheme of things. A time-wasting makework thing. I was shocked at how stunned I was. It took a while for the implications of what had happened to sink in. Living as close as we were to BWI a the time, the silence was eerie. I think the whole city flinched when we finally heard a plane again. We had to fly up to Boston a week later for a family emergency; all of the passengers were anxiously silent, and the sky marshal was very grim and visible.

I haven't forgotten- hell, it was practically yesterday. I certainly haven't forgiven, either.

[StagLefty]

Great video davsel-made my allergies act up.[Salute]

[Mazin]

Never forget that we were attacked and are continually at war with an ideology that seeks our demise.
[Salute]

[zteknik]

On my way to work, got to work saw the second plane hit. Got a phone call and was activated back on duty. Spent 2 weeks at Ground Zero in search and rescue for the first few hrs afterwards then the rest of the time just helping out going through the aftermath.
Day I will never forget.
RIP to all my freinds I have lost that day.[Salute]

[speedysst]

I was on my way home from work when the first plane hit and watched the second hit on TV when I got home. Immediately started packing my ruck and duffel bag. We were only called up for a couple of days then sent home. Kept waiting for the phone call that never came until May 2003 when we were sent to, of all places, Pueblo to guard highly secure chemical weapons. I was actually disappointed.

[th3w01f]

Our kids had a program in elementary school today, after that was done the Principal took the mic, quieted down the crowd and spoke to the kids about what happened on 9/11.

He didn't get into the religious side but he let them know that our country was attacked by terrorists and a lot of innocent people lost their lives and we should never forget them. He then told the kids that they should be thankful for our men and women in the military, law enforcement, fire, EMTs, etc. and invited all the parents who currently or have ever been in those fields to come forward. Then we all headed outside to raise the flag and lower to half mast for a moment of silence for the fallen.

Pretty cool for a grade school if you ask me.

[.455_Hunter]

I was on active duty at Fort Riley and serving as Detachment Commander for our training deployment to NTC (Fort Irwin), scheduled to begin on September 13, 2001. I skipped PT and came into work in duty uniform to catch up on paper work in my motor pool office. My NCO came running up the stairs yelling “Sir!, Sir!, Turn on the radio!”. I responded with a grumpy “Why?”, and he said a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. We found a news station on the radio and tried to get information from the internet on cnn.com, yahoo.com, etc, but everything quickly bogged down. I called my girlfriend (now wife) so she could watch on TV at home and my parents back in Colorado. I was on the phone with my girlfriend when she said “I think it just collapsed”. In the orderly room, the 50,000 KIA estimate was discussed, but then the news about the Pentagon hit and we got punched in the gut again.


My unit quickly went on a war footing, which now seems silly, but did not on that day- kicking out all civilian contractors from the motor pool area, making FedEx dump shipments outside the gate, stringing concertina wire around the Battalion HQ, mandatory ID check as all entrances, drawing small arms. One thing I distinctly remember was how sharp and crisp the salutes were that afternoon, as all the soldiers suddenly realized this was “real” now. I gassed-up on post that evening to avoid the cluster at the civilian stations, and by the time I left, there was an M1A1 sitting at the gate with a belt loaded M2 and 120 mm ammo ready to go, with the sector of fire being downtown Ogden, KS. My girlfriend and I did manage to tear away from the news and take our dog to the off-leash park nearby- it was strange to not see any contrails in the sunset.


My unit did manage to deploy on the 14th, flying out of Forbes Field in Topeka on a chartered Northwest Airlines 747. I sat next to our Battalion XO on the flight, and the stewardesses were EXTREMELY friendly. I figured we were about the only civilian plane in the sky, which was interesting to contemplate if there were still sleeper cells armed with MANPADS still waiting to strike. Some folks asked me later if I was scared about our flight being hijacked- I laughed, stating a sarcastic “not really” when I was sharing the flight with 300+ active duty Army officers, NCOs and soldiers. Because of the deployment, it was difficult to follow news on the initial Special Ops and air strike campaigns, but I can say that the intensity of our training was stepped-up a notch or two. One challenge we had was rumor control from back home, specifically since we were already packed-up, that the brigade (hardly the tip of the spear) would deploy direct to Afghanistan from NTC.