Do you remember what you were doing on 9-11-2001? (soldiers, regular)

[ditchoc]

Had buried my grandmother the day before. It was the last time all 7 of her children (including my Dad) were together. Me, my Dad and Aunt were sitting the living room talking with the TV on and were watching a news program when the events started being broadcast live. Later on that day, an uncle that had flown from Texas joined us because he could not get home.


Initially people were not sure of the circumstances. At first it was simply a fire in the WTC. Then it became an airplane strike. At first they were blaming air traffic control. No one was quiet sure. Then the second plane hit and it became obvious the US was under attack. It was not long before the news of the Shanksville crash, the Pentagon crash and the towers falling came like gut punches. Disbelief and anger .... disbelief and anger ... I was ready to go to my recruitment center except I was in my late 40s then and wouldn't have been accepted.


It still makes me sad and angry.

[No_Recess]

Working.

Someone has to pay to support the MIC, no?

[BobNJ1960]

Originally Posted by ELOrocks17

When you found out what was happening? I will never forget.

I was at work, my last day in the Scottsdale office. My company was transferring me to Sacramento to open a new call center for a new Pharmaceutical company. As a result, I had to drive to Sacramento since all flights were cancelled.

What were you doing?

At work, in a rural town near Nashville, Tn. Recall the full week. Stunned. Getting ready for 9/12 when I needed to present financials to traveling C level execs from division hq located in North central US. Obviously their trip was cancelled. We had just one working internet connection after plane 1 hit-an IT admin's pc stayed connected. (Mine took until 9:15 to regain a working connection). So from 8:50 or so to 9:30 ((he called us to his office), 6 of us watched his pc in a very tight cube. Silent except for gasps.

Went to lunch. Place had hundreds in it. Almost no talking. Glued to tv.

Noticed how sunken my eyes were as late as Friday evening, 9/14.

Worst period of time for the nation in my life. Not just 9/11, I still recall confirmed anthrax envelopes hitting NY offices weeks later.

[remco67]

Absolutely it was my day off and i was driving to meet someone for lunch later that day. I had left early to check the job boards at the university we were meeting at. I heard about it on the radio and I thought they were doing some stupid War of the Worlds type broadcast(it was that unreal to me) so i turned it off and listened to music. It was only when i got to the university and everybody was crowded around every T.V. listening to it with shocked expressions and some crying that I realized it was not a stupid joke.

[Three Wolves In Snow]

Originally Posted by ELOrocks17

When you found out what was happening? I will never forget.

I was at work, my last day in the Scottsdale office. My company was transferring me to Sacramento to open a new call center for a new Pharmaceutical company. As a result, I had to drive to Sacramento since all flights were cancelled.

What were you doing?

I lived in Seattle at the time, so 3 hours behind. When this happened, I was still in bed, asleep. I got up, got ready for work, got on the bus, and as we were going over the bridge from W. Seattle to downtown, the bus driver said something about things being on fire. I thought the bus driver was crazy, and couldn't wait to get off the bus.

Got downtown, got to my second bus stop, and everyone was huddled around someone with a radio. I had no idea what was going on, and it was hard to hear everything being said on the radio because everyone was talking to each other. I got a vague idea that something horrible happened in NYC, some kind of terrorist attack, but I still didn't really know wth was going on.

Got to work, radio was on at work. How on earth can a person concentrate on work? After about an hour, our work told us that if we wanted to go home, we could. I opted to do that because I really didn't understand, fully, what was going on, as I had not heard it from the beginning, everyone was talking at work, too, so I couldn't hear everything on the radio.

As I walked out of the building to get to the bus stop to go home, a co-worker said something about it, and then said, 'And they say Seattle is next." Oh. Lovely. I'm still not 100% on what's going on, and now you're telling me that where I live, is also going to be attacked?

Finally got home, I still had TV back then, and turned it on. I did nothing all day but watch the coverage from CNN, Fox News, and any other channel that I flipped to.

It was unbelievable, but I'm going to be very honest here: I was not shocked until I saw those people jumping out of the buildings. That's when it hit me all at once - what. the. **** ?!?!?!

