Every year, for the past the past twenty-one years, I remember where I was and the friends that I lost that day.
It will stick with me until the day I die...
It was just before one o’clock in the afternoon of September 11th (a sad commentary: we don’t even need to identify the year anymore) when my maintenance supervisor stuck his head into my room to wake me.
“Sir, someone just flew a plane into
the World Trade Center.”
Minutes later, I watched, horrified,
as a second plane struck the South tower.
And then, as both of the monstrously huge structures tumbled to the
ground as if kicked by a petulant child.
My unit and I were participating in
a multi-nation exercise at the Naval Air Station in Keflavik, Iceland (this
explains why it was the afternoon). A
round-the-clock operation, the Keflavik Tactical Exchange gave us a unique
chance to evaluate each other’s capabilities should we ever needed to flex our
respective militaries. Little did we
know that we were preparing for a type of war which belonged to the past.
Because the 21st Century came roaring
into each of our lives on that late summer day.
Naturally, the exercise was
immediately cancelled. Foreign aircrews
(funny that I call them “foreign’” since we were actually foreigners, too) beat
hasty returns to their home bases. We
had to remain in Iceland, because American airspace was closed indefinitely.
Station security forces went into
their highest readiness posture. Watch
teams at the main gate beefed up, rings of barbed wire cordoned off perceived
sensitive areas, and armed patrols roamed the perimeter.
My watch teams and I, on the other
hand, remained at our billeting. Only in
Iceland for the exercise, we were considered non-essential personnel who’d only
get in the way.
And so we spent the next few days.
I received a worried phone call from
my wife during this time. She fretted
over my safety. I assured her that I was
fine but omitted the fact that I was more concerned for her and the kids.
You see, my family lived only a
couple hours from New York and only a few from Washington.
The ensuing few days was a frantic
search for whatever updates we could glean from the news and how in the world
we’d get ourselves and thousands of pounds of equipment back home.
Most importantly, we desperately
wanted to know how we could get into the fight.
Whatever the fight was.
Four days later, U.S. airspace was
opened to military traffic. As I glanced
through the window of the Navy patrol plane which took us home, I was struck at
how empty the sky was-with the exception of the one plane which approached us
as we crossed into the United States. It
came no closer than a few miles before it disappeared.
I think it was a fighter aircraft.
What’s more, the radio circuits,
normally full of the cacophony of countless air traffic controllers, were
eerily silent. The only ones “on the
air” were the handful which guided us home.
All else were hushed into silence.
Our route of flight took us just
south of Manhattan, well out of sight of land.
At that distance, even at the altitude at which we were flying, it was
impossible to see any of the city skyline.
But, we did see a huge pall of gray-brown smoke lingering in the air like
the death shroud that it was.
As we touched ground at the Willow
Grove naval air station, there was nobody to greet us. There really wasn't much of anything by way
of an acknowledgment that we were back.
Somehow, it seemed fitting.
After all, we all had something much
more important to do.
Go home to our families.
In
memory of:
Commander
Bill Donovan, USN
AW2
(NAC/AW) Joseph Pycior, USN
and
the thousands whose only crime was going to work that day.
