May We Never Forget
September 11, 2007 by TJM Admin
May we never forget the results of fundamental extremism… (Moment of silence.)
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Amen.
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I was assigned to the Defense Language Institute (311th Training Squadron) and learning Korean back then.
The first plane must have hit right as I was waking up in California. I was out the door, running a little late that morning when I flipped on the radio. The DJ was asking people to switch over to another station for some important news about a major accident in New York, but he wasn’t saying much about it. I thought it was pretty odd that he was plugging another station.
I was on an access road leading out of Fort Ord, heading for the Presidio of Monterey when I switched over, and didn’t have to wait very long. Already, people were comparing it to the B-25 impact on the Empire State building, and I was wondering how badly a pilot would have to screw up for this to occur with today’s systems.
Not too many people new what was going on - our schedule had us in formation between the first and second impacts, and the vast majority of my squadron lived on the presidio - only a few would have been listening to a radio at that time of the morning. Our morning formation must have taken place after the first but before the second impact.
I think we watched the second impact live on CNN in our classrooms.
The rest of the day was pretty foggy. The TV was on most of the day, and nobody was all that interested in learning. I remember some report that the IRA was claiming responsibility, and I remember thinking that it didn’t matter if they actually did it or not: if someone wants to claim responsibilty, we should hit them AND whoever actually did it.
I remember that there were no American flags to be had - every last one of them had been bought before we were released from class.
I remember a tall sand dune on my way back home, right around the intersection for that access road back to Fort Ord. There were at least a dozen people up there, waving flags. In the weeks to come, people arranged driftwood and weeds to resemble a large flag on that mound. The field of stars was changed into a peace symbol one morning, but was reverted to a proper field by that evening.
Sorry, I’ve got no conclusions, no points to make. Just remembrance.
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