Those falling people really impacted me.

Those people and Kevin Cosgrove's call were the worst.

[WK91]

I was stationed in South Korea, and had just been out drinking Soju and OB beer most of the night, as young military guys tend to do there. Anyway, it must’ve been about 2 or 3 AM, I was asleep, and I got a recall notification. The guy on the phone said, “There’s been some terrorist activity in the US, so we are going into a heightened state of alert. But you don’t need to come in now, come in at your normal time and we will start working 12 hour shifts”.

But the guy was so nonchalant about the whole thing, my first thought was that it was no big deal and then I went back to sleep. I woke up a few hours later, and as I was getting my uniform on, I thought, Why not? Let’s see if there is anything on the news about these “supposed” attacks.

Needless to say, I was shocked at what I saw when I turned it on, which would’ve been about 7 PM in NYC.

About a year later, I found myself in Afghanistan, the first of about 12 deployments that I would subsequently go on over the next 20 years in the Middle East.

Because of the recent surrender in AFG by Biden, I wonder what was the point? A few people I knew were killed by a green on blue attack in 2011, a few people I knew got blown up in 2015 by an IED. This doesn’t even include the people I knew who were lost in Iraq.

Again, what was the point? So Biden could surrender to a bunch of mouth breathers? SMDH.

[Stuckatredlightsagain]

I was eighteen months old, at the time. My mother got a call from my uncle to turn the tv on (I don't remember this part, it's what she told me years later). (This is where my memory starts) I was sitting on the floor near the TV and I remember seeing this building burning. I was WAY too young to understand the significance of it. Then my mother screamed "Oh my God!" and I looked at her and then I looked back at the tv, and the building that had been burning was gone.

I remember it being the headline news for the next month, and not understanding why they kept showing the same burning building over and over.

[Taratova]

I was on my third day of vacation in Virginia and saw in my hotel room that the first building was hit. Knew immediately it was a terrorist attack. Was watching NBC or one of those stations and they acted as if it was a mistake made.. then the second plane hit. They still didn't make the connection it looked like a terrorist attack. Then the pentagon a short while later. I lived 50 miles outside of NYC and had close family living in Manhattan.



I packed up and headed home driving. As I drove home I saw police stationed at bridges, tunnels and certain areas thinking they might be hit as well. I remember driving a few miles headed to my oceanfront town and saw a huge line of purple looking smoke over the ocean drifting south from NYC. It was an extremely solemn event I will never forget.


I could not contact my family members in Manhattan and one of my family from NC called and they had gotten through. They were ok.. They had witnessed the fall of the towers looking out their penthouse window . They were locked in as they closed the tunnels and food was hard to come by as many trucks were not allowed through the tunnels leading to NYC. I have two copies of the NYC paper from that day as a reminder . I will never forget.

[Jimmyp25]

Originally Posted by ELOrocks17

When you found out what was happening? I will never forget.

I was at work, my last day in the Scottsdale office. My company was transferring me to Sacramento to open a new call center for a new Pharmaceutical company. As a result, I had to drive to Sacramento since all flights were cancelled.

What were you doing?

Freshman in Highschool. Left for school . Seen news before leaving to go to bus. Thought it was just some small plane that crashed into the WTC and left for school.

[Easternman]

I remember that day crystal-clear and I'm not even American. I was a high-school kid here in a mid-sized European city. I was about 16. What happened was absolutely shocking to me because I idolized the USA. And the symbol of the US for many of us here in Central/Eastern EU were the Twin Towers. That's what we always saw in the movies you know, they were iconic. The Twin Towers for America was like the Pyramids for Egypt.

Later I had the fortune to visit the US many times, the first time in 2007 when the remains were still there and I remember there was some kind of anti-terrorist simulation in NYC at that day: heavily armed soldiers in the subway stations underground and street level as well. They didn't let let a crisis go to waste even then, right? Haha. We were frightened like hell with my family you can imagine.

It's a shame that New York decided to not build back the iconic towers! The city, the skyline is not the same for me any more. Sounds stupid but it feels like America lost its essence with the fall of WTC. I heard that Trump wanted to build back the original ones.