Hearing everyone else's stories makes me realize how creepily practical and rational my whole clan really is.
It's always interesting to me to hear other's stories about where they were and I always put them in comparison to my own remembrance and also to where I was in my life. As a soldier at the time, I wonder if the men and women also had the same sense of feeling like a caged animal after the Pearl Harbor attacks. I can remember gearing up, walking to the C-130 in Uzbek, looking around at my friends who just needed to have boots on the ground in the country that housed the terrorists that killed so many people just a month earlier. We flew into Afghanistan at 0230 in a C-130 that was completely blacked out, windows covered, no map lights, nothing ... it was complete darkness and the roar of the engines. It was an eerie feeling. I'll never forget landing in Bagram in October 2001, getting kicked off the C-130 in the middle of the night and looking around trying to get our bearings. We knew the area was heavily mined so leaving the unimproved runway was not an option. As we scanned the area around us, I caught sight of a older gentleman and a little boy that may have been 8 or 9. They walked in a single file line through the dirt and up to a dirt road where the little village houses were. We all looked at one another and proceeded to get our asses on that little trail. Apologies for blowing up the thread with war stories.
9th grade Algebra class. An announcement was made over the intercom IIRC correctly and then we turned on the overhead monitor to find out what was going on in New York. The rest of the day was spent in each period mostly with the entire class being glued to the TV. I remember going home feeling pretty unsure of what would happen next since 14 year old me was pretty shaken up by what was going on that day.
I remember my cousin (in the AF) he was station in Ogden,UT. He told me that his office overlooked the runway at the base and he watched bombs being loaded on to cargo planes for hours and hours everyday of the week for several weeks.
My father could rarely be shaken (it pisses me off at times I didn't get more of this trait than I did), and I called him that day as I was trying to process everything. It was one of the few times I remember him at least being audibly shaken.
I can remember my Papaw plainly telling me as his voice shook... "this is worse than Pearl Harbor." He then proceeded to tell me he wishes his health was good enough to sign back up to active duty and "put a few rounds through those MFers."
Also placing an emphasis here on 9th grade. At the time of the news there were people in my class that were making light about the news and joking around about the entire situation. Could have been a way for some to cope......could have been some of them might have not understood the severity of the situation at the time. Whatever. Regardless I remember even at that age being pretty pissed that some of my "classmates" could be so insensitive.
Agree and remember that as well. From this side it's rather clear that 9th graders are not the brightest crayons in the box.
Funny war story: we had just moved helicopters to FOB Salerno which was over close to the Pakistani border. The special ops guys referred to Salerno as Rocket City because every night the FOB was blanketed with rockets and mortars. Me and my crew got to the FOB in the middle of the night once again. Because of the threat of rockets and mortars, Salerno was under light discipline after sunset which obviously means no flashlights, not even red lenses. So, we shut down, zip it up and start to walk, grasping the guy's shirt in front of us, to our hooch. Needless to say, you couldn't see shit so none of my crew knew where any of the bunkers were should we happened to get attacked. We had been laying down for about an hour when it started. Everybody usually layed in bed until they heard gravel spray the side of the tent and that was usually the sign to GTFO and make your way to the bunker. We all got up but I couldn't find my damn boots so I was the last one out. Some genius turned and shined his flashlight right in my face just as he exited the tent so was night blind when I went out. About the time I exited, a rocket hit about a hundred yards or so from where I was and scared the hell out me. I took off in a dead sprint in the general direction of where I thought the bunker would be ... keep in mind that I can't see anything. I hit a freaking picnic table in a dead sprint and went airborne head first into the gravel. I could barely walk for probably two weeks. It was a big joke and they even took my flight helmet and had a purple heart painted on the side. Good times.
I was a senior in high school, in economics class. We already had the tv on because we were going to watch the stock market open and stuff, so we saw the whole thing. My friend and I were both highly suspicious of a passenger liner colliding with literally one of 3 things at that altitude by accident. I know it happened before in the 40's with a B-17, but it seems like if you were going down, you'd avoid one of the only structures that high. Our economics teacher lectured us about truth being stranger than fiction. Then the second one hit and everyone in the world knew it was no accident. And the truth was a Tom Clancy novel.
Cool story. And here I would think "light discipline" would mean you could take it easy for awhile, maybe grow a mustache.
