I was working as a defense contractor at Ft. Polk, LA at the time. I worked in the main building where with the training systems analysis people and equipment. I remember someone saying a plane has hit a building in New York. I left my office and went into the TAF room which was full of soldiers and supporting civilians watching the large screen projection as the second plane hit. As with all here, my eyes saw what was happening but my mind couldn't process yet what f* was going on. I remember watching the soldiers around me switch gears immediately knowing there was going to be some shit going down soon and getting ready to go kick some ass. I worked in an environment that directly trains the soldiers at three major training centers and purpose of mission took on a whole new meaning that day. I still work in the business and I will not forget and take great pride in knowing what I support on a daily basis helps trains the soldier and saves lives in the long run. I still work with many who are retired and take great pride in having grown up as an Army brat and continued to support indirectly the mission. God Bless all American and all those soldiers out there serving.
That was an issue with us on our compound as well RT. They locked everything down as soon as the second plane hit. They blacked out our landline phones and prohibited anyone from using cell phones to contact anyone. We were locked down until after midnight and were in QRF planning meetings most all of the afternoon and night to make sure we would be ready for 18 hour callout. I remember that they allowed us all to make one 5 minute call to whomever we chose to in order to let them know we were ok. My wife was freaking out ... seemed like she was about to have a nervous breakdown when I finally calmed her down. Crying, speaking halfway unintelligable ... it was crazy. In my unit, we had this thing called the "Bullet". The "Bullet" was essentially a quick reaction force that had to have bag packs and ready to deploy in 18 hours including aircraft broken down and ready for airlift, etc. It was a rotating duty roster of sorts and I just happened to be carrying the beeper for the month of september. She knew that I was on call and was about to lose her mind when I finally called her.
Awesome Ho! But I have to say that there have been multiple occasions that I've wanted to punch a smart ass OC is his ****ing mouth. Some of those guys were [Richards].
We were out to sea and as you can imagine there's no cell coverage out there. To this day I have very little knowledge of what went down on the base. I know they recalled everyone, put all ships to sea that could go, and locked down the base. As Ho said, there was definitely a switch in gear with the crew and everyone was ready to kick some ass.
i had a buddy call and wake me up to tell me about the first plane, saw the second hit 2 mins after I had turned on the tv. I had been in az the previous 3 days. I had gotten off a cross country flight just 6 hours before the first plane hit.
Freshman in high school. Walked into my 2nd period art class and saw the first building ablaze on TV. My teacher told me that someone dropped a bomb on the tower. No sooner had those words left her mouth and you saw the second plane banking into the second tower. Shit got real at that point. Every class I was in the rest of the day was showing stuff on TV. It was so scary. At football practice that afternoon, our head coach talked to use for about five minutes before we got started and told us to appreciate everything we have and that that day was a good example of not knowing when your time will come. After practice, he spoke to us again for about a half hour. Told us we needed to not ever take anything for granted. Not our families, not our education, especially not our lives. It could end at any second.
This is some cool shit, Rockytop. I can't rep enough through normal means. I may have to invoke moderator powers to rep you up properly.
My family and I have visited New York and The Pentagon over the years. Both places really sent me into so many emotions. The Pentagon has the markers for every person that was killed but there was only three or four other families visiting but New York has probably thousands of people there. There were memorials on the sidewalk at the firehouse and along the road. You could tell most of the people visiting were going through the same things my wife and I were going through. Some people had the blank stare and some looked like it was pissing them off all over again and they were ready to fight. When I hear stories about the CIA torturing these terrorists, I remember the faces in the memorials and the people visiting and I wish they could hurt the terrorists more. Water boarding them isn't enough. I wish we could light them on fire and throw them off a skyscraper. Remembering this all just gets me pissed off again.
I was in third grade. I remember my teacher having the TV in our room on, but I'm not sure any of us knew what was going on. I remember doing nothing but watching the news that night with my Mom and Dad, and them explaining as well as you could to a 9 year old what had happened.
Thanks, I really wanted a bird's eye view of anything and everything in the air and it worked like a charm!
