Sept 11th Timeline
MCPO NYC USN (Ret.) sends this to help you remember;
For those of you who followed me over here from paratrooper.net, Mark still has the booklet “Even Soldiers Cry” available. It recounts the story of our experience on 9-11-01 as a discussion forum. That link it to Facebook, if you can’t get there from here, I loaded the booklet on to TAH.
ADDED: Our buddy, Aunty Brat takes a look back at 9-11 and how we’re still waiting for justice for that day.
Category: Terror War
The confusion about what had happened was enormous.
We were all sent home.
The Loop was evacuated.
People walked out of their offices carrying their hard drives with them.
The ATMs were raided for cash, because no one knew if the banks were going to be shut down.
It was spooky to see no planes in the air at all, but even worse was wondering why a plane was in the air a few days later.
This morning on the news, the report was that cancer rates and deaths related to the WTC collapse, from the chemicals that spread through the air, are continuing to rise.
I was the day shift supervisor for the PD when it happened. Little did I know I was only going to work about 2 more weeks before leaving that job and never going back. In the summer of 02 I worked as the CBRN NCO for the Northeast Air Defense Sector and became friends with many of the people from there who were on duty on 9/11. Their pain was and still is evident.
Was an E-5 at stationed at Ft. Meade the time supporting intel missions at the time. Got off one op to go smoke and saw a replay of the first plan and thought: ‘What a horrible accident. How did they not see that huge building.’
Then watched the live feed as the second plane hit. I turned away from the screen and noticed the shoked and dumfounded looks on everone’s faces. I blurted out ‘ladies and gentelmen we just went to war.’ Then some one else said something, I can’t fully remember but what ever it was it was it helped snap people out of inaction and we got real busy. Later that day the Ops Director pulled me aside and thanked me for helping galvanize everyone to get back on mission.
Few weeks later after a long conversation with my fiancée at. The time, we decided to do a JP so she’s covered just in case. We got married on Oct 5th and was walking around the Mall in DC on the 6th just to ‘get away for a while’ (we later had the big wedding a great honeymoon, but for right then it was enough). About lunch time a large contingent of helos flew over head. Wife asked a little scared ‘now what’, I looked up and just wispered ‘its begun’ and said a small prayer for the guys I knew that were now in harms way. I’ll never forget those moments.
Perhaps while you were walking around the mall on October 6th, I was working on the ramp at Anchorage International Airport. It was not unusual to see contrails overhead as freighters frequently flew the Great Circle Route. However, on that day, we had just finished loading a departing aircraft and I looked up and saw 2 con trails in which two aircraft that were flying westbound parallel, one had broke right and the other group left and they were in the process of making to symmetric u-turns. I pointed to it and told my crew something is going on. We got to the break room and sure enough the news was broadcasting the commencement of operations in Afghanistan.
Forget which day it actually was, but was on the mall (first few hours off in many days) visiting the Wall when first a couple helos, then a pax plane came overhead. Several others and I nearly hit the ground hearing them, but soon realized that they were deadheading aircraft in that late afternoon to begin “normal” operations the next day at National.
The other impression of those first few days was the feedback from civilian friends that they were jealous of my having a job to do, and the ability to just go do it. They wanted to contribute but had no idea what to do or how.
Had to wonder about myself, though, as I drove to DC. Many of us were doing so, and we must all be insane!
For some reason, it was extremely important to me that I be in full dress uniform for the trip. As soon as I reported in I was ordered to remove anything from my vehicle which might show a military connection. We were not allowed to wear uniforms off base or even let them be seen. Luckily, I had a garment bag in which to transport them from the hotel room to the trunk of my car.
Lots of memories.
It was Tuesday. Temp was moderate and sky was big blue. A beautiful morning in NYC.
