20 Years Later…We all have a story, here's mine...

By Caroline Saxon

8.30 - It was a beautiful September morning and I was running late. 9 months into my first pregnancy, sleeping wasn’t always easy and I had hit that snooze button more than once. Radio was on, as per usual, with regular chit chat and music but then… something had happened in New York.?

8.48 - I rushed to the living room to turn on the news and saw smoke billowing from the twin towers in New York. I called to my husband, who joined me to watch in horror. It must have been a propeller plane, right? An accident? Someone flew off course. But it was too big, the hole, it was too big. It had been years since I visited the twin towers observation deck and it was way to large a bulging to have such a gaping hole from one small propeller plane. Then…

9.03 -? A passenger plane hit the other tower. Live, on TV. We saw it, there was no accident. No way what we now knew was two passenger planes could have mistakenly hit the towers.?

My husband had just left the army to pursue a civilian job and we made the quick decision that I would drive him to work in Crystal City, VA and then return home with the car. We got in the car and travelled the familiar route down Columbia Pike to the Pentagon where I would usually be dropped off at the metro to ride in to work. While heading down we heard a low plane overhead. We didn’t know at the time that the high jackers of a third plane were using the same road we were traveling on as a map, a guide, in their pursuit of their target.?

9.37 - As we drew closer, we began to see smoke rising from where we knew? the Pentagon was located. As we passed the crest of the hill as Columbia Pike turns past Arlington Cemetery we saw it. A gaping, smoldering hole. The path towards the building seemed parted, like a tornado had gone through, but instead of parting trees there were parted street lights, undoubtedly clipped by the airplane wings as they flew low to hit the building. 50ft street lights snapped like twigs.?

There was no one there… no emergency vehicles… no barriers… that’s how quickly it had all happened… how soon after that terrible act we saw the devastation. It felt raw, stumbling into such a horrific scene before anyone else. We were powerless, insignificant, when faced with such destruction. And we continued past the building. I was in no shape to be of any help, a lumbering mess of protruding belly, and my husband would surely be in greater need at the counterterrorism office where he worked, so we continued towards Crystal City.?

We now knew.. this wasn’t an accident. This was a deliberate act of terrorism. We were under attack.?

9.55 - I dropped off my husband a few minutes later and turned the car back towards Baileys Crossroad where we lived. Only now the evacuation of the Pentagon were in full force, and the road back home blocked as emergency vehicles flowed in a steady stream towards the burning building.?

It was a long, surreptitious route,? to get back home, the usual 15 minute drive taking me over 6 hours. There was no panic, no angry or frustrated drivers, just resolve. People were walking, others offered rides and the ACs of strangers cars as hotels opened their lobbies for the weary and restaurants and stores came outside offering free food for those on foot and gridlocked in their cars.?

My belly ached from the prolonged sitting and tensions but I, thankfully, did not go into labor that day. I had long since abandoned trying to use my cellphone to reach loved ones, the radio was my companion during those hours. I cried as the 4th plane crashed. There were no tears left as I heard the news of the towers falling, one after the another, burying lower Manhattan in smoke and dust. I didn’t see any of the devastation in those first hours… only heard it.?

When I finally got home my husband was frantic. Somehow, while I was trying to get home he had gotten a ride from a colleague and returned before me. His managing director had been in the Pentagon? for an early meeting, presumed dead, and they had been told to go home.?

That night was long. Intermittently watching the coverage, then turning it off when we couldn’t handle it anymore, trying desperately, along with the rest of the nation, to reach loved ones and ensure they were all safe.?

And we talked… my husband and I… of what had just happened, what this meant and what would change. By the end of the night, or early morning the next day, I don’t know, we had decided. He was going back in. This was different from his previous service. He had been to Bosnia, Serbia, Rwanda, Somalia. Those atrocities were real and he bore the emotional scars of what he saw and did there, but this was our home. We had been attacked where we worked and lived. The day's victims, and those lost since, had done nothing more than gone to work or board a plane, the ultimate wrong place at the wrong time. Their only crime was being Americans. And our brave first responders and soldiers ran towards the destructions, not away from it. No one was safe. Our children’s safety had to be our first priority and we agreed that fighting this threat was the most important contribution my husband could make.?

May 2004 - My husband graduated college and was commissioned into the US Army. We now had our son, born in the shadow of 9/11, and a daughter, born March 2004. In 2005, he started his 1st deployment of many since his commission. He was gone allot, we had another child, and the toll of what he saw and did continued to chip away at him, he was breaking.?

20 years later - We don’t regret the decision we made that day. I still have my husband, my children have their father, although he’s not the same as he once was. With traumatic brain injury from an IED attack in Iraq, and PTSD, he will never be the same. But we’re proud of his service. Proud of what he stood for and that he didn’t sit back and expect others to keep us safe. And thankful! Thankful that we live in a nation that will never forget, never forgive, the wrong that was done that day.