Today has been a stark reminder of how I am getting older. None of my students thus far have any recollection of that day.
Sucks about the father in law. But neat story on the visuals. It was a crazy crazy day that I hope we never have to go through again.
I was in a client meeting on I beleive the 42nd floor of 161 N. Clark in Chicago. Someone came into the conference room and advised us to gather our things quickly and evacuate. Learned what had happened on the way home. I remember the combination of emotions that day - sadness, anger, fear. Our apartment was a 10 minute walk from the Sears (Willis) Tower and offered a clear view of the building. I remember sitting there staring and hoping it was over.
I was on my 9th grade class field trip to Camp Bethel in Wise County, Virginia. We got out of the car, and the class clown comes running up shouting "the Arabs are storming the Pentagon." No one believed him. Eventually, we heard what happened, and we all piled in the back of a teacher's pick-up truck to listen to the radio. Didn't get any TV access until the afternoon of the 12th
Junior history class, my teacher was a Gulf War vet, pretty intense dude. The neighboring teacher, also a history teacher, entered the room, he looked like he had seen a ghost. He whispered in our teachers ear and he immediately got up and left the room. We knew something was up. He rolled in a cart with a TV on it, told us to be quite, to not say a single word. He flipped it on to CNN and we were all shocked. Then the 2nd plane hit. He got up from his chair and without hesitation said "class, we're going to war", he then left the room. We watched coverage for 3 days straight. And for about a week or so after it happened we didn't do hardly any work. Just discussion.
I was in the 6th grade in gym class and they rushed us all back to our home rooms. We sat there for the rest of the day and watched the news coverage.
Was listening to some Sirius sports talk show on my way to an early English class. Was cut off from the world until 9:45ish. When I got back to car to leave campus and head to work, the radio was still on, and I just heard the end of a caller asking some question about something sports-related, and the host said something to the effect of, "Well, sports are the last thing on our minds, with all that's going on in New York." That was as I was pulling out onto Neyland. I clicked to another news station and heard them talking about the Twin Towers being hit. I can't remember if they had said that It was the first or second tower that had just been hit, or even if it was that one or both had just collapsed. I don't recall a single thing that they said after that first sentence. I don't remember completing my drive to work - it was like I was teleported to work. My next memory was of walking into the kitchen at work, and seeing everyone standing in complete silence, watching the story unfold on television. I don't remember anything else about that day - not one detail - until sometime after noon, when I had an overwhelming compulsion / primal fear / panic to make sure that my family and friends were ok. That I'm probably the only member of my family who has ever been within 500 miles of NYC, or that none of my close friends were traveling anywhere near it, either, didn't matter at all to me. I had to hear from each one, to make sure they were ok. The next 2-3 days are just a blur of things, comprised mainly memorable snippets of things I saw on television. I might have slept 12 hours in the days immediately after it. I think I just felt like if I could hear enough of the reports, or some detail, that I'd be able to wrap my mind around it all, and make sense of it all. I never did, and likely still haven't. The only thing I can equate to that feeling was the 98 game versus UF. I was in the upper deck, parallel to the cross-bar of the field goal that UF was kicking into. I was so nervous during that game, that I made myself sick and threw up several times. And it never occurred to me - it never crossed my mind - that if UF missed that kick, we would win. I saw the ball go up, but because of the angle of my seat, I couldn't tell if it was good or not. I just saw a little strip of Tennessee fans, sitting vertically (right behind the upright) start cheering. And then the place exploded. I was there with four friends (they drove) and remember one saying "WE WON!". I don't remember how I got from that spot, to the brick wall, about to jump down into the field. I don't remember leaving my friends, going down the ramps, deciding to go onto the field, nothing. It was surreal. That was the only other time that I had anything approaching the 9/11 attacks.
Today I've been trying to remember more about that day, my memory of it is faded, I think because as a kid I didn't understand the magnitude of it. It leads me to wonder about the path our country would've taken if 9/11 never happened, it's an interesting thing to imagine.