I was a senior in high school when it happened. I had been a member of my hometown’s volunteer fire crew for a couple of years, and had a bit of training. The thing that sticks with me the most about the TV coverage is that one segment from the cameraman who was across the street from the first tower when it came down. You can’t see anything as he walks around, but you can hear dozens, if not hundreds, of integrated PASSes on Scott BAs sounding their distress tone. That device emits a warning tone if the wearer doesn’t move for 20 seconds. If the wearer doesn’t move for 10 seconds after that, it switches to a much louder distress tone, to make it easier to locate the downed firefighter in zero visibility. Every one of those shrill electronic screeches indicated a firefighter who…wasn’t moving. I knew even then what that noise meant, and it gave me chills as I watched the video.
To this day, I still absolutely hate that fucking sound.
Years ago I met a former FDNY captain who was in one of the towers when it collapsed. He walked away from that unscathed, then 8 months later falls through a weakened floor in a basement fire in one of those shitty little bodega stores and throws his back out, getting medically retired–God has a strange sense of humor. He told me a little bit about that day, though I didn’t press him for details. Basically, as bad as it looked on TV, it was a lot worse in person. Apparently there were lots of body parts lying around. I was a pup of 19 at the time, two years into my professional career, and the closest I could relate to that at the time was SoCal’s “’03 siege,” where me and my crew had found some of the first bodies. What surprised the hell out of me was that this older-than-dirt New York City guy thought we were crazy for “chasin’ those bigass brush fires you get here in California with hose on your backs.”
That was the day the light went out of the world for me.
That was the first day I regretted being retired. I had retired in May of 2000 and wanted to be back so I could do something, anything to be with my Brothers. When I called asking to be recalled they just said thanks but no thanks.
I was on the Carl Vinson we were in the Arabian Sea getting ready to do turnover with the Enterprise and head into the Gulf was on watch in the reactor room when the planes hit. After I got off watch everybody was gathered around the tv since we had Fox News on satellite. Everybody was shocked at first but then it turned into resolve for payback. Then about 3 weeks later we started attacks on the Taliban
I was sitting in my office and my neighbor (who is a news nut) yelled “Hey Al, a plane just crashed into WTC!” I went upstairs to the media room where they had just turned on the TV, and mentioned to one of our safety officers “Damn, what a horrible accident”.
Then the camera spun and caught the second plane striking.
Safety officer turns to me and says, “We are under attack”.
Never Forget 9-11-01 NYFD/NYPD
PAPD lost approx 3 times the LEO’s as NYPD.
A female NYPD officer from my precinct who held on as long as her battery did. They found her.
Several EMS Tech’s.
The Chief Chaplain of FDNY.
The entire head shed of PA.
16 of my friends and high school mates.
But the single largest loss of responders were FDNY, many knowing they were perhaps not coming back, particularly anyone in North Tower. Two from Ladder 5!
But what the fuck do I know …
Holy shit!
Never forget. Never forgive.
I was at home that morning and watched the entire thing unfold on Fox News.
I tried to go back to the Army the next time I saw the recruiting office opened but was told I was two years too old to go back in.
I went home and cleaned my firearms and just watched Fox News for the next year or so.
I will never forget what I saw that day either.
Imagine being at Cantor Fitzgerald that morning and having to make the decision of so I jump or do I burn up and die.
Faced with two shitty choices they did what they felt was their best option.
God bless them and all those that have served in the military since then.
Godspeed to all.
I had been out of BCT/AIT for only a couple of months at that point. I woke up, walked downstairs, turned on the TV, and went in to start the coffee. I thought they were playing a preview for some new action movie and ignored it.
The phone rang. My Supply Sergeant gave me the alert phrase and told me I had to get to the Armory immediately. When I asked what happened, he told me to watch five minutes of the news while I got my uniform on. I looked at the TV and saw the first video of the plane striking the tower.
I spent the entire day in my arms room with a 9mm on my hip and orders to shoot anyone who tried to enter without authorization.
Hell, a Sheriff Deputy almost got shot by the door guards.
It was my son’s fourth birthday.
For those of you who read Mike Williamson’s military science fiction, this was before “Freehold” was published, and he and I were chatting on IM when the shit hit the fan. He told me there was a plane that crashed into the WTC. Neither one of us knew what plane or what was going on, so I just assumed it was a tragic pilot error – a little Cessna or something – or Bernath not checking his fuel gauge (in today’s vernacular).
Then the second plane hit the WTC and the third hit the Pentagon, and Mike goes, “Holy shit! We’re under attack.”
My son always told me his birthday was the worst day ever, but I always told him that it gave me indelible joy to remember his birth on that dark day.
It does.
In NYC we knew after the first, as 10’s of thousands saw it happen.
There was no doubt after the first strike.
I spent a lot of that morning shaking my head at all the dumbass reporters and politicians saying “no one ever thought of using planes as weapons” and thinking someone somewhere MUST have read enough Tom Clancy to know he thought of it, half a decade earlier.
Ah, everyone in the security business knew it would happen. It was not a novel concept.
It was pioneered in WWI, developed in WWII by the Japs and the concept was advanced thereafter.
It was, has been and will always be a concern for a delivery platform of a WMD.
Rick Rescorla knew it would happen. Not forgotten.
Did he ever get any posthumous recognition for his actions? I’m traveling and my google skills are weak.
Rescorla’s picture should be in the dictionary as an illustration for the word “badass”.
From Wikipedia: Rescorla was uncomfortable about being portrayed as a war hero. Although he had given some interviews to his Vietnam commander, Harold Moore, for his 1992 book, We Were Soldiers Once… And Young, Rescorla chose not to read it when he saw that its cover featured a combat photograph of him. When he learned that the book was being made into a film starring Mel Gibson, he told his wife, Susan that he had no intention of seeing it, as he felt uncomfortable with anything that portrayed him or other survivors as war heroes, commenting, “The real heroes are dead”.[3] Nonetheless, Rescorla’s activities during the September 11 attacks were quickly brought to national attention by the news media, including a detailed account by Michael Greenwald in the October 28 The Washington Post of Rescorla’s life and “epic death, one of those inspirational hero-tales that have sprouted like wildflowers from the Twin Towers rubble.”[3] Other memorials and tributes to Rescorla include: At a small, brief memorial service attended by family and a few close friends on October 27, Susan recited “The White Rose”, a Cornish folk song that Rescorla was fond of, and a hawk that had recently been restored to health was released into freedom.[3] The Morristown police paid tribute to Rescorla at a fund-raising dinner. Susan Rescorla donated Rick Rescorla’s dark green Lincoln Mark VIII, which had been left in the station parking lot, to be auctioned off for charity as a “hero’s car.”[3] The town of Hayle, Cornwall also held a memorial service that was attended by the head of Morgan Stanley in London.[3] Several days after the Hayle service a tribute for the British victims of the attacks was held at Westminster Abbey and attended by Queen Elizabeth.[3] Rescorla was honored with the White Cross of Cornwall/An Grows Wyn a Gernow award from his native Cornwall in 2003 by the Revived Cornish Stannary Parliament.[15] In 2009, Fort Benning, Georgia, unveiled a statue of Rescorla.[16] On November 11, 2009, Rescorla was inducted into the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame.[17] At the National 9/11 Memorial, Rescorla is memorialized… Read more »
There was also a FOB Rescorla in Astan Farah province 2008-2010 time frame.
I was an E-5 stationed at Mountain Home AFB, working in the Air Control Squadron maintaining their vehicle fleet. I had just arrived at work from dropping my kids off at daycare, and walked in to see a large group in the break room area watching TV.
After checking in, I strolled back into the break room in time to see the 2nd plane hit the towers. We all could not believe what he had just witnessed. I went to tell my co-workers, and the first thing they said was “We just went to war”. Within minutes, the base was on lockdown, and we had started 24 hour operations scoping the Pacific NW.
I never will forget watching everything unfold on the news, and wondering how our country was going to recover from this.
All work stopped on the floor in the Boeing Renton final assembly building as the whole work force crowded around TV sets. I watched the replay of two of our jets hit the towers. We watched another of our planes hit the Pentagon and heard that one had crashed in the woods on its way to DC. Two of the four planes were built by the folks that were watching that day. We were shocked and angry that those beautiful machines were used to kill our countrymen.
Having lived in NYC while the Towers were being built, I knew that there could be 50,000 people working in the complex and I feared that the death toll could be horrendous. 3000 was bad enough, but 30,000 was not out of the realm possibility.
A few moments later, I was having a smoke with one of the Mechanics and out of the blue I said “Osama Bin Laden”. I got a blank look from him. We had been chasing him for several years. Remember when Bill Cintoon had Tomahawked a couple of terrorist camps in Sudan and forced him to Afghanistan? I predicted on that day that lot of people were going to die before we were done with the Payback. I never thought America would ever elect a coward who would take our boot off the necks of the terrorists just to appease the islamic world.
The first estimate based on a request for body bags and DMORT cababilies was 30,000. That request was made approx 1200.
No one knew how effective and relatively calm the evac was ’til later.
People were pushed north up Greenwich and Church and west across Brooklyn Bridge.
Look at the water borne evac, it was improvised and was larger and faster than Dunkirk.
Unbelievable, I have so many stories, memories and tales of that week.
Many bad, a few good and all unbelievable to me.
I still see the towers.
We all do!
On Tuesday 11 September 2001, I was serving my full time mission for The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints, protecting a ranch in Jensen, Utah.
I had just woke up, and turned on my computer, where I saw some strange messages stating that there was, “an appeal for blood donors”, and that, “a car bomb had gone off in front of the State Department”.
So, being curious, I went to the DRUDGE REPORT web site, and what I saw made me think that his web site had been hacked, and that somebody was playing a cruel joke.
Then, I turned on the television, and watched as the events continued to transpire, minute by minute.
The scene I most remember was of the man and woman holding hands as they leaped to their deaths.
The attacks of Tuesday 11 September 2001, was this generation’s version of “Pearl Harbor”.
In the days immediately following those attacks, we were united in our national resolve.
But, today, we are once more a divided people, and very obviously on the eve of general anarchy and/or a massive civil insurrection, in response to continuing unbearable tyranny and despotism from our own government.
Several years ago, when I was a resident at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, D.C., a group of us went to the Pentagon for the United States Army’s birthday celebration, and we were taken to a part of the Pentagon where members of the public are not allowed, and that is the memorial chapel built on the very site where the aircraft impacted.
Parris Island on team week over at 4th battalion chow about to serve horny female recruits.
😉
I was responding south bound two blocks short of the North Tower when it collapsed.
Very bad day!
The bride was at Shaw Air Force Patch visiting #1 son living in base housing. I just got out of bed in Arkansas. No reason to have the TV on that early. She calls says turn on the TV and that all hell was breaking loose at Shaw. Wanted to know what was going on. I turned on the TV in time to watch the second plane crash into the tower. Once she convinced me it was real time and not another War of the Worlds deal, all I could say over and over again was “Holy f’in shit”. Then it took us how many years to kill the SOB? Now look at the shit we are in and about to get mired down in again. “Holy f’in shit” Kill em all and let Allah sort it out.
I was on the way home from PT when I heard the news about the first plane. I got home and turned on the TV. I changed into uniform and went right back to the Company without even showering. I was one of the last vehicles to make it back onto Ft Campbell before they went into lockdown. My 1SG kept holding formations to let us know every time new news came out. I remember him saying, and I paraphrase, “men, right now your pucker factor should be high because we are going to war”. Next thing I knew I was behind a .50 at gate 4 thinking about that if I had to fire the people at the US Cavalry store across the street will be having a bad day. I heard later that Soldiers were waiting up to 12 hours to get on post. Businesses along 41A were coming out and giving the Soldiers waiting in line to get on post bottled water and snacks free of charge. After a couple of days we were allowed to go home to get some items like changes of clothes and hygiene items.
I had had prostate surg at the old Walter Reed. 9/11 I was supposed to come back to get the damned catheter (FU Bernasty) removed. We saw what happened in NYC and was on 95 at Springfield when I read that the Pentagon had been hit…we had to go there to do the short route but we waved off and did the longer beltway. Amazingly, got on Post with no problem. At the Urology ward they said, tough, all the Docs in the ER. I sucked my thumb and a Doc walked by and asked what I needed….pull the tube out…he said, we can handle that real quick and he did. Then began a huge traffic nightmare til we got back to Woodbridge.
But, nowhere near the nightmare that so many had. I lost two senior NCO friends at the Pentagon.
Sadly, today’s folks have forgot all that. Muzzies are the religion of peace, right? It must be the Lutherans/Methodists/Presbys/Mackerel Snappers, et al that are beheading people.
Isn’t that what my Priest said last week? Er no. He spoke of kindness, understanding, hope.
By Thursday everyone knew we had 24/7 CAP across metro area. On occasion a CAP pilot would conduct a full on patrol (with after burner for all to see) from USMA at West Point due south down Hudson and pull up over WTC site!
My 9-11 story:
I was in Elgin, Illinois, waiting to go to the bus station to catch the Greyhound back to Georgia after my Aunt Erna’s funeral. I watched the morning news program and saw the towers hit … and was in a total state of shock. Soon the announcements were made that airline flights were cancelled indefinitely and even Greyhound shut down. The next day, Greyhound resumed its routes, but the trip from Elgin to Chicago was surreal – we passed O’Hare Airport, but nothing was flying. The bus picked up as many passengers as it could hold and we went into the city.
At the Chicago bus station, there were wall-to-wall people, most of whom needed to get somewhere and unable to fly there. The bus to Atlanta was full to capacity and we headed south … and it was a very, very quiet ride.
I had a small personal portable TV with me, and became the most popular person on the bus because I kept the news on all the way to Atlanta. At every stop, people bought batteries so the TV could give us what we needed to know.
Passing Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta was even more surreal. The buses were going past the two busiest airports in the world … and those airports on that day were deadly silent. Nobody was there. Nothing was flying.
I made it back home and back to work one day later than I expected … and what had happened in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania dominated the discussions in my history classes for the next few days. My students wanted to know, “Why did people do this to us?”
I had no answer then. I have no answer now.
0300 in the morning, Johnston Island. The soon to be Mrs NBC and I had fallen asleep with the TV on and she woke me up in time to see the second plane.
I’ve got a friend (no, shut up, it’s true) who is not a bad man, in fact he is a. very good man, though this story is going to show him in a very poor light. When the movie United 93 came out I suggested he go and see it, “it’s too soon” he answered. Less than a year later I made some other comment reminding him of 9/11, “it’s time to move on” be replied. That’s the attitude that is all too prevalent in our nation. Remembering, in anything other than a superficial way, is hard because it reminds us of our duty. Most modern Americans dislike “hard”, their lives are supposed to be easy and anything that makes life harder is to be ignored. The enemy knows this and factors it into his planning. Until we figure out how to overcome this, we won’t be able to effectively deal with him.
At that time I was a Trucker up in Northern Indiana awaiting my next load assignment. I turned on the radio and heard the news thinking “Huh, what? Is this some ‘War of the Worlds’ kind of stunt?” I then turned on the TV in my truck and watched unable to believe it. Driving through major cities was spooky afterward, not seeing any aircraft and I was relieved to see that resume.
I wasn’t due into work until 10 that morning. I was watching Good Morning America, towards the end of the show, they said they were going to go live to the World Trade Center where something had happened. They were talking & guessing, it looked like a horrible accident. Then as I watched, the 2nd plane exploded into tower 2. I new instantly we were under attack.
I went to work. Most of our customers work in large buildings in big cities around the country. They started calling us, telling us their buildings were closing and they were being evacuated. We had an office near the pentagon, we couldn’t get through to them. At some point, I just got up & went home. I think we all did – we just closed.
I watched it over & over… Honestly, it is the only event in my lifetime that caused me to have nightmares. I kept dreaming of collapsing buildings… With the darkest & most depressing feelings I’ve ever experienced.
I can’t believe that 14yrs later AQ still draws breath.
– Ken